Color blindness

[wrestler3]

Im a kid whose always wanted to be in the servive, my grandfather fought in some of the bloodiest battle in the phillipines during WWII and ive always wante dto keep his spirit alive. I have a slight red-green color defficiency AKA color blindness, this does not mean i cant tell them apart, not at all, just dark greens may look brown and the same goes for dark red. I wanted to know if my disorder would keep me out of any aspect of the marines, i would preferabley like to go in as an officer and its essential for me to know if i can become one, as it is the only way my parents would let me go in (not that enlisted is of any lower caliber, i have tremendous respect for you). so will my being color blind keep me out of OCS? i know the other branches think that im "incapable" of doing my duty cause im color blind. But they're not the Marines.

[Phantom Blooper]

Well kid who always wanted to be in the service...fill out your profile...Capitalize Marine...and READ & SEARCH the Poo-lee Forum,Marine Mentor and Ask A Marine forums. Then if you can't find your answer come back. But like magic the answers will appear.

[Jimber]

What you are describing sounds like no color perception. I never realized I suffered from it either until I joined the Marines. I wanted to be in the infantry so it really didn't affect me very much. I just couldn't be a TOE gunner which was fine. That doesn't mean that your options won't definately be limited. My only other choice was an admin and I didn't join the Marine Corps to push paper, I joined to have the privalege of defending my great country in the greatest military branch ever assembled on God's green Earth and add a splash of red to it if necessary be it my own or preferrably someone elses. I am not sure if the requirements have changed but that's what I was told when I enlisted. I hesitate to say this but I was in the USANG before joining the Marine Corps and I was a crane operator and heavy equipment operator so go figure they must have different requirements. Either way, don't let it stop you from attempting to join this wonderful brotherhood. And like Phantom said, read and research and learn a little bit about the ettiquette. The fastest way to **** of a Marine is to offend the Marine Corps or a attack fellow Marine or try to take his beer he he he.

[Marine84]

Yeah there may be certain MOSs you may not be able to go into but there' s got to be something you can do where the color blindness won't be a problem for you.

One thing you have to understand though - they use color coding A LOT - if you can't tell the difference in colors................you liable to do something stupid like try to drop a fake bomb when you should have dropped the real one.

[wrestler3]

I've never had any problems with confusing colors, stop lights have never been a problem, the only time its ever come out is during those damn dot tests

[Echo_Four_Bravo]

There are plenty of people that never knew they were color blind until they enlisted. You can be a Marine with color vision problems. I have rather bad problems and made it just fine... as a communications guy that had to deal with red and green wires all the time.

I am confused though. Why would your parents have to allow you to enlist? Mine didn't like it, and it caused some major problems that still exist 12 years later. But, I knew what I wanted and I did it. You can too.

[ggyoung]

Before Vietnam started you could not be a helicopter if you had any type of vison problems. When the vc and NVA started shooting them down and more people were needed to drive them they relaxted the rules a bit there was one type of color blindes that was found to be a big help. They could see into the shadows better.

[wrestler3]

people with my type of color blindness RG are known to have better than normal night visin, they say thats because we've trained our eyes to see shapes and not colors as people with normal color vision do, so therefore we can pick out dark shapes easier.

[Old Marine]

The kid I grew up with and I joined the Marine Corps together. We then went to Korea together. He found out he was color blind in boot camp. Come to find out that when someone put camouflage on something he could pick it out because of his color blindness. (Makes sense) He completed his four year term with no problems, but maybe the regs have changed by now.