Questions!

I am a nursing student as well and graduate in December. I am planning on going Army when I graduate. The reasons I chose Army is because the deployment is (supposed to be 3 months)..but you may have multiple deployments within a year and the Navy deployments are 1 year or longer from what I understand...you will also have the possibility of being stuck on a ship at sea for whatever time...My army buddy is also an RN stationed at walter reed..his housing allowance is $1600 a month but he shares a townhome with another officer and pockets the leftover money...from what he tells me he has every available amenity there is to use on base..the exchange, gym, etc. and as far as boot camp, he said its more classroom time than pt, but the pt is very easy stuff. sorry i cannot give you more info about the NAVY but I hope this helps somewhat..

The Army's deployments have never been 3months since my time in the service (7+yrs). I am AF by the way, but I work in tri-service envirnoment. The Army's deployments used to be 6months, but that hasn't been for several years probably about 6yrs. The Army now deploys anywhere from 6-18mo at a time, and yes you can come right back and be deployed again for the same amount of time. There are legitimate reasons why the Army has the highest suicide rates of any service.

Navy deployments are 6mo, and I haven't heard of any of the Navy nurses I work with doing any longer deployments than 6mo (they are probably out there, but I just haven't heard of them). Navy deployments also aren't always on a ship. There are a lot of Navy deployments that are at land based hospitals supporting Marines. The AF used to do 3month deployments, and now does 4 or 6mo with some doing up to 1yr deployments.

Now as far as the other things you have talked about those things are not significantly different than any branch, and by the way did your buddy tell about his/her lovely camping trip at Camp Bullis? One other thing by the time you graduate, and get through officer training there probably won't be a Walter Reed Army Hospital anymore. Walter Reed Hospital is intergrating with the National Naval Medical Center, and will become tri-service hospital.

I know I am being a little sarcastic, but there are a lot of good and bad things about each branch and you should do A LOT more research into each one before choosing one.

Some of the benefits to the Army: Faster relative promotions, lots of bases, extensive opportunities for training, lots advanced education opportunities, frequent travel (if you like that), one of the largest services, some of the biggest military hospitals all over the world.