seanessay.com (under a thousand words)
One of my college classmates sobbed during her brief time in a British police academy. She later wondered, as many civilians do: Why are recruit classes for police and the armed forces so hard?
When civilians ask “What time did they make you get up in the morning?” or “How far were your daily runs?” I get bored. A better question is Why? I don’t think it’s to “make a tough woman out of you.” And I don’t think it’s to “break you down and then build you up,” however romantic that may sound.
For readers who want to get their theory straight from the horse’s mouth, a Canadian officer was quoted by a journalist as explaining that basic training is made hard so they can see what you are like, see how you react… But I don’t quite think so; I feel the officer was showing only one layer of the cake.
Picture a young sailor, not in Kansas anymore, on a street corner, gazing up at the tall buildings and neon signs. Sounds real. Now can you imagine any sailor, while sober, slouching against a lamp post, cigarette dangling, hands in his pockets, cap askew? Not me: “There’s something wrong with this picture.” Maybe he’s only an actor on a smoke break.
Time for a deep philosophical dive:
If you ask a scientist, I think she would, for example, offer no definitive pronouncement on whether marriage “should be for love” or “should be arranged by parents.” The evidence is 50-50. The scientists don’t know, while of course different regions will be 100 per cent believing one way or the other.
Imagine two male immigrants to our fair land. The first does whatever it takes to feel at home, rejoicing in his “new citizen ceremony” at the federal building. The second man “kinda, sorta” commits, but he goes back “home” for a full season out of every year.
At the end of seven years, the first man, without ever hearing the pressure-words “unAmerican” or “assimilate,” has somehow come to believe in democracy, and in marrying for love. The second man? After escaping the ambient pressure every year, maybe he still believes in arranged marriages; maybe he still believes anyone elected to to be a leader at the local community centre is a crook…
Surely seven years of ambient pressure can be concentrated into seven weeks. Hence our sailor soon acts, and reacts, as a proud serviceman. He wouldn’t be caught dead slouching against a lamp post. Neither would he let down a buddy when a storm of steel shards is flying, even if no one in authority is nearby to see how he acts.
The serviceman’s new culture involves doing things well, or as Rudyard Kipling noted “… getting shut of doing things rather more or less.” When parents come to see their son or daughter’s graduation parade, they have every reason to be proud.
I should add that boot camp does not involve being highly scared so much as ongoing stress and fatigue—I recall looking forward to a lecture by an officer about history, so that I could finally sit and rest with my eyes wide open. I might add that in the British Commonwealth forces the stress is imposed impersonally (except after individual failure) by demanding the recruits achieve high standards. Yelling is employed mostly for emphasis, not so much for anger, and not for distain. Only in the U.S. do disdained recruits, as a group, get called maggots.
As for parade drill, there are several layers to that cake. (Here is a link to a “zippy facts” explanation of Colonel “Martinet”) A fellow junior NCO could recite to me the big official reason from the drill manual we both used, but I didn’t bother to learn it. A British drill sergeant, during one of the world wars (I forget which one) told his keen volunteers, who were questioning the value of drill, (in my own words) “Can you do drill as well as the Queen’s Own Highlanders? When you can, then you can ask me why we are doing drill.”
To me close order drill, besides instilling a sound mind in a sound body, serves to instil instinctive instant obedience. Hence nobody in the forces ever adds, “that’s an order,” not like in a Hollywood movie.
Imagine a line of ten marines firing over the top of a ravine at a lone enemy shooter. If they merely pop up their heads just one at time then they may fail. Better an entire line of marines blazing away in earnest. Best of all: If they all jump up at once and charge in a line, the lone shooter may be too scared to shoot straight, right up until he is overrun… (Usually some marines will manoeuvre as the others supply covering fire)
But the obstacle that would prevent stopping that lone shooter… would be if every marine had his own reaction time: One individual needs to say a hail Mary first, another individual takes a deep breath, another individual needs two hails and two breaths… Frail human nature means it’s hard to be a lonely target; it’s terribly hard to leap up and charge unless you are confident the guys on each side of you will be charging at the same time. This, then, is when parade drill pays off. As another bullet zips by: “Prepare to move… Move!”
As you know, US farm boys are comfortable with rifles, and those same wholesome young men may go college to study acting. Meanwhile, a US Marine Corps officer wrote in a forces trade magazine, “How do you tell ten marines out in a field from ten actors in uniform? When the first round goes by. Do they react as ten individuals, or as ten men with one mind?” (one leader)
God bless recruits.
…
…
Sean Crawford
As over in Ukraine good and evil stands clear and unmistakable,
April 15, 2022
Footnotes:
~There is more on “why so scary” in my previous post.
~I was privileged to walk in an Indian soldier burial ground in Woking, south of London
~Kipling, in his poem set to music, knew recruits (link)
