They want to keep you on your toes, to keep you uncertain of what is coming next, because it is just one way of breaking down your resistance to them moulding you the way they want.
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[Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book Army Jerks: 6 Years as an Intelligence Specialist in the Australian Army, available here at Amazon.]
The first few days at recruits are a blur for everyone. Just like the lack of schedule, it’s supposed to be that way. You get there in the late afternoon on a bus, before being herded into a room where you are told in no uncertain terms by the company commander that you are now subject to the Defence Force Discipline Act. They also emphasise the point that you’ve signed a contract and there is essentially no way out. In other words “we own your ass, there is no turning back, so you’d better get used to it.” When that was over I remember being in our hallway, with boxes lining each side full of different uniforms. I couldn’t understand what the hell the corporals were yelling, all I know is I wound up with the unfortunate position of being at the front, so I just walked and grabbed. I ended up with the smallest size of PT shorts despite being a healthy 85kg, but thankfully managed to get the right size in everything else.
Although there was a set schedule for each day, it was never the same – that was the point. There were your basic things that changed very seldom such as your morning routine, but everything else was always different. They don’t want you in a routine at recruits, because then things become easy. They want to keep you on your toes, to keep you uncertain of what is coming next because it is just one way of breaking down your resistance to them moulding you the way they want. This is the funny thing about army recruits in Australia – going in I had seen all the usual war movies and expected to be screamed at, hit, bastardised (looking back it makes me wonder why I would willingly subject myself to such things, and why people continue to do so) and so on but it wasn’t like that at all. It didn’t need to be. The Army Recruit Training Centre is a well-oiled machine; they have been churning out recruits for a very long time and have got it down to a science. You always feel as though you are part of a large efficient machine there, like you are just a small cog amongst hundreds of other cogs with no choice but to keep spinning.
I think the whole “breaking you down to build you back up” is a massive fallacy, though. The forces that use such methods without doubt get amazing soldiers as a result, but the problem is these soldiers can struggle to fit into the real world once they leave the service.
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I can barely remember the first week there, all I remember was the sense of never feeling like I had a moment of stillness. We were moved from this to that and I never felt settled. From what I’ve seen though, the U.S. Marines and no doubt other services in the world have it a hell of a lot worse. They arrive at some stupid hour after midnight where they get screamed at by the staff and rushed along in a similar manner. Everything is faster, harsher, meaner. Their goal is a bit different though – they aim to completely break a person down and build them into what they desire from scratch. The army here is more a moulding process – similar methods are used, but rather than breaking you they aim to just wear away any resistance you have to the system and modify your behaviour to what they want. It is all a spectrum really – all armies use similar methods, with the only variation being how harsh it is. I think the whole “breaking you down to build you back up” is a massive fallacy, though. The forces that use such methods without doubt get amazing soldiers as a result, but the problem is these soldiers can struggle to fit into the real world once they leave the service. When you leave high school, go straight into the military and go through brutal indoctrination training, by the end of it you are exactly what they want. The problem is, it isn’t what a lot of employers on the outside want.
Whatever other purposes there may be in indoctrination training (and there are many) the biggest one is to have you following orders without question. They will make you do the most ridiculous things at recruits, things that serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever just to fuck you around and annoy you. The key thing is though, that you never question any of it, no matter how stupid or nonsensical it is. I remember them making us switch everything in our room with the room across the hall from us, and putting a time limit on it. This was at 8pm on a Friday night. After enough of these exercises, even though you never would have actually questioned them, you lose even the thought of questioning them. You just do it, and that is exactly what they want. It’s known in the army as “playing the game”. If you aren’t going to question people telling you to do something ridiculous, then you aren’t going to question them when they send you over the top of a trench into direct machine gun fire.
When you join the army straight out of school, it is easy for them to make you how they want. You trade one uniform for another, one form of rigid authority for another. The worst thing is, you become dependent on authority.
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Identity is probably the biggest thing that gets changed when you get to recruits. Essentially, it is stripped away from you. Individuals have thoughts, feelings and wants, which is the antithesis of what any army needs, so they take your individuality away. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, they do that by shaving your head. They also take all your personal stuff. Most importantly though, they take away your power of choice. You don’t get to choose anything while you’re at recruits, you’re provided with what they want you to have, even pyjamas. Yep, you read that right. Being a boxers kind of guy, imagine my horror at being forced to wear full length fucking pyjamas every night. This lack of choice extended to language as well. Everything has a different name in the army – a desk is now a “tables personnel”, the bathroom is referred to as “SALs” and so on. They want you to completely forget your civilian identity and give yourself over to them, and these methods are their way of doing that.
This is especially effective for those that join the military straight out of school, which is essentially their target demographic. At school you are in an environment where you are told what to do all the time. Then you come home, and your parents tell you what to do. By the time you’re 18 you might have a sense of identity, but it isn’t even close to developed. You’ve never lived out of home and had to pay your own way, make your own decisions and essentially make it in the real world. So when you join the army straight out of school, it is easy for them to make you how they want. You trade one uniform for another, one form of rigid authority for another. The worst thing is, you become dependent on authority. When you are always following orders, when do you ever have to think for yourself? The army has a whole network of support to find accommodation, help out your spouse, have things fixed at your home, subsidised this and that. This means that you essentially rely on the army your whole life to do things for you. If you do finally decide to get out at whatever age, what identity, if any, do you have?
This is why indoctrination never fully works with older people that have lived in the real world before they join up. There is always resistance in someone in their 20s or older, and no matter how much they might grind it down they can never erase it completely. When you finish recruits, that resistance slowly, inevitably builds back up. When I think of all the people I’ve known while being in the army, it is always the older ones that struggle. They struggle because, like me, they assume recruits will be the end of the stupidity and bullshit when in reality it is just the beginning. When you have a fully formed identity before you join the military, whether it takes a couple of months, or a couple of years, it will inevitably begin to grate on you that assumptions are made about you based on your rank alone, regardless of what other abilities or experience you might possess. If the army hasn’t taught it to you, or if someone of your rank wouldn’t normally possess those skills or attributes, it will be automatically assumed that you don’t and couldn’t have them either. The constant rules and regulations – and the fact that they can be abused by anyone that has more authority than you can be utterly infuriating. Then you consider the basic human rights everyone else has, that you once had but don’t anymore. This is why people that joined the military later in life barely ever make a career out of it. One of my favourite quotes on this topic is by Gwynne Dyer:
“It’s easier if you catch them young. You can train older men to be soldiers; it’s done in every major war. But you can never get them to believe that they like it, which is the major reason armies try to get their recruits before they are twenty. There are other reasons too, of course, like the physical fitness, lack of dependents, and economic dispensability of teenagers, that make armies prefer them, but the most important qualities teenagers bring to basic training are enthusiasm and naïveté…
The armed forces of every country can take almost any young male civilian and turn him into a soldier with all the right reflexes in only a few weeks. Their recruits usually have no more than twenty years experience of the world, most of it as children, while the armies have had all of history to practice and perfect their technique.”
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Photo: Skeeze/Pixabay
“This is why people that joined the military later in life barely ever make a career out of it.”
Hmm. Thankfully, the British Armed Forces arent like that. My 16 years allowed me to recognise some of what the writer has detailed here, but I guess a lot of it is perspective.