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The Army
School finished and my peers progressed, treading the well-worn paths of their predecessors. These predictable roads and destinations depressed me. Their inevitable outcomes stole any excitement from the future; everything on offer seemed undramatic and foreseeable, pointless and uninspiring.
I avoided commitment to university or career, hoping inspiration would appear and save me from ordinariness, but for months no avenue inspired me and life remained futile and senseless. I walked for hours to burn time, letting my thoughts drift, hoping they would provide solutions and rescue me.
I wanted to matter, I wanted greatness. I wanted to fight the cruel and force the world better. I felt some primal longing to test myself against the world, to improve, to strive. I wanted extraordinary experiences, betterment and adventure. Finally, only the army could provide in some small way what I sought. Its violence and danger did not dissuade me, it encouraged me, it challenged me to be courageous.
I said farewell to my parents and home and with my few possessions I mounted the train, nervous but convinced, full of naive premonition.
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We were lined up and ignored awhile, then marched into featureless blocks. We were led around our new home: uniform, colourless, old – a soldier factory. We followed silent and nervous, braving only attention and deference.
Our first few days were beyond basic, our lessons washing, shaving, ironing, cleaning, polishing and tidying. In between these banalities they ran us hard, through mud and over concrete, often weighted. The only weapons we saw were carried by senior recruits, who like everyone treated us contemptuously. We were not people, respect had to be earned.
When introduced to weapons we carried and cleaned them for weeks before firing them. I was an average shot but was undeterred, knowing only practise separates the amateur and expert.
Our waking was early and exercise was immediate. Breakfast was basic but calorific. Afterwards we had lessons in field-craft, weapons, conduct, ethics, history, warfare and duty. Then they pummelled us through assault courses, mud and attacks.
Most nights were outside without sleep, hiding in forests, patrolling under stars or rain. The following mornings we rehearsed attacks until exhausted, carrying casualties, killing enemy and storming positions. Then we cleaned until evening, awake on adrenaline, making fun of ourselves to lighten moods.
These initial weeks were the hardest but once army life became familiar it intimidated less. I liked and respected most of those who stayed but my heart kept distance, knowing this only the beginning and that many more would fall.
Training was the protracted bludgeoning of the body, saddling it in soreness, starving it of rest and wearying the mind. Once mundane normalities became fantasised luxuries: long sleeps, beds, baths, free-time, good food. The deprivation irritated, provoking some to leave, realising the glamour was myth and the reality abject. Accompanying the ailing body was the doubting mind, forever questioning our undertaking and ability. Doubt nagged, thoughts fought themselves, reasons for both perseverance and surrender debated. This internal monologue broke more men than broken bodies, its relentless pestering was relentless. Do not judge from comfortable chairs, know that everyone imagined quitting.
We lived continuously nervous, unsure what harshness awaited. The sound of approaching steps outside dorms were terrifying. The fear some unreasonable task would soon interrupt our rest always hovered over us. The training staff became demonic figures, capable of shattering our peace, armed with the power to demand unbearable and unreasonable feats.
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Days lumbered by, each hour saturated, each free moment a fleeting mercy. We became efficient wretches, everything done quickly: eating, cleaning, washing, sleeping. We stowed away food in anticipation for going hungry. We prepared spares of everything, knowing our primaries faced destruction. The perfect method to each mundane task was quickly found after failure and its disproportionate punishment. Our ingenuity was focused on escaping attention and appearing proficient.
We slunk from notice, hiding amongst many, wretched animals obedient to orders, aggressive urchins severed from reality. Our impossible feats went unrecorded, unrewarded, lost to time, saved only by memory. Each concluded triumph was serenaded by criticism and disappointment, shaming us for our efforts, decimating any buoyed spirits. We were insulted and derided, treated like sub-humans. The occasional compliment created relief and let us feel value temporarily.
We spent our lives wet and muddy. We waded through swamped ground, rivers and under rain. We were always carrying something, and when it slowed us we were disciplined. We strived in discomfort, were run beyond our ability, and lived free of fairness. Exertion strained lungs and hearts, legs cried for clemency, worn shoulders bloodied. At night our lacerated bodies, bruised and stiff, lay alongside under night skies, drained and collapsed. Dreams were anxious and rest frequently interrupted by task. Tiredness damaged our ability to think and made our actions automatic and instinctive. Our greatest joy was sharing misery, or returning from exercises on the precipice of collapse.
We believed we were growing inexplicably, that getting used to increasing hardship somehow ascended us above the normal. We conquered staggering feats of endurance in deplorable conditions, accomplishments unthinkable outside the military gates. Our pride was incommunicable to the inexperienced and our confidence in our strength grew. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable; I am grateful to have suffered for this.
Civilians became a different species, pampered and oblivious, their concerns trivial, their lives hedonistic opulence. Women became impossible Sirens, enchanting and otherworldly creatures. Glimpsing them became torture, even their pictures were soul-wrecking reminders of our starvation. We stole glimpses of them through vehicle windows, self-imprisoned prisoners watching the bewitching forms denied us.
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I never noticed how wretched I looked until I saw women, then it was inescapable. I felt a hundred washes and sleeps could not wipe the dirt and tiredness away. Exhaustion and strain had burrowed into my bones and shone through in my sunken eyes and tired skin. I wished they could see my inner strength and the will that carried me through deprivation, then I knew I would win their admiration.
But these were only fleeting thoughts before I was plunged back into the fray – screams and fire, sweat and blood. No matter how much training we suffered exhaustion always found me. I would feel the strength in my legs disappear, then my speed would follow. I would battle against my deterioration but it was an unwinnable war.
Afterwards, when they threw us into the back of vehicles, none of us could stay awake, nor any of us manage talk. We sat on those metal floors, thrown around by bumpy roads, passed out, heads bobbing, mouths open and limbs sagging. The trials made me realise how unexceptional I was, how all too human. No matter my effort or commitment biology always won. Energy always fades and the mind always tires. Eventually, despite inhuman will, I was useless and only stubbornness carried me onwards.
Despite this base existence there were inexplicable moments of elation and exhilaration. Sometimes I could ride the crest of my ability, teetering between surviving and submitting, every effort straining, but managing to exist in this fragile place. A euphoria would creep into me, making me comfortable within my discomfort. My aggression lifted me above normality, momentarily unbreakable, a world breaker.
There was no fear or concern for self, I just was, and I accepted death and any fate. Drunk with exertion I wished the test harder, to stretch myself beyond myself. A primal violence filled me, casting aside limitation, filling me with contempt for weakness. In these moments I understood more profoundly myself and man.
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Our million ancestors had sculpted our impossible greatness, the unworthy sacrificed to gift us this strength. Through me flowed war’s survivors and victors. The past’s merciless genocide of the weak had allowed the seed of the strong to proliferate, equipping us with their tools of survival. Inside us all were the cutthroats and killers, cavemen and conquerors, barbarians and animals. The scrupulous and conquered had been torn from the earth and we carried their murderers’ genes. Each of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries are the great sea of its total memory.
Deep inside myself I found this inheritance; it was cold machinery fighting to keep itself alive. When my humanity cracked, I caught glimpses of this terrifying beast buried in all of us. It was as old as the first lifeform and it infected everything living. It had grown devious fighting other beasts, and tirelessly reached for new ways to thrive, and our every behaviour was the manifestation of its icy deviousness. It was unpitying and powerful and the source of all our drives. It was encoded into every cell and forever inseparable from the living.
I felt this primeval energy and embraced it, content to be its vessel. What power it made me feel: I could fight until exhaustion killed me, conquer the most brutal people and lands. I was a rampart, I was my country’s guard. When the unpleasant was necessary I would scorch any obstacle to ensure my people’s future and descendants. It was a truth deeper than any I had read, and more moving than any experience or sentiment.
Without civilisation, man turns hard and this was the army’s method. I fought through the rest of training growing more used to suffering, more stoic, more intolerant of weakness. When I reached the end of training I was fitter and stronger but the real change was internal. I had accepted brutality and suffering as natural, and believed expecting fairness and mercy was infantile. Only strength guaranteed me anything, and only defeat ensured me helplessness.
Finally, the months of training ended. The survivors were lined up and the inadequate were failed. I passed. I felt a leper king.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
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