Military service – a necessary evil

A new recruit's view of the matter.

Conscription day was a date that for conscripts placed at various units meant the end of a life in freedom – (at least in relative freedom, for even civilian life has its obligations towards us, though they are not as tangibly noticeable as in the military) a life that one only after this day learned to fully appreciate. Now, a good two – and such a long two – months after reporting for duty, it is a pleasure to dress in civilian clothes, to walk around with shoes as unpolished as one pleases, and to have an entire room entirely to oneself. The first days were of course marked by total confusion, from the forcedly humorous comments about the size of the linen trousers.

- "Am I supposed to be alone in these?" And "Someone has worn these trousers before me."

– Don't worry about that, there are plenty who have worn the same trousers before you. As for the anxious speculations about what might happen if we didn't greet the vice corporals – that something terrible would occur, such as punitive running around the area or confinement on bread and water for an uncertain number of days, we were absolutely convinced of that. The military abbreviations were also the subject of little Gösta Knutsson moments of eager questioning: mtrl, bat, battfu, kn, and similar cryptic terms.

Those in our circle who had already paid their tribute to the fatherland greeted us with cheerful smiles when they met us in town, thereby confirming the old adage that schadenfreude is the form of amusement that humans are most prone to, and they added to it with hair-raising stories about grumpy officers, maneuvers in 40-degree cold and full snowstorms, nurses with bicycle-pump-sized vaccination syringes, and other such little pleasures. The bunkmates, the clothes, the bed – yes, you know – the weapons, everything was fairly new, unknown, a bit frightening.

But – gradually one began to feel a little bit at home; one realized that a great many clothing items were extremely suitable for the purpose (there are probably not many fabric types that withstand so much dirt, dampness, etc. as the uniform cloth does) but unfortunately also that many details could leave much to be desired. From the pile we can pick out a pair of the most notorious gaiters and the linen neck scarf – the so-called "idiot". The gaiters might be defended with a little goodwill, but the scarf contradicts all sound design principles; where a bit of fabric is needed to protect the neck, there is nothing, but instead there is much fabric where nothing is needed. Such a scarf protects the neck from chafing as little as suspenders protect us from the cold. One just wonders how long soldiers have been tormented with these items and who the inventor is. Fortunately, these things have been completely abolished at many units and are also being phased out at units where they still darken the existence of the enlisted man.

As a former soldier in the Finnish army, I missed footcloths and handkerchiefs. It didn't help to go to the regimental commander; one could manage without footcloths, but with the handkerchief it was worse. I could never reconcile myself to that; I even went up to the regimental commander and blew my nose by sniffling into the uniform sleeve. Nothing helped.

The food is both good and nutritious; those who complain about the food rarely have reason to do so, especially if one goes to the older soldier instructions from 1769 where one can read: Every other or every third day hot food, no more than a shot of aquavit, but instead a little good drink.

Of the provost (today roughly corresponding to the field sergeant, the ensign) it is said that he ought to be:

Sturdy, bold, and look terrifying.

However – the officers turned out to be ordinary people, for better or worse, and as for such an important part of life as food, plenty of food and food on time, no one has likely had much reason to complain so far. And besides these and many other purely superficial experiences, each of us had a little opportunity to review our personal attitude toward the ill-famed phenomenon of military service.

The idea behind all military training in peacetime must necessarily be that it should, as much as possible, mirror the conditions and behaviors during war. One cannot come infinitely close to the real conditions in peacetime; in a democratic country, the life of the individual citizen is more or less sacred and must not be risked unnecessarily.

War is – and thank God that no one nowadays argues the opposite – an abnormally abnormal condition. Therefore, peacetime service must also bring with it, for the individual, a fairly large measure of the unnatural conditions that characterize wars – duty of obedience, relinquishment of the demand for personal freedom, and much else. It must be so, because no troop becomes well-disciplined and knowledgeable overnight just because war is declared. Many, however, drive the opposite to the extreme and treat disobedience as a sport and main occupation. Unfortunately, the worse examples are more contagious than the better ones, and one might sometimes get the impression that the entire group is at a very low level of obedience – that is by no means the case. Most young people nowadays are, however, extremely objective and clear-sighted – they bow to necessity. Later developments have brought much that is new: the Conscription Council, the Regimental Committees, etc.

This is nothing new. Yet we are so very quick to forget it when we complain about terrain service and fitness training. If one goes back to this simple logic, one can find an explanation for most of what we often consider unnecessary, time-consuming, and stupid. And despite realizing this, a feeling of unease wells up within one – why should I be the one to waste almost a year of my life under these unnatural circumstances? I don't fit in here at all; leave me alone, and let those who enjoy fighting do the military service.

And when you've stopped seeing red for that time, you understand, with a little goodwill, why. Despite all the criticism of the welfare state, of high taxes, of housing shortages and the government, the fatherland – if the expression may be used without sounding like patriotic chest-beating – still represents certain values for us, too self-evident for us to even notice them when everything functions normally. We may move as we wish, we may hold and express any political or religious conviction we wish, we are protected from certain disasters, disease, fire, and calamity through our common institutions. We may write whatever we want in our newspapers – if you write in a paper that conditions at a unit are unbearable, that the shaving water is ice-cold and the officers are snooty, not even the Supreme Commander himself can put you in the brig for it, or even find out that it was you who wrote it. You can also go to the regimental commander or the regimental committee and point out certain irregularities without being struck by excommunication or persecution from the officers' side. We have, in other words, laws that we ourselves have established and that guarantee us protection against abuses of various kinds. We have rights that we consider self-evident, but which in many other countries are completely unthinkable – the Hungarian revolution shows in all its bloody desperation how much a people is willing to sacrifice to obtain these benefits, which are entirely natural to us – which of course also correspond to duties of various kinds toward the country, the community, fellow human beings. Only those who have themselves experienced dictatorship and unfreedom have the ability to fully appreciate what a democratic (democratic in the true sense of the word, not as the word is abused in some places) system of government means – and above all how much it is worth defending.

So, what you get in exchange for the robbery of 10 months of freedom and the billions that you, together with 7 million other Swedes, invest in defense – it is a certain guarantee against a deprivation of freedom that would surely be unbearably noticeable and longer than 10 months. You pay this, among other things, to keep your freedom and the belief that the earth is round, that humans are not gods, and that – yes, in fact – that armed force and raw, brutal strength should not be the decisive factor in international conflicts. No one expects you to like it. Take it as a hard but necessary trial; it is, however, temporary.

Perhaps this is useful to think about sometimes – but for heaven's sake do not take it as a defense speech, either for war as a principle or for small details of our daily barrack life. To like and be comfortable in the military is, at least for the undersigned, something highly unthinkable – to accept it, on the other hand, is to grasp what it is about and what values are at stake.

Someone has made a paraphrase of Winston Churchill's remark:

Never have so many learned so little in such a long time, which in itself may to some extent be consistent with the truth, but as another, very experienced man has said:

”Every country has an army – its own or someone else's.