Friday, 10 April 2009

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  Army: a life’s experience or a prison of the mind? Part 2

  As a follow up to my last post I will write about some things that I find absolutely ridiculous on the whole institution that is called Army.

  Shaving

  Shaving is something that we are obligated to do on a daily basis. Some people (and especially women) find a clean shaved face more attractive than one with a beard. To me it’s just hair and for the past 3 years - before army that is - I refused to put a razor on my face. Not only because it irritates my skin but let’s face it, I am too lazy to shave. There I said it! The army’s excuse for shaving was that (when on war) a clean face shows high morale. First of all, can you believe at this shit? And secondly, we are NOT on a fucking war! But no, they keep forcing us to shave.

  Cleaning up

  As rational human beings we tend to keep our places of living/working/hanging out clean. We all clean up our homes, our offices at work. But not every day (and in some cases twice a day)! Okay, it’s perfectly acceptable to clean the barracks, since there are common places and we are about 100 people living daily in them. But warehouses? Vehicles? The freaking grass? Yeah, every day we keep to sweep, mop, even pick cigarette butts on an area that’s about 1 km². Yeah it’s tiring and at some point ridiculous, because you might have checked everywhere for a little piece of litter and found nothing and after three seconds you get yelled from a superior that in a hundred meters from your position he found a cigarette butt. Pick it yourself you stupid ape! Once you saw it pick it yourself and throw it in the trash. It’s more than simple. All of this just so everything "looks nice". That’s their official comment on the cleaning up. Some how I don’t get it!

  Superiors
  

  Here we got a variety of people that have ranks. There are young people that are in army through military school (which makes them at least good students with a high educational background). There are those who joined the army as volunteers (with the possibility of a low educational background). Anyway, educational background is not really a rule to judge someone so I will drop it here. What I want to say it that in a camp you can find a 45 year old lieutenant that can be a really cool person and you can find an 18 year old corporal that can be an enormous jackass. Or vice versa. You can find a 60 year old general that will talk to you like he’s your grandpa or he will terrorize you with some idiotic argument about old times and wars and shit. I had for example and 18 year old kid ordering me to get him coffee. He was one rank above me. I am 25 and I was offended by that notion. There’s no point continuing on this because of a local saying: "Where logic ends, army begins".

  But even all these and more things that bother me I had some values discovered or cultivated while being in there. First of all comes patience. I have learned to be very patient in many situations while before my army days I would transform into a big green creature and smash stuff around. With patience came endurance. In cold weather (-10 Celsius), in stupidity (which is impressively unlimited), in lack of sleep, in hunger (food mostly sucks there), in dirtiness (yeah at some point there wasn’t hot water to shower). I have overcome myself quite a few times and for that I have to thank the army. I have yet become a better person.

  That’s it I guess,

  Private Con over and out!               

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