In the discussion of 'Bastardisation' in the Armed services, I was reminded of the number of young men who come back from places like Vietnam, E.Timur...etc and somehow are traumatized irrepairably.

They saw things that most of us will never see.. nor want to see.
Did anyone tell them the nature of human conflict before they went...or just how to fire a gun and lob a grenade.

War was brought home to me in both peace and war. In peace time, I had the 'interesting' experience of being ambushed during a night patrol which I THOUGHT was just mucking around and 'playing' soldier as we were just RAAF apprentices at the YouYangs.
When the 'grenades' started to explode around our ears.. and the 'terrorists' leaped out and started seriously clubbing us with rifle butts..and shooting.....(how the hell did we know it was just flashbangs and blanks ?) well.. that was one instance.

Then..in Vietnam around 69 at Phan Rang.. when an Aussie Iraqois chopper was brought back by a 'skycrane' and dumped on the ground.. shot up.. and all the other wreckage was strewn around the place.. Vietnamese people wandering around.. being told that a Morter had landed where I was standing last week...etc...

But who gives the FRAMEWORK...for all this.. do our infantry soldiers get taught about:
-Alliances
-Historic battles.
-Types of manouvers and who invented them
-International politics
-Treaties and treaty obligations.
-The real world nature of warfare..
-Morality and War...Just and Unjust war..

I guess it is a 'yes' to some of those, but to me the political/moral framework issues are far MORE important for the long term mental health of the soldier than the mechanics of shootemup.

Thoughts ? (specially from former or current infantry soldiers) (Scotty ?)

I currently work in a non-medical role in a place that deals with returned servicemen and their mental illnesses.

The vast majority are Vietnam vets. Obviously ww2 had the biggest showing but they've now mostly moved on to other more physical related illness wards due to age.

I recently heard someone state that military training is all about ignoring your basic survival instincts. Mostly fear. If you have a consequence of listening to that fear being percieved worse (cowardice, letting your mates down, responsible for death through inaction etc etc) than ignoring it and possibly being shot etc, that creates an emotional conflict, moral conflict, mental conflict ending in mental illness. Anger, confusion, nightmares etc etc.

So, it doesn't matter what sort of psychological preparation you put into military training, you're still making people do what society spent the first 18 years of their existence (the most influential) saying they shouldn't do. Listen to your fear. Don't trust strangers. Don't hit and hurt people. Religious influences.

If you want to help soldiers with their mental preparation. You have to make that sort of enviornment 'the norm', from a young age. Which is against what society is all about.

We have our cake, but we ask to eat it as well.

Ya know what I mean?

'do our infantry soldiers get taught about:
-Alliances
-Historic battles.
-Types of manouvers and who invented them
-International politics
-Treaties and treaty obligations.
-The real world nature of warfare..
-Morality and War...Just and Unjust war..'

Not during my basic training (not infantry), we were taught drill, weapons handling, active and passive defence, nothing about the above.

We were expected to follow orders blindly, without question.

STG... thanx for that very insightful contribution.. I'd not thought of it like that before... and now I certainly have learnt something.

Probably also, the emotions you mention, would be felt more accutely if you DON'T have some kind of idealogical framework into which to fit them. They would be totally lost...

JACK.. nor in my time.. nothing of that nature was ever said. I had no clue about the rationale of Vietnam... I honestly thought we were the 'good guys' and still to with reservation... my reservation is that the US did some rather dirty things which ultimately led to the war.. they could have managed the situation much better.

Their intel should have detected that Ho was first a nationalist.. 2nd a communist.. and that once he had slid toward the only source of assistance.. the Russians.. the old 'domino' theory became much more digestable. A simply history lesson would have shown that Vietnam,Cambodia and Laos have much longer histories than the small window of the Vietnam war era, and helped to have a better perspective on things.

Preparation in other Beliefs.

-Islamic.. the promise of a great reward including Houris at your service if you are a martyr must do something for one's mental outlook. The idea of 'installing the Rule of Allah over infidels' would also be a strong incentive.

-Zulu.. They took hashish before a battle.... 'who cares.. I'm superman' result :)

-German/Nazi.. "The Fuhrer, The Reich"

I'd be interested in knowing other approaches if anyone comes across them.

StG is absolutely correct: the object of the brutal induction rituals to which military recruits are routinely subjected is to strip from them the humanity they've acquired during their prior socialisation, in order that they reformed as obedient and amoral drones who are capable of performing the inhuman and anti-social acts that are required of soldiers. A brilliant depiction of this process is the boot camp sequence in Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket".

Of course, if Boazy had read more anthropology than a single article, he'd be aware that this is a particular form of 'rite-of-passage' that has been analysed and taught about in every anthropology department that exists.

BOAZ, They also gave amphetamines in chocolate to the German soldiers, known as 'Flyer's Chocolate' or 'Tanker's Chocolate.'

Undoubtedly that helped.

I hate to bring fiction into it. But some of it is based on some sort of fact, I 'spose. But the movie '300' and the way Spartans raised their warrior children. Disassociated from normal life and treated the way someone without conscience needs to operate. Conscience slows you down. Conscience comes from a learned right and wrong.

'Normal' society just doesn't get military society. They are at complete opposite ends of the social spectrum. But 'normal' society expects the military to exist by their morals. That's where the clash happens, I believe. Like the 'Klan' headgear at xmas photo in north QLD. Things like that isn't something society 'gets'.

Hi team... well.. CJ :) ol faithful.. so just because I often quote 'one' article.. it is the sum total of my reading ? good 1

I think what you mentioned was one possible aspect.. not all soldiers need to be stripped of humanity and re-constructed as mindless drones.

Muslim soldiers are nothing like that. They are fuelled by the dual motivation of 'glorifying Allah' and establishing his rule..and stamping out the infidel... and also the reward aspect of 'deflowering virgins' if you can believe the Islamic Q&A site Ive quoted from. (which quotes Ibn Katheer)

I rather doubt Hindu soldiers.. or soldiers of any major belief system have been dehumanized.. THAT...sounds more like the practical application of Nietzschian/Sartrian philosophy than anything else.
Truly "Christian" soldiers.. (as in.. those who are born again, and in the Armed services.. as the Centurians of Acts and the Gospels were)I rather doubt they would comply with any dehumanizing.

Amphetamines eh ? :) don't make me a passenger in the plane THAT pilot is flying.

Actually mate i've heard that the USAAF does the same, administers something like 5mg of dextroamphetamine sulfate every 3 hours on long haul flights to its pilots to keep up their concentration. These pilots are the ones that fly those B52H Stratofortresses that can bomb places in the middle east from bases in the North Atlantic.

Interesting, Boazy - but as usual your thinking is clouded by your fundy delusions. I would say that every one of those examples you listed must have some kind of rite of passage that separates the neophyte warrior/soldier from much of (usually) his former socialisation, including such things as the strong inhibitions everybody learns against violence and killing.

Apparently it's really quite difficult to get normal people in any culture or society to kill other people, so they have to be 'transformed' somehow - whether this is through bastardisation, indoctrination, medication or various combinations thereof, invariably experienced in some ritual.

In the Australian military this is glossed as "training", and I suspect it's done a bit more formally these days than in the anecdotes above - but the object is still the same: to brutalise the new recruits so that they are obedient and capable of extreme violence on command.

This, of course, is one reason why many ex-military personnel have difficulty in readjusting to normal civility - as evidenced by some of the tripe that gets posted here by purported ex-military forum members.

Nah no brutality

Nah no bullying

Not even any swearing anymore.

CJ's lies evaporate with the truth.

The worst thing about my training was I didnt get a beer for the first 4 months. You can if you wish have a couple of hours off on a Sunday to go to church, most do for the free bikkies and a chance to sit down. Even then its all pretty hands off and if you want to go to mosque or whatever the good people of Wagga will accomodate you.
Pretty scary so far CJ.

Basic training teaches the fundamentals of first aid, drill, basic shooting skills getting fit at a slow pace beacause your unfit to start with. Its a glorified boy scout or girl guides jamboree.

No drugs not even coca cola or chocolate.

Politics, potential enemies or what have you are banned and are not big topics anyway. The boys would rather get pissed and have a good time. When your in most would rather be out.

You get told what to do and you do it to the best of your ability period, this is why soldiers are sought after when they discharge.

What I can not understand is why some people have a problem with soldiers?

Are they jealous they didnt get to entertain thier military fantasies or are they the same scum that threw pigs blood on our soldiers when they returned from Vietnam?

I suspect the latter of these leftist traitors.

Recommended reading:

"On the psychology of Military Incompetence" by Dr Norman Dixon, London University, RE, MBE. An ex bomb disposal Captain. http://tinyurl.com/3b5hwt might work

And http://www.killology.com/ for recent work by Prof (Ex Lt Col) Dave Grossman

Then "Her Privates We" by David Manning, fiction by a soldier who served 1914-19, brilliant, if you can get your hands on a copy. Try http://tinyurl.com/2ocmzj

Then speak to a Veteran who has struggled to get a disability compensation claim approved by the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Hi all...

I suppose part of 'indoctrination' and the process of transforming a normal bloke into a pitiless killer COULD involve the dehumanizing and demonizing of the enemy. Thats one approach.

I can agree with the demonizing but not the dehumanizing. I would rather the soldiers know exactly what they are up against..and that the primary threat is to their freedom.. In the case of the enemy being 'Muslim'.. they could rightly be told of the possibility (though not the guarantee) of their women being raped when captured.
Not only is this Quranic, it is also the actual experience of some Christian women in Jordan as I related in another post.

It would be quite correct to demonize the Bali Bomber types.. and to explain how their fanaticism is not to be reasoned with, but to be stopped.

We were so close in Malaysia at one stage following an election, to massacres and turmoil of the Ruwandan scale..(us being the victims) it wasn't funny.

I walked through the valley in the Jungle with tribal people who had slaughtered 600 Japanese in an ambush (WWII)..
I stood at the tomb in Ranau of one of our blokes who was slowly and systematically beaten and tortured by the Japanese, over many days till he finally died..

it all kind of brings the reality home to your heart..

Scotty.. the yobbo's who were with me in PNG (RAAF) were drongo's of the worst kind.. unfit for life on the front line.. a thrill for them was aiming the Comby wagon at a dog to kill it. I was not encouraged by one of them who said on the night b4 servicing the engine of the plane which would take us there.. "Lets go and get pissed"

If we expect our Soldiers to die for us.. the least we can do is give them a good reason for it.

Somebody reckoned there's no brutalising going on in today's Australian Army.

"An Army investigation found that Private Jeremy Williams killed himself after suffering intimidation and abuse from commanding officers and trainees at the Singleton School of Infantry in 2003.

Two years ago the Williams family and three other families whose sons committed suicide wrote to the then-defence minister, Robert Hill, seeking compensation."

I guess those guys must have been imagining things.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/03/2050220.htm

I don't know about the army, but I have a relative who went through 1RTU in the RAAF a few years back and he said that training was almost PC and non-confrontational.
Apparently, recruits were given a card to hold up to the drill corporal if he/she felt harrassed by him.
Back in the 'dark ages', we just had to stand stony still as a corporal screamed into our faces. Maybe it was 'character building'. At the same time, the new way, if true and if still in use, will not produce decent troops.