PART V: What I learnt from the army and why I think everyone should do boot camp

Memoirs from boot camp

They say the army teaches discipline and that cadets enter as soft slackers and leave as strong mature men. The army may not have added much toughness to my person, but I sure learnt other things that greatly influenced the way I think and act.

Firstly, the service was a great means of gathering Lebanese youths of most religious, social, and political backgrounds. It is an exposure that no one can get anywhere else, not even at university.

Sure, I have seen and interacted with people of different religions and socio-economic strata before. But this time was different; I was living and spending all of my time with them. We were wearing the same uniform, eating the same food, and being subjected to the same hardships. Basically, we were going through the same ordeal and to be able to survive it, we had to unite and cooperate no matter what.

Religion? Well, some people used to go pray on the roof, others were satisfied with the personal space provided by their mattress. We even had a pastor among us! Apparently he entered the clergy late so he was not exempted.

My military tour overlapped with the Holy month of Ramadan where the Moslems fast from dawn to dusk. This exposed our religions outright and separated us for a small period of time every day. At lunch, the Moslems would take a break while the Christians ate. And at Iftar, the Moslems would leave class to eat. After the Iftar, the Moslems would continue the remainder of their class while the Christians had dinner.

I did not like this separation, though short, because it emphasized the Moslem-Christian divide. But it did not take long before Ramadan was over and we were back to our normal unified schedule.

At camp, I also discovered how big a difference there was between the calibers of the different universities in Lebanon. Sure, we were all engineers and architects and doctors, but there was a difference in the levels of the universities and that was apparent on their graduates. I did not feel all the cadets were qualified engineers or architects or doctors. In saying this, I, being a graduate of a top university, may sound elitist, but one notices.

One cadet kept talking about Tomahawk and Cruise missiles and how certain he was that these were Tom Cruise missiles! He seemed so convinced to the extent that no one was able to reason with him and explain that Tomahawk and Cruise were two different sorts of missiles and that calling them Tom Cruise would make them one. He was so paranoid and full of conspiracies.

There were two types of courses at camp and the occasional lectures. Combat lessons included shooting (only three times), marching, walking through thorny bushes, and crawling in mud. Theory classes took place in class and included: army law, military correspondence, weapons theory (types and history), structure and hierarchy of the army, topography and map reading, law enforcement, and a course I like to call “Psychology of Leadership,” since we were supposed to graduate with the rank of lieutenant.

The lectures, which were usually given by a visiting ranking officer, were on life, ambition, culture and the like. Many of the times, the officer would tell us stories about his life, his adventures as a young officer, and his training and how our training is much less physically demanding yet we still moan and grumble about it.

I used to like these lectures. I classified them as “sharing of experiences.” These were more beneficial, I thought. I enjoyed the lectures more than the other courses.

We liked our superiors, especially at the end of tour when we became friends with them.
With the exception of one or two who were rude, the supervising officers were generally good. Sometimes they were very harsh, but that was their job. They were “building officers” after all. They said that we should be given a lot of orders so as we would be able to give out orders. In the end, we were to graduate as lieutenants who are usually responsible of a number of soldiers. So we had to be prepared to give out orders.

In the army, I learnt to appreciate things I used to take for granted, or merely things I had not had the chance to appreciate before. We used to tidy our own beds every morning and clean our units and the toilets regularly. I had never done this before and now I understand how hard and demeaning it is to scrub the toilets and sanitize the washbasin. Now I look up to the cleaning lady, who comes to our house every week, with respect and gratitude.

On a much happier note, I have also learnt to appreciate the environment and the sky. Since our camp was in a mountain area, we did not have many surrounding lights at night, so we could clearly see the sky and the stars. I got some really cool photos of some stars and the moon. I even saw a real falling star for the first time in my life.
Also, standing at attention at sunrise, I could actually see the sun rise and spread its light over the surrounding land. I later realized I never woke up and enjoyed sunrise at the start of a new day before. I used to stay up studying or having fun, and sunrise always signaled the end of the day and not the start of the day.