Military Training: Tough Love or Unjustified Brutality?

English Professor Carol Burke’s interest in military culture led her to research the prevalence of superstitious charms in the military through a series of interviews; she published these findings in “The Things They Bring to War.” In Humanities Core lecture, she further analyzed military culture through the lens of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), which explores how military training psychologically wounds many soldiers. Our most recent Humanities Core project is the Literary Journalism assignment, in which we have to interview someone who has experienced war—such as a veteran or someone who was displaced due to war—and write a story that recreates their experience. Since I interviewed a veteran for this assignment, it was interesting comparing my interviewee’s experience during army training with the points Professor Burke brought up in lecture.

Representations of military training usually reveal superfluous verbal and physical abuse. Professor Burke claimed, “Basic training is a highly ritualized military rite of passage designed to transform identity, one that will allow its members to execute violence on command in the name of the state.” In Full Metal Jacket, this depersonalization of soldiers is epitomized in Private Pyle’s transformation from a joyful, goofy soldier who has a hard time performing tasks correctly into a sullen soldier who excels at following commands. The drill sergeant and soldiers’ harsh treatment of Private Pyle eventually drives him to abandon his individuality and concentrate on perfecting shooting, running the obstacle course, and the like. In my interview, Joseph admitted that during training, “There was so much yelling going on that sometimes it makes you crazy a little bit. You got people yelling at you and then you end up yelling like they do ’cause it makes an impression on you.” I thought it was interesting that in Joseph’s experience, “their power [is that] they [can] write you up and they fine you.” In addition to the verbal abuse, they added another powerful incentive to get soldiers to obey their commands: money. Based on all of these representations of army training, it does seem like the commanders and drill sergeants aimed to drive the soldiers to the brink, break them down, and reconstruct them as depersonalized killing machines, as Professor Carol Burke addressed in lecture.

The drill sergeant (right) rebukes Private Pyle (left) in Full Metal Jacket (Source: www.mentalfloss.com)

However, regardless of how unethical and mentally taxing military training is, it does create an efficient military. If soldiers go into battle with more lenient training, they would probably still retain their individuality and would not see themselves as part of a unit. In this case, it is likely that the soldiers will have an “every man for himself” mindset and will be reluctant to follow orders that endanger them. Soldiers in the military have to endure extremely rigorous training in order to be prepared for combat; compared to the risks of being unprepared on the battlefield, such as severe physical injury or death, depersonalization seems to be the lesser of two evils. In my interview, Joseph explained that a large chunk of his training included classes about safety. He stated, “They wanna get you ready for the real thing so you won’t make mistakes that are gonna cost you your life. They want you to be programmed like a robot, almost.”

Although military training seems more stressful and cruel than necessary, it has been proven to be effective. As my interviewee Joseph clarified, the commanders were very concerned about not letting the soldiers leave training unprepared for combat.

Types of War Stories: Civilians vs. Combatants

Although the effects of war permeate society as a whole, civilians and combatants have very different experiences of it. In general, the most common problems civilians can face in wartime are grappling with a loved one being deployed to war or being displaced from their homes due to the outcome of war; most civilians do not directly encounter the threat of death on a daily basis as soldiers do. However, my parents’ retelling of my grandparents’ experiences in World War II (1939-1945) revealed that they were part of the exception to this generalization. My mom’s parents lived in the Philippines when it was occupied by the Japanese (See “Piecing Together the Past” for a description of their wartime experience). My dad’s parents lived in Germany when it was being bombed by the Allies. Hearing about World War II from different perspectives marveled me about the countless subjective experiences of war.

In 1941, Nazi forces invaded Ukraine and implemented their “ethnic cleansing” policy by killing civilians who did not look Aryan (i.e. having blonde hair and blue eyes). Although Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust during Adolf Hitler’s reign, many non-Jews, such as Ukrainians, also died or were forced to become slave laborers. WWII finally ended in 1945 when the Axis powers surrendered to the Allied powers.

My dad talked about how his mother, who was originally from Ukraine, experienced life after WWII in Germany; he admits that he does not know a lot about her experiences during the war because she is so traumatized that she is still unable to talk about it. After WWII, the casualties in Ukraine were so devastating that my grandmother and her father fled to Germany. Eventually, she found a job milking cows for a wealthy farmer outside of Munich. During this time, the United States and Britain continued bombing Germany. The farmer my grandmother worked for generously offered his basement as a bomb shelter for war survivors. My grandmother and several others accepted his offer and lived in his basement for approximately a year. The farmer ensured that everyone had ample food and protection during their stay. Although my grandmother never witnessed any violence firsthand during this time, she heard the planes flying overhead and dropping bombs.

The opening of a typical air-raid shelter (Source: www.bbc.co.uk)

The stories my parents told me do not necessarily fit Tim O’Brien’s definition of a “true” war story in “How to Tell a True War Story.” O’Brien characterizes these stories as lacking a moral, failing to give the reader or listener a sense of closure, and seeming far-fetched. My parents’ stories seemed to have a moral and gave me a sense of closure. For instance, these stories illustrated how quick wits could save people’s lives during wartime and confirmed that there were altruistic individuals amidst war. In addition to that, these stories do not seem implausible in the context of war. In such dangerous times, people had to do whatever they possibly could to stay alive, even if it meant pretending to be dead amongst decomposing bodies or accepting an employer’s offer of shelter in his basement. Perhaps I only felt a sense of resolution from these stories because I know that things ended well. Or perhaps a “true” war story has a different definition for civilians who live through a war than it does for soldiers who fight on the battlefield; after all, although inhabitants of war-torn countries were undoubtedly traumatized by their experiences, they probably did not have to take another person’s life.

Hearing the stories of my grandparents helped me understand the complexity of war and how it truly affects the nation as a whole. Although my grandparents were noncombatants, they still experienced the terrors of war firsthand.