Learning To Walk - A Soldier's Story by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 7

A couple of days later, I went back to the recruiter's office and scheduled my entry date. In five days, I would have to be in Augusta. I’d have to go through a physical exam and sign a contract, giving the Army the next four years of my life. One part of me was looking forward to the challenge of military service. The other part of me was terrified. Then, there was the question that occasionally rose up from a small fear of the unknown - ‘what the hell was I doing?’ But, I knew that what I was about to do was right. It was right for me and no one could convince me otherwise. Over the next four days, I talked with my parents -- a lot. I called a few friends and made a visit to the university. That was probably something I shouldn’t have done. The university was my second home and the idea of leaving school felt worse than the idea of leaving home. But, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would come back in four years with what was sure to be a new perspective and that would only add to my continued educational experience.

I spent some time reading as well -- partly to take my mind off the idea of leaving home and partly to mentally prepare myself for military life. I read Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ and found a lot of interesting ideas in it, but it seemed more like a guidebook for management and I wasn’t planning on becoming an officer. I did, however, read up on the Roman philosophy of warfare. The ancient Romans, it seems, took a strong position for conquest based on the complete and utter devastation of the enemy. Orders were strictly followed without question and the warrior was seen as more than just a soldier, brutally molded into a highly disciplined killer, able to shut off his conscience for the sake of bringing the glory of battle to their emperor -- whom they considered a god. For the Roman soldier, there were no rules of engagement - no code of conduct - only orders. The idea of ignoring the need to survive in order to bring one's enemy to its knees made sense to me. Wars cannot be fought with survival instincts. To cast off ones need to survive for the fray of battle it seems, requires something that most people do not possess and I’m still not able to put a word to it.

While most ancient cultures had little need for battlefield ethics, the armies of today’s developed world fight by a code of conduct, largely guided by the Geneva Convention with the assumption that a moral war could be fought. History shows us that this assumption is misguided for the simple reason that not everyone plays by the rules and as far as I’m concerned, there’s a big difference being a warrior and being a murderer. However, it also occurred to me that sometimes the line that divides the warrior from the murderer can become blurred, leading somewhat civilized human beings to regress to their animal nature.

It’s amazing how time flows so quickly when you’re about to throw yourself into a life-changing event and before I knew it, the day of my departure had arrived. My parents drove me to Augusta. Naturally, my mother cried for most of the way, still believing that I was making a huge mistake and had spent the last five days trying to change my mind. When we arrived in Augusta, we followed a set of directions to the federal building where the enlistment center was located on the third floor. There was a large group of people, both men, and women, who were also there to be processed for enlistment. Women, of course, were shown to a separate processing section. My parents waited in the hallway as I lined up with the rest of the group. I was not aware of it at the time, but there were about a dozen or so people in the group that I would spend the next ten weeks with and almost all of them, including myself, would be sent to the middle-east.

With the exception of underwear, we were told to remove our clothes. We stood single file through every step of the physical exam, inching forward like a slowly moving conveyor and they examined everything. They also drew blood, testing for recreational drugs, HIV, hepatitis and a battery of other health issues. They didn’t want anyone to ask questions. Unless you were asked to speak, you kept your mouth shut. This was made very clear to us on several occasions - not that I had anything to say anyway.

After the physical exam, they took small groups of us to be seated in a separate room where a rather intimidating looking uniformed man stood in front of us and as we sat down, he seemed to be looking us over very carefully. With his first question, it became obvious that this was the psychiatric portion of the exam.

"Has anyone here ever been in a psychiatric hospital?” he asked.

Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, one person raised his hand and announced that he’d been recently discharged from the Spring Harbor Psychiatric hospital bear Portland.

"Get your stuff,” the uniformed man said. He was promptly escorted from the building.

None of the questions surprised me - had anyone experienced depression, heard voices, hallucinated, thought about or attempted suicide. I tried hard to believe that the military was doing a good job to keep weapons out of the hands of unstable people but with a psych exam that consisted of nothing more than questions and answers, I just couldn’t bring myself to be convinced. We were probably sitting there for an entire ten minutes while he continued his questions, trying very hard to read everyone’s reactions. It wasn’t exactly a clinical assessment, but it seemed to be good enough for the military. Now, we were again shuffled to another room where another uniformed man stood behind a podium. In the back corner stood an American flag on a wooden pole. We were lined up in rows and told that we were required to take the oath of enlistment.

"Raise your right hand,” the man ordered. “Now repeat after me.”

I’ve found that not many people can be taken at their word. So, I’m not really sure about how much value an oath really has. After all, people lie to Congress under oath on a fairly regular basis. Maybe the oath of enlistment is nothing more than the first step in a lengthy indoctrination process designed to instill a strong sense of loyalty. At any rate, this is the oath I took:

“I, Clarence Taylor, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Obviously, these are very dramatic words and I couldn’t help wondering why God would be mentioned. ‘So help me God’. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what that phrase means. I do understand the importance of faith in the military, especially at times of war when one’s life is immediately threatened by battle. I imagine that many people use the idea of God to find the strength to do what needs to be done – to kill the enemy. I guess my question is ‘what kind of God would advocate war?’ If the Christian idea of God is true, then why doesn’t God wage his own wars? I suppose a divine war is fought by divine beings.

Historically, we have always waged war with the belief that we do so as part of God’s will - whatever that is. But, we also go to war believing that God supports us in our slaughter of each other and everyone seems to have God on their side, regardless of the name given to that god. I wonder what conversation would arise from two people meeting on the battlefield - each the enemy of the other, both are out of ammunition and each claims to fight for God. Would they sit and talk about their respective Gods? Would they ask each other why they are there at all? Or, would they draw knives and kill each other for their respective Gods? I think that the idea of God is certainly well-meaning until you introduce people into the equation. Apparently, God is the weapon of choice for warfare as faith becomes the substitute of reason. If there is a God, I don’t believe that He would act on our behalf. I think there is a very clear difference between religion and spirituality. In religion, we do what we’re told - we go to war for the same reason we go to church. In spirituality, we are guided by compassion and a sense for doing the right thing without the restraints of church politics or religious laws. I am certain that the idea of loyalty is blind by virtue of the idea of God. Perhaps this is the idea behind the phrase ‘God bless America’.