Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Mad Doc Grotsnik's thread about WW2 experiences certainly has some eye opening experiences in it. It got me thinking about the military and what life during compulsory conscription is like now, or in the recent past.

Most of us on this forum are from the US (conscription ended in 1973) or the UK (conscription ended in 1960) so probably aren't old enough to have had to go through it first hand. However various European countries had conscription until far more recently, some well into this century. I'm not aware of any European Union countries which still actively conscript, happy to be proved wrong on this point though. There may even be some forum posters who are from countries where conscription is still common place today.

So feel free to share as much or as little as you want on this subject. Either personal experiences or from people close to you.

Personally being a UK citizen and not old enough to have gone through it I don't have first hand experience of this topic. However I'll kick this thread off anyway with experiences from some friends of mine:

A German friend of mine did military service in the late 90s. He was stationed with the Military Police. One of his jobs (perhaps his only job, I'm not sure) was to go round the houses of people who hadn't turned up for the draft and force them to enlist. One house he went to they were banging on the door for a while. Eventually the girlfriend of the person they had gone to enlist opened the door and told them he had locked himself in the bathroom and was slitting his wrists... They managed to break the door open and get the guy some medical assistance. I believe he survived the ordeal, I'm not sure if he ever actually did his military service though.

Another Swedish friend of mine (also in the late nineties) actually did a tour in former Yugoslavia. When I told him I found it odd that a conscript would have to go to a war zone he said that while the military service was obligatory, being stationed abroad was optional. He volunteered for that. I don't know much about what he did during his tour (he's more a friend of a friend really).

For me it helped that i was conscripted older with a better education than most. That meant I was responsible for the rest of my squad in the absence of our NCO. In another posting I was given admin duties that sure beat carrying heavy weapons in the hot sun. Still I clocked about 1600 hours of sentry duty. I still have nightmares about being late for the guard report.

That's... an interesting topic. I'm from Germany and was conscripted in 2005. Back then for 9 months. Some years later the time was shortened to 6 months and finally conscription was suspended in 2011.

One thing I still remember that was a bit odd was the selection process. For some background: general (male) conscription was kind of a relic from the cold war days were Western Germany had an Army around 500.000 active personel and Eastern Germany something in the 150.000 + reserves in both countries. As part of the reunification the combined army was limited to 370.000 personel tops, and soon reduced under that allowed treshhold. When I served, some 200.000 were left. So comparatively few of each birthyears males were really conscripted, kind of like in a lotery. And it was hilariously easy to dodge conscription. You just had to find a doctor that would give you a sheet of paper stating that you had bad feet, problems with your back or whatever. And even if you got conscripted you could alternatively do civil service (which a lot of people prefered) or serve 6 years part time in catastrophic prevention (like voluntary firefighters). So in my own class in Gymnasium almost nobody really went. I was amongst "the lucky few" who got invited. Back then I was a lifeguard and was pretty interested in the paramedics and had (and still have) the opinion, that it's a good thing to have "normal citizens" in the army instead of only those who decide for a carreer in the armed forces. So I went to the mustering office and right at the beginning a visible tired officer asked "before we waste any time: do you even want to do this or will you do civil service anyway?" so I told him "I want to serve as paramedic. If I can't I'll do civil service." he just nodded, checked some boxes and told me a hand full of standard phrases I should tell the recruitment guy next door.

Then we had to do some anamnesis and a couple of reaction tests. Following that you got a sheet of paper stating every position you seem to be able to perform in the army and those you seem unfit for as well as highlighting those you seem to have to best potential for. That was really interesting. Turned out I'm too small (1.75 m) to be in the parade guard or a paratrooper, too big to be a really good tank driver and my eyes were too bad to fly anything faster than a helicopter. On the other hand I was told I would be remarkably suited for rocket artillery or anti air- missile battery duty. As - like I told - they basically were down to only pick those that really wanted to do anything I was free to choose, so I had no problems in just saying "I want to be paramedic", so that was it. I finished Gymnasium, drove to our last class holiday and literally a week later took a train from Berlin to a small village at the coast of the baltic sea were I was trained (which was also sometimes pretty cool... If you are interested I can tell some stories about it, but now it's a bit late in the evening).
After the 3 months basic training I was send back to Berlin to serve in the military hospital. Other than most conscripts who spent their later 6 months just bored to death or doing senseless tasks (I had a friend who sat with two others and had half an hour of work per week, just sitting around the rest of the time), I did administrative work, basically from 6:30 am to around 5-6 pm, sometimes 10 pm. That was not planned that way but Afghanistan happened which meant instead of the planned outfit for my office (2 sergeants doing the work, one private helping and me, the conscript just carrying around mail and cooking coffee) the sergeants were in Afghanistan, the private changed his/her mind and never started, so I was alone there and was basically told "do your best, try to work away as much as possible and slow down the inevitable backlog as much as you can."
I would claim that I did... well enough.

All in all it was an experience that I think did me good. It definitly improved my character, I found some friends, at least one of which I still have contact too and ... kind of grew up a lot. I know I'm one of few with this opinion but I think suspending the conscription was not the best of ideas. Reforming it would have been better. I personally think some months of compulsory service for the country, if in civil service, catastrophy prevention or the military is a good thing for growing up as a person, gaining respect for the lower end of the income pyramide and also good for the country. But that is my opinion and everyone can feel free to call me dumb for maintaining it.

konst80hummel wrote:
For me it helped that i was conscripted older with a better education than most. That meant I was responsible for the rest of my squad in the absence of our NCO. In another posting I was given admin duties that sure beat carrying heavy weapons in the hot sun. Still I clocked about 1600 hours of sentry duty. I still have nightmares about being late for the guard report.

Wow, 1,600 hours of sentry duty! I spent one summer working as a "security guard" (basically signing drivers in and out of a parking lot). I was allowed to read during that time so got through quite a few books that summer. I'm guessing you didn't have that luxury.

Just think, you could have clocked up 1,600 hours on Total War Warhammer 2 instead If Steam is anything to go by many people have done just that.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
All in all it was an experience that I think did me good. It definitly improved my character, I found some friends, at least one of which I still have contact too and ... kind of grew up a lot. I know I'm one of few with this opinion but I think suspending the conscription was not the best of ideas. Reforming it would have been better. I personally think some months of compulsory service for the country, if in civil service, catastrophy prevention or the military is a good thing for growing up as a person, gaining respect for the lower end of the income pyramide and also good for the country. But that is my opinion and everyone can feel free to call me dumb for maintaining it.

I find your view on conscription interesting (the rest of your post is interesting too, just wanted to comment on this for now), and one which I don't necessarily disagree with.

I've often thought that a year or so of military service would have done me some good, especially as an 18 year old. Knowing myself I also know I would have done whatever I could to get out of it, so my views are a bit conflicted. One part of me thinks that people shouldn't be forced to serve their country if it's not something they want to do, though I can't help being an old fogey as well and thinking that the youth of today could do with learning some respect.

Morally speaking I think it's a tricky issue. Although most (if not all) developed countries, at least in recent decades, have allowed their conscripts to serve in the health service rather than as military personnel. This reduces the moral concerns on the subject.

back when I was conscripted there was also a huge debate because so few of each year were really mustered. I skimmed through the net for numbers and found that in 2004, 1/3 of the relevant men were completely left out and only 1/4th did military service. And women were exempt. There was always that suspicion that the conscription was only kept up to get cheap workers for civil service. In the last years the whole system was just far from fair.

And also I am fully aware that being conscripted in the reunited Bundeswehr in the 2000 was extremely different from the experiences of the generation before me. My father and some uncles had to serve in the east german army in the cold war and that... was really something else. I got the easy mode so me advocating for conscription/compulsory civil service might sound very shortsighted in the eyes of those that had these experiences.

One thing I found interesting though was how big (in theory) the cold war bundesweer was due to their conscription practice. In times of crisis it could easily be increased above 1 million soldiers. Still too few if it ever escalated but I personally found the number pretty impressive.

I'm not old enough to have experienced it (except in one case, where I was too old to be called up).
I gained Dutch (dual) citizenship when I was 45. Their national service capped at 45, but it had also ended a couple of years before.

My father was called up for Vietnam (newly naturalised citizen) but he refused to go (having fled Europe to get away from that bs).

My grandpa was conscripted post Korea and painted rocks for 2 years. No one else in the family would have been in the right age range to get hit with papers except an Uncle that dodged Vietnam somehow. Maybe exemption for being a professor?

Edit: The only people in my family to go to war or even be in the military during a war were volunteers.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I finished Gymnasium, drove to our last class holiday and literally a week later took a train from Berlin to a small village at the coast of the baltic sea were I was trained (which was also sometimes pretty cool... If you are interested I can tell some stories about it, but now it's a bit late in the evening).

Yeah, when you get the time it would be interesting to hear.

All in all it was an experience that I think did me good. It definitly improved my character, I found some friends, at least one of which I still have contact too and ... kind of grew up a lot. I know I'm one of few with this opinion but I think suspending the conscription was not the best of ideas. Reforming it would have been better. I personally think some months of compulsory service for the country, if in civil service, catastrophy prevention or the military is a good thing for growing up as a person, gaining respect for the lower end of the income pyramide and also good for the country. But that is my opinion and everyone can feel free to call me dumb for maintaining it.

No, I agree. Too many brats skate their way through their twenties having never become adults here in America and a bit of mandatory service would do them a world of good. Be it military, civil, or just spend a couple years at a fast food counter; the idea that the basic worker is only worthy of scorn needs to go.

EDIT: Note, I'm not necessarily referring to people of alternative personal styles. There are plenty of good people in the goth, punk, alternative, etc. sets, as well as a few bad apples. No, the real brats I run into most commonly are properly dressed and neatly groomed in 'normal' styles... and tend to wind up on videos with the label "Karen" (and whatever the current male equivalent is).

So, I've never been conscripted (thank god), but I lived in South Korea for 2 years, and I know loads of people who were.

What's really interesting is that so many people here talk about conscription as a positive experience.
All my buddies hated their time in the military.

In South Korea, you're drafted for 2 years. Usually where you're placed is really high security, and they won't actually give you too much information about where in Korea you are. For certain special occasions, if your CO is nice, you can get out for a day. Contact with the outside world is otherwise extremely limited, and the pay is GARBAGE. You get less than $30 a month, which nearly always just gets blown on instant ramen and cigarettes at whatever you have on-base that looks like a convenience store. $30 will get you some ramen and cigarettes, but not a lot.
You're expected to drop everything, too. Conscription can happen at any moment from 18 to 28, interrupting college, jobs, relationships, whatever. While the fear was always that you'd lose a job at an important point in your career, or mess up your degree, most of my mates were most bitter that "no relationship ever survives conscription".

COs are usually really brutal. In the west there are far more regulations, but intimidation and beatings are pretty common in the South Korean army. Officers are usually lifers and professional soldiers lumped with a bunch of miserable conscripts who - in the words of my friends - just cry all the time, hate what they're doing, and want to go home. It's miserable for the draftees, and it's a massive inconvenience to get reluctant green civilians prepared from the perspective of the officers, who really seem to have a lot of contempt for draftees. Professional Korean soldiers are proud to hold themselves to extremely high standards. The parent of one of my students had been a Korean Marine and the dude was one of the most intimidating, intense people I've ever met. He was only about 5'3, too.

There are also really archaic military laws about homosexual relationships, and male-on-male sexual assault - which carries extreme penalties for victims of lower rank, regularly including prison time but few repercussions for senior officers if they are the perpetrator.
Draft-dodging carries really harsh penalties, usually prison time equivalent to the length of time you'd be conscripted, and you can be accused of trying to dodge the draft for things like weight gain or having a tattoo. Conscientious objection only became a thing in 2018, after I left Korea.

Once you're finished with your time, every year, for 6 years, you have to go back for three days to, in the words of my friend who had been called up to do this in the middle of winter "Get yelled at, march around in the freezing cold (like, it gets to -10C at about the warmest part of the day in winter to the north), sit on a mountain in the freezing cold, get yelled at some more, and disassemble and re-assemble your rifle in the dark a lot."
Time in the military gives most Korean men - and thus society as a whole - a notion of the security situation, but not the full picture. Where I lived was relatively quiet, but people knew vaguely that there were defensive missile bases and radio stations in the mountains somewhere nearby. We knew that Changwon, a large city close by, had a big munitions and armor factory, and would be a high-priority bombing target. Busan, also close, is the second-biggest city in the South, and again, was a potential target. Rumors circulate fast.
When I arrived in 2016, it was as Trump and Kim Jong-Un were having their first saber-rattle-off. We did bombing drills in my city, where military planes dropped smoke bombs, to simulate a chemical attack. The prospect of war hangs over Korea, it's something that draftees will have understood to some extent since they were about 5 years old.
A lot of my friends talked about their conscription as a traumatic thing. Most Korean men that age live in the familial home, and have relatively comfortable lives. They transition really abruptly to a world where they are being trained to do two things.

1. Throw their bodies in front of a North Korean attack to create enough time for the Americans to arrive.
2. Kill their fellow Koreans.

No-one in the south has particularly warm feelings about the North. At best they have relatives stuck up there. If they're lucky they might have met them once or twice. Otherwise it's this Chinese-backed menace that threatens to ruin a country that only very recently became anything close to financially affluent. However, Korea has a very strong sense of nationhood - some of this is built on the really quite unapologetically ethno-nationalist way people are socialized , but also the collective trauma of Korean history. Korea has always been trapped between the ambitions of China and Japan, and suffered greatly because of it.
As such, despite the North and South still technically being at war, most Koreans regard the North as part of the same country, and its citizens and soldiers as their countrymen.
A drunk conversation with my friends about their close combat training once got onto the idea of having to kill someone from North Korea. All of them had grappled with the fact that the knife drills that they all still remembered perfectly, even blackout drunk, were taught to them to be used on someone who might beg for their life in a language they understand. While I was out there, a few high-profile border crossings were made. One of them was that border guard who got shot defecting and had to be dragged to safety. When they extracted the bullets in his (parasite-filled) stomach they found that he had mostly been eating corn, because it's cheap, filling, and easy to grow. If he was a border guard, it paints a sad picture of the physical condition of the average North Korean soldier. Malnutrition and starvation is common in the North, and all my friends were despondent about the prospect of having to kill someone who was living such a miserable life.

Though it's likely that the North has some nasties up its sleeve, it's broadly recognized that it doesn't have the facilities or resources to keep them stable for a long time. All of my friends knew that if things hit the fan, the most likely thing would be that Pyeongyang would try to just drown the South in bodies, as that's really the only edge that they have. Seoul is already within shelling-range of the North, and my friends were equally acutely aware that civilian casualties stood to be huge, another moral burden that weighed heavily on them as they were being reared to wage civil war in their homeland.

@ Posermcbogus: I totally agree. There are lots of places and timeframes were getting conscripted really sucks. Maybe it would be fairer to phrase my opinion as "in the context of the post-reunification German Bundeswehr and the modern Federal Republic of Germany, I think compulsory military/civil service was a good idea that should have been reformed instead of suspended."

Conscripts in Korea, Israel, Russia and lots of other places definitly have it a lot harder. Also as mentioned: the generation before mine and those before them getting conscripted into the NVA (east germany) and cold war Bundeswehr had it harder, not even to mention being conscripted during any active war.


Some comments on how it was handled when I was at conscription age (in 2005 as mentioned): You did not have to take a break in your education. You either made your compulsory service after school before starting an apprenticeship/study/work or after apprenticeship/study and usually you could choose yourself. Sometimes that education took long enough that you were to old to do your service afterwards, then you were lucky. Also at my time you could just choose to do civil service. In earlier generations you had to really apply for it and defend your decision in front of a commitee (and not everyone got through with that). The payment was... poor for german circumstances but not as poor as you mention. Basically 7.50 € per day during basic training, roughly 1000 € a month for the later 6 months. And also you were free to drive home almost every weekend (with one or two weekends during basic training were you couldn't). We could call home every day and even - under certain circumstances - get visited at weekends by family. Those that went to work at the military hospitals in big cities like me could even sleep at home. And it was clear that conscripts would not be send out of the country unless they specifically wished to be send. Also the cold war was over for 20 years and the environment looked really peaceful.
But: even under these extremly comforting circumstances I have to agree: it is a strain to say the least for your social circle. I did not have a girlfriend at the time, but some friendships died or rather more... faded into nothingness. In a strange way I was kind of lucky with my now wife because we met before my conscription, got to like each other but missed out on exchanging numbers. Then we met again by chance afterwards and started dating. I have to say I doubt that our relationship would have survived if we had startet it already before my service.




So, as requested, some impressions from my conscription time. We were trained in a "Lazarett Regiment" so kind of a formation purely of paramedics and ongoing military doctors. The medical service of the Bundeswehr is it's own branch but expected to be kind of spread through the other branches as needed in times of crisis which leads to the rather weird situation that while our field uniform was the same, all three forms of parade uniforms (army, navy, air force) were distributed to the conscripts. If there was a system there, I did not get it. We had "Navy" paramedics from bavaria or "air force" paramedics that never saw an airfield up close. I got the army one (the ugliest... of course). Our platoon leader was an ex paratrooper and a pretty good leader. Charismatic and with kind of a natural authority. The platoon itself was mostly conscripts (just men) with some ongoing NCOs (one women) and a hand full of ongoing military doctors (all women). Regarding the later: you could (and still can) study for example medicine via the army.
Short excurse on that: there is something called Numerus Clausus, basically depending on how many people want to study a topic in a givven university there is a minimum mark you have to pass or else you have to wait some years before you are allowed to study there or have to find another university. Studying medicine in a bigger city like Berlin or at a prestigious university usually need an average mark of 1.0, so the best possible. One of the few loopholes is through the army, which has some places in the unis reserved. If you volunteer for 17 years (!) you get in one of them, regardless of your marks. You get payed during study, do your officers education in parallel and when you are finished you perform the remaining 12 years of service with a rank equaling captain. These students still have to go through basic training though and are often... not really fit for it. The sergeants tend to take it easy with them, knowing that most of them will never need to fire a gun in anger. A lot (maybe even the majority) of women joining the Bundeswehr in my time did so to become doctors.

So back on topic: A special thing about the paramedics was that they attracted significantly more conscripts from Gymnasiums and women than the other branches. So we conscripts were like 2/3+ from the "higher" schools, the ongoing doctors/officers also and while we only had I think 5 women (one of them amongst the training personel) amongst 50 something men, that was - back then - extraordinary high compared to the other branches. In my experience there never was any real problem with it. Especially the ongoing female NCO was - excuse my french - a tough b***h and impressively hard and disciplined. She was like... 1,65 and carrying the same weight as us dudes, running the same rounds.

The basic training was pretty cool at times. Never before and never afterwards was I so physically fit. As paramedics we only got the most rudimentary fighting training, basically maybe an hour on the shooting range with the Heckler and Koch P8 pistol and G36 assault rifle. We had to carry a G36 either empty or with blind ammunition (do you call it that way? I mean things that only go "pop") sometimes as that was our supposed armament as paramedics. So while this part of training got really short, we did a lot of (obstacle) running, carrying each other short distances and learning to hide and move at least rudimentary stealthy. I'm sure any real soldier would laugh about how we did it, but in three months basic training you could not expect wonders. I remember one practice that was pretty cool. We were stood down at one end of a small forest and our trainers were going in hiding somewhere inside or patroling. Our task was to get through this forest unseen. It took us a while, but most of us did it. Me and a buddy (the one I'm still friends with) crawled through the forest sideways to first get a bearing of the terrain and look for an opportunity and managed to find a deep gorge made by the wheels of a traktor of forest workers. We were careful to make sure the trainers had not found it and could use it to get halfway through the forest basically below ground level. One of our guys even found a depression were 2 trainers were lurking hidden that hadn't seen him and were unaware that he found them. So he picked up a pinecone, wrote "grenade!" on it and threw it between them. Afterwards we all (including the trainers) had a big laugh about it (even if we were well aware of the implication if this would have been not just a game).

After they had physically brought us up to the mark they started training the paramedic stuff which was the best part. I would say I learned a lot about emergency stuff, and we also did a lot of practices with actors, going through different situations. Things like patroling through the forest and suddenly meeting a civilian... or... is he? Sometimes that civilian really was only lost on the army compound, sometimes he had a knife hidden somewhere etc. Another time we found a truck with unconscious crew on our way to lunch or heard someone moaning from a bush in between sessions. Also the trainers were free to spontanously modify practice sessions if they felt like it. Like one time we were carefully loading an actor that was "injured at the spine" onto a stretcher when a passing sergeant casually shouted "you hear gunfire from over there!", so we just threw the actor on the stretcher and started running like hell for cover. Another time we had something similar to the "crossing the forest unseen", this time with an injured partner in a mixture of high grass and bushes. So we had to crawl and somehow pull him with us.

Two "sessions" that particularly sticked to my memory were:
1. another "truck accident". We arrived and there were injured actors lying around. We had no officers present, so kind of arranged ourselves. I don't really remember how some of us took charge and others accepted it but somehow it went - in a smaller scale - quite naturally. So I took up charge of a couple of troopers taking care of two injured (as someone with at least a bit of background in first aid it was accepted that I had a bit more knowledge). One of those had simulatanously signs of beginning shock (for which you should put the feet up) and of a broken skull with bleeding into his brain (where you definitly should not put the legs up and definitly not move the body). The troopers taking care of him were argueing so I took over and ordered them to keep his head up (he was in a state that he would have died 100% if we didn't do it and the shock was likely but not imminent. So I concluded some chance of surviving is better than none) and later ordered him to be moved because the simulated situation detoriated and it was clear that we had to evacuate. Again: better a slight chance than none. In the debriefing I was told that the decision was... good under the circumstances. It was meant as an example that sometimes you only have bad options to choose and have to pick the least bad.
Nonetheless I, another guy that had taken charge of some troopers got taken to the side by our trainer and critized/encouraged that we should have instead taken charge of all troopers present. They purposely sent us there without any of the ongoing NCOs to see if someone would improvised take up command and organize things, which none did which made things... uncoordinated and awkward.

2. Situation: the basement of your barack is on fire, there's lots of smoke and some of your comrades are still in there. This time we managed said organisation. One of our guys organized teams, got a rope for orientation and gasmasks from the trainers and organized a methodic search of the basement, I picked out the 2 best paramedics, got out a radio call and prepared a first aid position. Soon after they brought us the injured and we started reanimating them. I organized rotation, made some rudimentary triage, had an eye on the teams coming back from the smoke, so that they also were rotated when they started showing signs of exhaustion etc. I later heard that within the smoke there was a trainer picking out some of the rescuer, tipping on their shoulder stating "your gasmask is malfunctioning, you are unconscious now" which was a mean surprise. In the end we managed to save as many as possible.

So far for now.
Cheers

Ah yes.
Conscription fond and some very decidedly less fond memories.


Normally that dance goes as follows.

"Marschbefehl zur Rekrutierung"
Yes marching order to recruitment. Universal for males during that time you count already for the military. Hurray for Machiavellian Republicansim and collective cultural Paranoia torwards your ethno-cultural relatives. I blame france and germany!

You go to your designated Area find yourself for 2 (if lucky) or 3 days there.
Then testing starts:
Fitness, inteligence and psychological aswell as medicinal.

Pass all these and well, you are now a recruit and go to RS.
Basic training or recruit school.

If you are higher educated and or show leading potential you will get chosen to become a NCO --> CO. The army can force you one time to: "Witermache" to do more translated. Which comes after the RS with additional time for NCO / CO training.

Now there's very much a rural urban divide for capability for service with urban people generally being a lot less fit or selfreliant.
Anyways being myself rural and "higher educated" because i went and did a Matura and was studying i already got earmarked for a forced promotion. But the nail was when i organised my fellow recruits to get gak done in mapping out a path..... and i wanted so hard not to become a NCO....

So i was doing already longer than i wanted but also honestly was still pretty nice.

Part of being an Füsilier NCO means also that you are going to get involved in the training and leadership for future recruits. So little me got himself his little squad.

Which lead me to show a Tamil that had been recently naturalised how to shoot a rifle competently. Did a good job now one of the better riflemen, also a really nice dude.

I also got nearly shot once because some morons don't do gun checking well...

Taught all off my recruits how to play cards propperly.

Increased my capability in french because 2 other NCO's were rommands and i had a rommand in my squad. (jokingly also sometimes reffered to as russians).

And survived survival week...

Oh and since we had too much ammo and needed to use it or loose the budget we got to shoot a lot ... Fun times actually, still kinda a hobby of mine.

It’s been interesting reading all of these stories. Ignorant ol’ me didn’t even know some of these places kept up conscription for so long! Thanks for sharing.

If you’ll indulge a bit of curiosity, how did you folks handle the switch from civilian life to military? Was it much of a shock, or did you feel ready by the time you started? Was there anything you did to make the transition easier, if that was even necessary?

 Pyroalchi wrote:
@ Posermcbogus: I totally agree. There are lots of places and timeframes were getting conscripted really sucks. Maybe it would be fairer to phrase my opinion as "in the context of the post-reunification German Bundeswehr and the modern Federal Republic of Germany, I think compulsory military/civil service was a good idea that should have been reformed instead of suspended."

Conscripts in Korea, Israel, Russia and lots of other places definitly have it a lot harder. Also as mentioned: the generation before mine and those before them getting conscripted into the NVA (east germany) and cold war Bundeswehr had it harder, not even to mention being conscripted during any active war.

Oh, no way dude, like, if you think you were enriched by your time in, then that's excellent! I really want to say that I in no way wanted you to feel any to disrespect you or your time in. I think there could be a way of doing national service in a way that's worthwhile, effective, financially not wasteful, but also doesn't encroach into the rights of the individual too much.
I guess I just wanted to give a portrait of conscription that is much less European, and exists because of real fears of a real conflict, rather than a relic of a more turbulent past. For what it's worth, really enjoyed reading your posts! I remember when I was in Bavaria on a student exchange, the German kids all sharing their stories of how they were gonna try and dodge the draft, or else what they'd want to do if they did get conscripted.

For sure, there's always somewhere worse. I've heard horror stories about Russian conscription and it sounds hopelessly horrid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SkavenLord wrote:
It’s been interesting reading all of these stories. Ignorant ol’ me didn’t even know some of these places kept up conscription for so long! Thanks for sharing.

If you’ll indulge a bit of curiosity, how did you folks handle the switch from civilian life to military? Was it much of a shock, or did you feel ready by the time you started? Was there anything you did to make the transition easier, if that was even necessary?

Haha, not super directed my way, but my Korean friends didn't find the return to civilian life that difficult at all. Compared to mates of mine who have been professional soldiers, you're in for a much shorter time, so breaking routines is much less of a problem, and far less likely to be doing anything that's likely to leave you emotionally too different from regular folks.
Most Korean men really never stop being civilians when they're conscripted.

 SkavenLord wrote:
It’s been interesting reading all of these stories. Ignorant ol’ me didn’t even know some of these places kept up conscription for so long! Thanks for sharing.

If you’ll indulge a bit of curiosity, how did you folks handle the switch from civilian life to military? Was it much of a shock, or did you feel ready by the time you started? Was there anything you did to make the transition easier, if that was even necessary?

Well certainly really diffrent.
For us swiss its basically after school / apprenticeship.

However, discipline is needed to make the service sufferable and actually understand what you are doing there and to make units into units.

Frankly the worst part is boredom. But that is with anything military wise the case.
Technically you learn to value those parts tough because better bored and nothing to do whilest warm then being somewhere in the nowhere whilest it rains / snows and doing long marches with full load.

I don't imagine we'll be hearing from any, so... perhaps a moment of quiet reflection is in order, as we consider what North Korean conscripts must go through.

@ PoserMcBogus: No problem, I didn't take it negatively. Your post just reminded me that my appreciation for the concept is heavily based in my experience and my country and might sound very very weird to someone from other places. The fact that lots of men still tried to dodge the draft even in countries like mine were the circumstances are pretty good is an excellent indicator how unloved it is.

Regarding the Question of change between civil and military life: Due to the short conscription time (9 months) and the fact that I slept at home and even had time to meet friends in the late evening the last 6 months I have to say that I did not divert that much from civil life.
In the one direction (getting into the military) it was... more weird than a shock. Suddenly you have significantly limited personal freedoms (which in my opinion lets you value those much more) and not everyone was born for suddenly receiving orders that are not to be discussed, but in my memory it wasn't that hard to get accustomed to it. Of course I missed my family and friends a lot, but we conscripts soon bonded in new friendships and you usually did not even have that much spare time to brood about it.
For a lot of us it was the first time they had to keep their room and appearance reaaaaly clean, take up responsibility for their own mistakes and also we had to learn to get by on very short sleeping hours.

In the other direction it started a bit already during the 6 months in the military hospital. Part of the staff is civilian and the general tone there was much more informal than we were trained for during basic training. I needed a month or two before I was able to loosen up and remove the stick firmly implanted in my behind during basic. A short example maybe just understandable for Germans: you might know that we have the pronouns "du" or "sie" instead of "you" when speaking to someone. "Sie" is more formal for strangers, superiors, not so close colleagues etc. "Du" is informal, for friends and family or children (but can also be used disrespectful when adressing someone who would usually qualify for a "sie"). Added to that you can either use the family or given name, which gives various combinations.
Usually Colleages working together everyday soon change to "du" + given name or at least "du" + family name. Instead for weeks I adressed everyone in my department with "sie" + military rank + family name and saluted at least the first time I saw them every day (and everytime with the colonel leading our department).

But when my time was over it was quite literally "here is my the rest of my stuff, my desk is cleaned, have fun, I'm outa here!" No problems getting back into civil life. I took from it amongst others that I still can fall asleep pretty fast and deep and come along with much less sleep than my wife for example.

I salute those that served, whether intentionally or not and know some are better geared towards serving and some are not.

It always blew my mind the countries that do/did this and I have some Israeli friends that talk about it (an older woman for one) and I do think the short times seem to work out, like 9-12 months right out of high school, as you can still go to college afterwards and not have to postpone your life for too long.

But, gettting back to those that just are not well suited, do some of those eventually think the discipline and structure makes them a better, more organized, more mature person? I do not think you can tell at the start, but only ask them after they are finished.

I did 2 years of college and enlisted in the Navy, did my normal duty, but then stayed in the reserves and retired with 20+ years. I have three boys, where my middle one is currently a Naval Aviator/pilot in the Navy. He is perfectly suited to this life, desired to go in and is excelling. However, when my oldest thought about getting a commission (he has a college degree) I just did not think his personality was greatly suited, as I never pushed any of my children in the military.

Those that have served can tell right away those that acclimate well and will succeed and grow, and those that will fight and really have a terrible time of it; however, in hearing some of the stories above, my heart goes out to those that had to endure terrible enviroments - no excuse for that, and really no way of acclimating and coming out a better person - a lose/lose situation for a person and their country.

@ Not Online: it's interesting that the conscripts in Switzerland can become NCOs. I didn't know that. In Germany that was out of the question. Conscripts stayed privates at best.

@ some are suited for it, some not: definitly. And it's also a bit factor how your trainers and comrades tick. Almost all the dudes I served with were cool and nice ones to hang out with and none of the trainers was a d*** about it.

@ going back later on: when I was conscripted after the 9 months conscription you got into "silent reserve" that would only be called up as a last resort. But you could choose to be "Active reserve" going back for some weeks each year to train. In that case you got promoted to higher ranks marker as "reserve" so like "major of reserve". That meant under normal circumstances you were no real major, but if all things went ploin shaped you would be called in.

We had one of those as trainer for some weeks and I also thought about it. But then studying occupied me too much.

Later after my PHD I thought again about joining. I was interested in the ABC troops and when you join with a degree that is useful for the specific tank, you were allowed to join older (else I would have been to old at 31) and Start with a higher rank, definitly officer, somewhere between the equivalents of lieutenant and major. But the only army bases for that were gar away, I had two small children and got a better job offer around this time, so I didn't. Still think about how life would have turned out had i decided to do it.

Conscription was abolished here a few years before I would have had to do it, so all I have is my dad's stories about it.

He seems to be kinda neutral about it. It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful either. After training, he spent most of his time doing boring stuff like guard duty and paperwork. Standing guard during winter nights was especially not fun. On the plus side: he was stationed in an air force base, so he got to fly a few times (as a passenger, obviously).

There have been debates about reinstating the service; making it a civil service instead of a military one sounds reasonable. Ending up in a warzone without any choice in the matter should be avoided when possible. I've heard of older relatives who were sent to Indochina or Algeria and basically never talked about it. Not what I'd call a positive experience...

 Pyroalchi wrote:
@ Not Online: it's interesting that the conscripts in Switzerland can become NCOs. I didn't know that. In Germany that was out of the question. Conscripts stayed privates at best.

@ some are suited for it, some not: definitly. And it's also a bit factor how your trainers and comrades tick. Almost all the dudes I served with were cool and nice ones to hang out with and none of the trainers was a d*** about it.

@ going back later on: when I was conscripted after the 9 months conscription you got into "silent reserve" that would only be called up as a last resort. But you could choose to be "Active reserve" going back for some weeks each year to train. In that case you got promoted to higher ranks marker as "reserve" so like "major of reserve". That meant under normal circumstances you were no real major, but if all things went ploin shaped you would be called in.

We had one of those as trainer for some weeks and I also thought about it. But then studying occupied me too much.

Later after my PHD I thought again about joining. I was interested in the ABC troops and when you join with a degree that is useful for the specific tank, you were allowed to join older (else I would have been to old at 31) and Start with a higher rank, definitly officer, somewhere between the equivalents of lieutenant and major. But the only army bases for that were gar away, I had two small children and got a better job offer around this time, so I didn't. Still think about how life would have turned out had i decided to do it.

Whatever you do don't join ABC....
if it stands for atomar, biological and chemical warfare....

Just don't, that was the one training excercise even i started to blink out.

Also in regards to the swiss army... milita and military tradition. Indeed we regard proffesionals as wierd. It's the same reason why the highest rank in the swiss army is called general even though it would be more equivalnet to a military dictator for emergency situations. (jokingly refered to as Gärtner)

I was almost conscripted. This was back when Sweden officially and legally required every man of voting age to serve in the armed forces but when the actual personnel needs were so low that the amount of potential recruits vastly outstripped the positions that had to be filled. So in practice it was completely voluntary because they just sorted away everyone who wasn't fully into soldiering.

You still had to show up for the various tests, though. Medical, physical, theoretical, psychological iirc. You did them in a random order because there wasn't enough sapce for everyone doing the same test all at once. I did theoretical, then psychological and then I was thrown out because they thought I was lazy.

Regarding ABC troops: again, I forgot to mention the context: The position I was interested in was in a laboratory doing basically stuff not too far away from what I did in my PHD. I was also interested in potential projects to develop filter and analysis systems for the ABC reconnaissance vehicles. I know that going in the field as ABC-trooper sucks pretty hard, but there is quite some interesting (in my opinion) research in the field of prevention, detection, decontamination.

Sorry, as a 2000AD reader, I’m interpreting ABC as Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical?

Yes it is. Sorry, I missed out the context again
The German ABC troops are only task with prevention/detection/decontamination as we (I think at least) have no ABC weapons. But from experience our military was pretty sure to face some, so we have some troops and equipment for that. They saw some service during the last Ebola outbreak in Africa I think.

So just to clear that up: I was not interested in developing weapons of mass destruction or using them. I was interested in removing those hazards where they endanger people.

No worries. I suspected 2000AD didn’t invent it

Man. What a horrible job though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
No worries. I suspected 2000AD didn’t invent it

Man. What a horrible job though.

Well propper ABC Units have atleast the propper Equipment.
Unlike my unit class which mostly consists of gasmask with filter, specials gloves and some other assorted bits providing at most medicore protection but guarantee maximum suffering through heat and breathing discomfort....

 Vulcan wrote:
I don't imagine we'll be hearing from any, so... perhaps a moment of quiet reflection is in order, as we consider what North Korean conscripts must go through.

I believe they're in for 20 years.

 posermcbogus wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
I don't imagine we'll be hearing from any, so... perhaps a moment of quiet reflection is in order, as we consider what North Korean conscripts must go through.

I believe they're in for 20 years.

Given that, from what I hear, being in the NK military is as close as a North Korean can get to having regular meals it might not make much difference as they'd probably stay even if given the choice. Either you have some minor authority over your fellow citizens and at least higher food priority OR you get to scrabble in the fields hoping your potato crops don't fail. again.

I WoW-raided with a couple of Israeli guys who had to do their NS and their reported experience was "it's alright, everyone I know has a doctor's note about what they can't do" - one of them still got the stockade for slacking though... My father-in-law left Italy to dodge NS, too.

I have a friend who did his NS in Israel (he was born there, but didn't do it until he was 21 or so. He wanted to finish his uni course first here - but served in an officer training regt. while here - a couple of universities in Sydney have their own - not sure about other states).

He told me that there's a 2 week "leeway" period where they won't come for you if you are eligible to do it (and don't have an exemption) but if you wait for them to do that, you get to go into infantry training.

If, however, you volunteer as soon as you can after arrival, they're a bit more flexible about that. He got to do his training and service in Armour. Slightly cushier.

He was a brash, somewhat sexist 21 year old male.
ALL of the instructors for that branch were women who quickly disabused him of any notions of "feminine weakness".
(One of my wife's former co-workers was also ex-IDF armour. I never had any such notions ... ).

Even with armour, not many of his unit survived their terms.
His unit had the Achzarit carriers, known colloquially as "the b*tch" (it's a feminine-form of "cruelty" and the closest English gets to the concept.). It was the 90s, to put that time period into perspective.