The Tories want to bring back National Service. Over the weekend the Foreign Secretary did the rounds of the television and radio studios to explain the rationale. It will be compulsory for eighteen year olds. Though not mandatory. Or will it be mandatory but not compulsory? There are options. You can give up your weekends, for example, doing voluntary work for the NHS, or the Fire Brigade.
But why? Apparently it’s more to benefit the eighteen year olds than the armed services, or the social services. It will get the youngsters out of their “bubble”, crouched over a tablet, absorbed in social media. Well! (I shouted at the radio in exasperation.) Whose fault’s that? Who told them to get connected, and that IT, and AI, were the future? But now we are to recede back into the past, the past, precisely, of 1947 – 1963. What’s that beautiful final sentence from The Great Gatsby?
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
My uncle did National Service. He had a sunny disposition and a great sense of humour, and would beguile us with amusing stories of his experiences. He would fall foul of some obscure military regulation, and be commanded by his sergeant major to stand upon a table and recite, “I am a dozy man.” But it wasn’t all funny. He was on parade one day, standing to attention, when the man next to him nearly amputated his own thumb with his bayonet. Blood everywhere. The man fainted on the parade ground. Naturally my uncle went to his aid.
Big mistake. He was yelled at for stepping out of line. Does not that little vignette sum it all up? Army training, especially for conscripts, starts with the inhibition of humane instincts in favour of blind obedience. How else can you be persuaded to impale another human being with a bayonet? But this is what the Tories want to bring back for eighteen year olds. Do them the world of good.
I wonder what really lies behind it? I can’t think the government is really much bothered about teenagers being wedded to their devices. Much better that they be thus pacified, than at the barricades demonstrating against the fossil fuel industries. And would the armed forces welcome it? They would be saddled with a duty of care, unable, surely, in this day and age, to send insubordinates out on a yomp on the Brecons, in full kit and at 32 degrees Celsius, followed (should they survive) by a good beasting.
Maybe the Tories are just flying a kite. It’s like mood music, setting the scene. We are, after all, moving from a post-war world to a pre-war world, and we had better get used to it. I notice that Mr Sunak’s much cherished dynamic sliding-scale smoking ban has quietly been stubbed out, at least for the time being. That would certainly fit with this latest conscription wheeze. I remember at school asking a teacher – in a fit of bold precocity which would occasionally overtake me – why it was that we were forbidden to smoke, when all our teachers smoked. He replied briefly, “We were all in the army.” In other words, it was really foisted upon them. The cigarettes were dirt cheap, and then they became addicted.
But it’s never a good idea to badmouth your army. You never know when you might have need of it. Didn’t Kipling say as much? I suppose, after a manner of speaking, I did my own National Service, quite voluntarily. I was in the University Air Squadron, hence the RAF Volunteer Reserve, for about two and half years. So I know a little bit about being beaten about the ears and told I was a bloody idiot. I remember dining in the officers’ mess on an RAF station in Oxfordshire, sitting beside a US Air Force officer who was completely silent, and who sat rigidly to attention, consuming his meal, utilising cutlery in a series of right-angled manoeuvres, as if presenting arms. Not for me. But I stuck it out, largely because I liked to fly the aeroplanes. After a while, my superiors began to cut me some slack. “Take this Chipmunk, Campbell, up to 7,000 feet. Spin it seven times over Loch Lomond. If you haven’t recovered by 3,000 feet, bale out. Now bugger off. There’s a good fellow.”
Later on, I flew a great deal in New Zealand, and couldn’t get over everybody’s relaxed, laid back attitude. Aviation became a very rich seam, for me, and I suppose I have the RAF to thank for that. So I guess the military never did me any harm (apart from the nightmares, the facial tic, and the puddle of urine appearing at my feet).
jamescalumcampbell 