Garbage

Gosh, an essay question about what's important to me. Let's try writing something about the army. I'll whack something out. What do you think?

The seminal experience of my life thus far has been the time I spent as a soldier in the Singapore Armed Forces, from December 2000 to June 2003. I came out of that time a completely different person than the one I was when I went in. While I do not claim that serving in a peacetime army compares to fighting in a war, it is those things I underwent outside of the usual concept of the army that changed me. Anyone can put on a uniform, slap on some camouflage paint and charge up a hill with a rifle. That is nothing more than physical exertion. It was a combination of many other things I experienced that forced me to change.

I enrolled in the Singapore Armed Forces two weeks after high school graduation. This was mandatory national military service for all male citizens over the age of eighteen. I was quite naturally rather disgruntled at the prospect of being forced to spend two and a half years of my life as a soldier in a country that had never gone to war as an independent nation-state. It seemed like a complete waste of time, and a perfect way to lose what seemed then to be the best years of my life. I would start college late; I have classmates who will graduate younger than when I matriculated at the University of Chicago. What made the entire prospect worse was the enthusiasm my parents and my older brother, who had already gone through the bulk of his service, expressed. I could hardly believe that anyone, save the foolish, would embrace a life of mosquito-infested jungles, soot-clogged rifles and water-logged socks.

By the way, I still hold that view. I believe that very few actually enjoy life as a soldier, and those who profess to love soldiering probably refer to an enthusiasm for protecting their country as part of the military. This is not a discussion of patriotism and its manifestations, however, so I will not digress.

Suffice it to say that I entered military service with a marked lack of enthusiasm. My first days seemed to prove me right. While the accommodations were adequate, I found it difficult to come to terms with the complete loss of privacy and a sense of self. The activity in every moment was dictated by the instructors for my basic military training, there were communal showers and toilets, and we spent a great deal of time trying to clean our surroundings to standards quite impossible in a jungle environment. I have always considered myself a reasonable sort, and was shocked by the complete lack of respect for reason I found in the workings of my training. We lived in sheer terror of our instructors, for there seemed no way to tell what would set them off. The collective was held accountable for the actions of selfish individuals, the erratic whims of non-commissioned officers, and the vagaries of nature. Even when we thought we had done the right thing, we found ourselves punished as often as not.

As time wore on, my resentment grew. I hated this life, and did not see how my fellows could enjoy themselves. This particular point has never really changed. I do not, and likely will never enjoy dragging myself by my elbows up a thirty degree incline through thorn-infested bushes with a rifle in my hands and fifty pounds of gear on my back. The change I referred to above was in other arenas.

In this environment, where it seemed that nothing was ever good enough to please the instructors, some people react by becoming the classic officer type. They try to go above and beyond, demonstrating what some consider leadership qualities by loud verbal exhortations of their peers to do better, or showing any and all that will see that they are capable of achieving the impossible goals set by the instructors. These are the classic alpha types, who garner a great deal of attention because they go to a lot of effort to do so. Instructors like them, they like themselves, and they thrive on any little scraps of praise they can garner.

I reacted in a different way. When I realized that it was fairly pointless to try to please my instructors, since they were not supposed to show that they were pleased in any case, I turned inwards for approbation. Without a source of external approval, I focused on doing everything I did as well as I could for no other reason than that I could. In other words, I started to try to succeed for my own sake. I had near perfect scores on the shooting range, but did not bother to publicize it, as did some others who were jockeying for attention. It was enough that I knew that I was good with a rifle, and I maintained my weapon perfectly. My instructors mostly nodded and let me go without fuss, while others who did not do as well would fish for compliments. In a workplace, this would disadvantage me, but I began to feel that it did not matter in the environment I found myself in. I was not going to sign on as a full-time regular after my mandatory service was complete, so any successes I had were only important insofar as I personally drew satisfaction from them.

When I completed my training and became a combat medical orderly, this became even more important. My duties included many administrative matters, particularly the maintenance of drug and medical stores that were used in combat training missions, the on-base medical center, and various external events. As anyone who has been in charge of a store can tell you, no one notices if a store is in good order, only if it is not. When supplies are ample, it is assumed to be the natural state of affairs. When things are in short supply, questions start to be asked about why that is so. In particular, since I was only in charge of the stores for the medical sub-unit, it was assumed that it was less difficult to maintain. I can assure you that this is not the case. The varieties of drugs and medical equipment, coupled with the remarkable amount of restrictions on many types of these made it a fairly complicated affair to keep everything in order. Prior to my posting to the unit, the senior medic of the unit had assigned four men to maintain the store. When I took over, things were in a complete mess, and the records were chaotic. I took stock of everything again, then insisted that my medical officer sit down with me and inspect all the items he was supposed to, a process that required four hours a day for two weeks, and had not been performed for years for that reason.

Few understood why I had bothered to go through this process, least of all my extremely exasperated medical officer. Most assumed that I would simply allow things to continue in the disarray they were already in. My decision to organize and straighten out the store was purely for my own satisfaction. Having been assigned this duty, I would perform it to the best of my ability, and ensure that I did a good job, even if nobody else knew about it. The only indication that I was doing my job well was the reduction of the number of men assigned to maintain the medical stores from four to one, me. To my knowledge, after I left the unit, the number of people assigned to maintain the stores has grown gradually to four again.

There were some instances where I was called on to assist in logistical support for medical services for large scale events. One particular event that stood out in my mind was the National Day Parade in Singapore. The parade itself had 15,000 participants and 55,000 audience members, many of them children. The organizers assigned 20 medics and 4 medical officers to provide medical assistance to about half of those. During one dress rehearsal, the audience was composed of 30,000 third-graders. As can be imagined, the number of those seeking medical assistance for problems ranging from asthma attacks to scraped knees to broken elbows was quite high. At one point, close to a hundred children were lined up outside our treatment area, many of them screaming their lungs out. Most people in my position would have called their superior officer and allowed them to panic over the situation. I called my superior officer, let her panic over the situation, and then set about trying to ameliorate it. I asked about half a dozen medics who were supposed to be on standby to assist me in checking and helping as many of the children as we could. While medics cannot diagnose and treat illness, we can treat surface wounds. In those cases where we could not effectively help the patients, we tried to organize the order in which the medical officers would see them, so that the more serious cases would be seen first. I doubt the medical officers ever even noticed that anything was being done, and nobody mentioned it, but I found satisfaction in knowing that I had done the best I could under the circumstances, and that was enough.

In cases where as a medic I encountered more serious injuries, the standard procedure is for four medics to assist the medical officer. Each of the four medics has a list of things he is supposed to do. In practice, many of these duties are swapped, as any particular medic may forget some things, or find that it is beyond him to do it. This is usually not a problem, as the medical officer is supposed to monitor and control the situation. I always took pride in knowing exactly what I was supposed to do, and doing it perfectly. I never required assistance, and in fact was usually the one who took over some of the tasks assigned to others. Such things are rarely noticed, but again, the knowledge that I am doing my job well was enough motivation.

I learnt self-motivation in military service, something that many people lose instead. In an organization of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them just trying to wait out their time, it is easy to simply lose interest. Many spend their days finding chances to take naps or circumvent their work. I never did so. I do not claim that my work was particularly difficult or challenging. It was not. The importance of what I learnt from this experience is not what I did, but how I came to see that no matter what the task, the most crucial motivation must come from within.

By the way, I know it's phoney. Anyway, please don't actually send me comments. I removed the comments for a reason. And I don't really give a damn who reads this stuff and what they think of it. So please stop sending me stupid emails.