Conscription, Part 2

 Chapter 2: Uninformed Citizens

 ’You look straight ahead, even if the sky is full of cunts!’
- every instructor in basic until 2001

 November 4,5, and 6, 2000

 I guess something happened on those days, but I have absolutely no idea what. My daily planner only says ‘off-duty at 1800h’.

 A note on how I spent my off-duty time during basic: Recruits in basic training were allowed to leave the base when not on duty and had to be back at 2200h. While most of the guys came from all over Germany, Steve and I usually jumped into his car, drove the six kilometers to where we lived and spent a few hours at home, sometimes taking the rest of the team along.

 Yes, I can actually hear you guys laughing from over the big pond, wondering what kind of military training that is supposed to be. (And no, it was not the watered-down version for conscripts – volunteering enlisted men, NCO candidates and officer candidates were among us.) As some of you may know, there was a slight historical hiccup in Germany’s history during my grandfather’s days, and the idea of re-establishing a military was frowned upon afterwards. The fears of a disconnected, parallel military society were high. The result was a concept called Staatsbürger in Uniform or ‘uniformed citizen’ (the ‘uninformed citizen’ pun only works in English, unfortunately). Part of this was the very decent treatment of recruits and endless lessons on the rights and liberties we were volunteering to defend, for those who had slept through high-school. ‘Leadership development and civic education’ or innere Führung was and is the main part of a German soldiers theoretical education.

 I’ll ponder the question whether this system produces useful soldiers later. As for now, I was happy with the few hours a day during which I could read a book, take a shower by myself and see my future ex-wife.

 November 7, 2000

 From the vault of useless, but always available memories the Bundeswehr gave me: The G3A3. 4.1 kilograms, caliber 7.62×51 mm, muzzle velocity 800 m/s, engagement range 300 m. I could list the parts, but it would take me half an hour to find all the correct translations. I called her Winona, and we had a rocky start. (I miss you, girl. They didn’t let me keep you.)

 After we had learned the basic rules of gun safety, how to handle and disassemble and reassemble the beasties (the main parts, disassembling the bolt came later), we were lead to a tiny building, its interior resembling a small movie theater – a row of four pseudo-G3s in front of a movie screen, and behind them four computers and two rows of seats. It was called AGSHP (Training Device Shooting Simulator Handguns/man-portable Anti-Tank-Weapons), and we were there to take our first test in basic riflemenship, the G-V (seated at a table, target at 50 m, sights set at 200 m, 5 shots, single fire).

 It was quite cool, simulated recoil and all, but the main part of it was the after action review, where the instructors brought up you performance on their screens and corrected mistakes – holding the rifle askew, pulling the trigger too fast, too slow or with the wrong parts of your finger etc. I passed, and I was confident I could handle that thing.

 Four hours later at the shooting range, I had failed the G-S-1 (seated at a table, 10-ring-target at 100 m, sights set at 200 m, 5 shots, single fire, 40 points needed) for the third or fourth time. First time, I hadn’t pressed the beast firmly enough into my shoulder, and it nearly broke my glasses (and my jawbone). I wrote about that topic before – in a no-guns-society, firing one for the first time was quite a psychological hurdle.

 The instructors were patient, though – they were used to it. (Fun fact: At the range, there is always one instructor armed with a pistol whose sole purpose is to shoot people who go crazy.) And during my fourth or fifth try, I suddenly got it – my hands stopped trembling, my breath got steadier, I simply got it (and 47 points.) The chief instructor half-joked that I had intentionally thrown my first tries to get more rounds off – ammo for live-firing exercise was quite sparse.

 If I had, I would have cursed myself back at the barracks – I didn’t know that rifles get that  dirty that fast.

 November 8, 2000

 Leadership development and civic education. Fun fact: There are seven different ways someone can be your superior in the Bundeswehr. Way Number Five once made me the superior of a sergeant for 24 hours. (He was fine with it.)

 November 9, 2000

 Combat training for all troops of all services. Pack all the stuff you need for three days in the field and prentend you are at war. With Redland, if anyone asks – it made a habit out of amphibious landings at the Baltic shores, combined with airborne assaults on the Kiel Canal.

 Combat training f.o.t.o.a.s. was and is the main practical part of the curriculum. Nearly all the other f.o.t.o.a.s. parts – NBC defense, medical training, hand weapons and tank defense – are done under combat training conditions, with the German version of SMESSCS, camouflage and a few magazines of blanks. It’s centered around squad-sized infantry warfare – or the ‘small fighting community’ as it is called officially and affectionally.

 Corporal Team Pet was a really nice guy, a 17-year-old volunteer who had just finished his first NCO course. (Rumour had it that he had to leave the service because his liver gave up. He could drink way too much.) The squad leaders were on the butt end of the basic training process – worse off than the recruits, actually. They were on duty for at least two hours more than us, and were blamed for everything that went wrong. They constantly had to balance between being part of the small fighting community – fraternising to a certain extent – and being instructors.

 We liked him, and not wanting to disappoint him (and thus earning him the wrath of his superiors) was a major motivational factor for us. Thus, we ”rödelt” for him – an (even to non-serving Germans) untranslatable word for both the combat gear and the combat training, with shades of hitting the frozen mud, excavating fighting positions, and running around with 35-40 kilograms of stuff. This particular november day was focussed on camouflage, with superiors running around trying to find us in the woods, the two basic squad formations and tactical signs.

 November 10, 2000

 Leadership development and civic education, and then, suddenly, at 1000h, we were off-duty for the weekend. (I can still hear you laughing.) Officially, the weekends could be cut if the training goals for the week weren’t reached, but like NATO alerts, it never happened. Those of us who wore glasses were given a pre-paid prescription and told to order new ones during the weekend, and all of us were told to be back by Sunday, 2200 hours.

 

Chapter three: Basic Steps

 ’79 centimeters is gay, 81 centimeters is desertion!’
- every instructor in basic during marches

November 13, 2000

Basic training taught a lot of things you should already know. How to clean your room, how to fold your laundry, how to dress – and how to walk. No goosestepping was involved, even the Wehrmacht didn’t teach it in its latter years. Eastern Germany resurrected it under a different name, but unlike their MiG-29s, we didn’t want to try it after the reunification.

The most challenging aspect of formal training, aside from turning right on your left foot, was to quickly regognize all the rank insignia. German soldiers adress each other by rank, not by a general honorific. (Although years of watching American media resulted in a fair share of ‘yes, sir!’s from all of us in the first few days, which in turn resulted in some vaguely annoyed shouting from the wrongfully adressed Oberstabsfeldwebel.)

While that’s not that difficult in and by itself, a few things made life complicated. First, most personnel at our base wore combat dresses while on duty, featuring dark green insignia against a lighter green background. Second, no one ever dressed down superiors for the sad state of their uniforms – not even the overweight maintenance sergeant who had his jackets fit while he was 18 and still wore them, which put his rank insignia somewhere in the region of his shoulder blades. (As if it weren’t difficult enough to count all the stripes and diamonds and wedges from five steps away when you’re just short of six feet.)

Third, officer candidates after their first officers course. They are cadets with the duties and rank insignia of a corporal called Fahnenjunker, normally found as squad leaders during basic, and they are the nightmare of every recruit. (Except of those in their own squad, they told us. Probably afraid of being fragged.) They become human beings again when they are promoted to Ensigns. The problem is, their rank insignia differ only in a very thin silver band from those of a corporal, and that band often slips below their shoulder stripes. As one doesn’t usually correct ones’ superior’s state of dress, that left the helpless recruit who adressed him as Corporal with additional homework, i.e. drawing all rank insignia by hand. Alternatively, you could tell your squad leader about it, who’d whisper it into the company’s senior NCOs ears, who’d eat the cadet for breakfast like everything else he encountered. He’d probably eat a Redland T-72 and shit its ERA plates.

Senior company NCOs are mystical creatures, traditionally called Spieß (as long as he isn’t present), which is the German word for pike and the short form of the Prussian version of running the gauntlet. There’s a reason the company commanders are afraid of them. The Bundeswehr doesn’t have senior battalion NCOs, everything concerning human resources is handled by the Spieß, and he is the stern mother who looks after the kids while the company CO isn’t around much and spoils them if he is.

But I disgress. As noted above, the German soldier marches at a distance of 80 centimeters from the man in front of him, each step measuring 80 centimeters, at 114 paces a minute. (No, I don’t know why it is 114 paces. It’s probably the number of buttons on a Prussian uniform shirt or something like that.) Thus, the German soldier walks at 5,472 meters per hour, which I still remember because it was the phone number of the first girl ever I fell in love with.

After learning the basic maneuvers in formal training, i.e. standing around, turning around, walking around, walking in curves and stopping, we had something resembling lunch, and were sent to put on our battle gear, pack our backpacks and get our rifles for our first combat march – 6 kilometers, to be precise.

Ignoring all the stuff that you always had to have in your pockets (I’ll talk about that later, when I’ve dug up the regulation for it), combat gear was the follwing: Olive battle dress, possibly with olive rain suit if there is (behold the rational thinking) rain or mud. Else, put it in your backpack, rain and mud are never far away in northern Germany. The old rain gear was especially designed to keep the inside and outside equally wet (by transpiration and rain, respectively), while maintaining a comfortable level of tropical temperature conditions on the inside, even in November. Flecktarn rain suits are, as we’ve been told, much better, but I don’t know about that, they were to expensive to buy privately.

Next, on your right hip and slung through your shoulder stripes, your most hated posession: The NBC protection gear pouch. It won’t really protect you from anything, but it will kick you in the balls when you have to gone prone while running.

Over that, the ballistic vest – in Flecktarn, actually, but without ceramic plates, those were only issued on deployment. Thus, they were quite comfortable and kept you warm. Except when wearing rain gear, then they actually kept you visible on infrared targeting systems in several states.

Now it’s time to put on your ”Koppeltragegestell”, or load bearing equipment. As everything else but the ballistic vests, it came in two versions. The Flecktarn LBE is great, easy to use, comfortable and not commercially available at the base PX. Olive LBE is, well, olive. Attached to it is your canteen, four spare magazine pouches (if budget allows, each magazine fully loaded, but most of the time, you recieve between 25 and 50 blanks) and your trusty old entrenching tool. In the German army, it’s ‘ready folding spades!’, not ‘attach bayonets!’ for close-in fighting.

Finally, the backpack, stuffed for three days in the field, more or less. It always contains half a tent, a sleeping bag and a foldable ground pad. If we were actually in the field rather than pretending to be, it had to contain our boot cleaning set, personal hygiene stuff, three combat rations, dinner utensils and hexamine fuel tablets. Always take spare socks and fill the remaining space with snicker bars and the double amount of cigarettes you think you are going to need. Backpacks were, of course, available in two version, but surprisingly, the olive version doesn’t suffer that much in comparison – it’s smaller, but only a little bit  too small for all your stuff, that’s it.

Put on your helmet (theoretically available in, you guessed, olive steel and flecktarn kevlar), sling over your rifle, put your fifth magazine in it and there you are: One standard German soldier.

The six kilometer march was done in platoon strength and marching formation and was not very difficult to manage. I was a little bit worried – although I did my fair share of long distance running back in those days, I was and am only a 130 pound guy. But it was surprisingly easy. I had heard a lot of horror stories about blisters and uncomfortable boots, but they were all wrong. The combat boots were fitted in length and width, and if you wore them with a thin and a thick pair of socks, they were the most comfortable piece of footwear in the world.

We spent the march answering questions about regulations that were fired at us, returned to base and were told to know the Tank Song  by tomorrow. Stanzas one and four only, and yes, I’ll cover our military’s rather complicated relationship with its history and traditions in a future update.