"The military training and the life of the soldier" by Lucas Turks

Considerations about the formalities of training to the soldier's life and consequences on the behavior in the military operations

Since the times of the Thebes phalanx and of the Roman legion, the importance of the training of the military units has constituted one of the fulcrums of a military campaign. Although the preparation of military kind is not to be considered only for war (it is enough to think about the Spartans that did a lifestyle of it), the period that is spent to acquire physical and psychological abilities suited for the fight is really focused to the final moment constituted from the clash with the enemy, what it is. Having underlined that during the military formation it is necessary to also forge the psychological part of the man that will become a soldier it doesn't have to let think about solutions of compulsory indoctrination that there have also been, but more simply to that necessary strengthening of the feelings of comradeship and obedience that act as base for the units of an army that wants to consider itself such.

We proceed with order and we start from a breve dolly shot of what has been in the past the evolution of the military training. In the prehistoric times, with dating around 8000-3500 BC, also continuing then in recent times in those tribes still tied up to the Neolithic traditions, the preparation to the battle had an importance that went beyond the simple training melting with the mysticism and the ancestral cosmogonia. The passage between the youth, it would be better to tell infancy because in some cases the age limit was around 8/10 years, coincided with the beginning of the preparatory activity to the hunting and consequently to the war. The initial coincidence between the exercises needed for the activity of maintenance and for the war, left lacking of whatever moral or moralistic consideration either the use of the weapons either the formalities with which was reached such ability.

With the slow passage from the nomadic tribes of the high Neolithic to the permanent and agricultural populations, the initiation to the military life was not shown as a natural moment of the life of group anymore, but as a real option for a type of “career” different and decidedly more dangerous in comparison to the average. When man choice was not voluntary, for necessity coming from the military operations, the recalled persons, accustomed to a pacific existence of agriculturists, had to be “reeducated” to the hardness of the war. The training in that time was hard by circumstance and in practice without rules, exactly as it was the infighting for which it was done. It shows this fact firstly the hard behavior kept in the arc of the whole life from the Spartans already quoted in precedence, then the existence for some aspects unhappy indeed that had to bear the neighbor populations of the Assyrians.

These people born warlike and stayed such for the whole brief duration of their own empire, it had a conception of the war and the preparatory work to it that it grazed the absurdity. If in battle the head of the enemy was an excellent trophy and the death of his family in the atrocious looting following the victory was considered inevitable, the fact that for itself that hard Mesopothamic population didn't reserve very different treatments, it leaves perplexed. The bodily punishment that could arrive to the loss of arts for simple disciplinary infringements was normal in the military camps and would not have to surprise that the hate toward the adversary was not anything else other than a reflex of that very often more rooted towards their own commanders.

Despite the existence of warlike populations as the Assyrians, the tradition of division between soldiers and agriculturists went consolidating with the time. It was inevitable that the specialization of the soldiers brought to the creation of corps of professionals and mercenaries. During the Roman empire the work of the Legionary became an appreciated job and often undertaken with good final profits. The salario, term with which today in the Italian language is pointed out the working salary, it derives from the Roman habit to pay with salt, very sought after material, in the moments of great monetary difficulty. However, it is not to believe that also the life of the Legionary was easy and that he could easily enrich. It existed a right of looting that could bring extra wealth in the pockets of the soldiers, but the largest part of the good was of the government and this greatly limited the possible earnings. Also the lands that the Roman commanders very often reserved to their own veterans at the moment of the retirement, it was always also little thing in comparison to the large senatorial properties. Nevertheless, the legionaries acquired during the period of preparation an element that allowed bearing the hardest campaigns of conquest. It was said to them that all the soldiers were equal and the classes didn't exist anymore. Certainly, the distinctions remained between patricians and plebeians in the attribution of the ranks in the order of command, but a good soldier always had the possibility to reach the highest levels of the society.

To testimony this element, there is the large number of generals of humble origins that knew how sitting on the imperial throne in the darkest period of the empire between the second and the third century AD. Although their kingdoms were of brief duration and they were concluded in many cases in civil wars and consequent baths of blood, they had given origin to a “military democracy” that allowed the election of subjects of poor origins either that they arrived from the Legion either that they went out of the ranks of the Pretorium. Until the superior cohesion of the Roman troops coming from the better training and from the superb inside union didn't meet resistance, firstly the Republic and the then the Roman empire didn't have difficulty to dominate large part of the known world. It was only with the advent of Barbaric people that could have armored cavalry that the Roman infantry was swept away. Some historians think that additionally to this technical motivation there was another psychological reason, directly tied up with the increasing number of Barbarians present in the Roman military squads as mercenaries. They didn't share the same ideal of who paid them, neither culturally nor politically. Very often, they didn't participate even in the phases of training, being directly enlisted in specialized troops (They have become famous the Numidian cavalry and the infantry Coming from North Greece), also losing that very strong connection with the comradeship of the legionaries.

The fall of the Roman empire involved a return to the past, creating more than four centuries of obscurity, where the military life was still confused with the daily one, at least for that that it concerned the most elevated classes of the society. In fact in the Middle Age, it was preserved a social separation between farmers and soldiers creating a real caste of servants of the glebae. The increasing power of the feudal gentlemen that constituted the only other social class in secular circle before the birth of the middle class, brought to the concentration in an only person, the First-born, of all wealth of the noble family. Resulting difficult for whoever to program the birth of an only child, was necessary to handle an alternative career for those people that, for their adversity, was born for second. The possibilities were essentially two: the Church or the Cavalry. Naturally, we are speaking of the line of masculine descent, because for the women in that times there was not a lot of choice between a convenient marriage for the most fortunate ones and the Convent of seclusion for the most quarrelsome ones. Returning to the possible choices of the junior children of the Middle Age gentlemen, excluding the ecclesiastical way that doesn't interest the object of this treatment, we can say that the military way constituted a good solution for their fathers, above all from the economic point of view.

The training happened in single way, often with the assumption of a tutor that had to transmit its own knowledge of man-at-arm to the youth descendant. The values and the principles that were consolidated with the time in the Cavalry have transmitted through the literature the heroic figure of fearless Knights ready to all to save the beloved Lady or to protect the defenseless people. Although it cannot be denied that figures of such kind have existed, it is to remember as it was very more common another type of Knights that we can denominate “land-less.” They were, in good substance, noble young people that, for the motives of primogeniture, didn't practically possess anything but the title, which they brought and the armors, which they dressed. For such reasons they offered themselves as mercenaries to the service of other gentlemen or they tried with all means to conquer lands distant from home. We find example of it in a lot of figures that accompanied Goffrey of Buglione in the First crusade in holy land: Boemondus of Tarantus, descending of the Norman families that dominated South Italy and the younger brother of Goffrey, Baldovinus, then become king of Jerusalem. In every conquered city (particularly Edessa) they fight to take possession of it without any reservedness. They had well few to divide with that “monks with the sword” described by the reporter of the Crusades William of Tyro.

Other interesting aspect of the preparation of the feudal knights is surely the participation to the tournaments. Originally born as moment of reunion and improvement of the military abilities, the tournaments or “jousts” degenerated in simple games of hazard, where the last blood struggle could have as compensation in case of victory, prizes in money or in lands or, in rare cases indeed, some noblewoman's kiss. Without penetrating in the cruelest aspects of this demonstration of military exercise, we will remember as even the Pope had to intervene, promising the excommunication for whoever participated in the tournaments, threat that practically didn't intimidate anybody, because the assemblies quietly continued until the end of the fifteenth century. It was not the divine intervention to put an end to the Heroic Cavalry but an entirely human invention: the fire weapons.

With the introduction of the gunpowder and the improvement of the first arquebuses, in 1500 there was a deep change of the access to the military life. The enormous costs of the war equipment (armor, sword and mount) were reduced to the expense of construction of the rudimentary rifles and the training of the men that had to grasp them only. The widening of the base of recruitment and the evident necessity to proceed to a specific training of group involved another return to the past. The units of arquebusers, artillery men and riflemen restarted to conduct a life in common during the period of preparation to the fight, just as it had already happened to the times of the Roman Legion. The rediscovered feelings of affiliation to the different units were melt with new and unexpected moral principles with the advent of the French Revolution. The introduction of the obligatory conscription during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and gave origin to an army that fought for ideal that had learned to know just in the phases of preparation in the barracks.

The restoration consequent to the fall of Napoleon delayed for decades the ulterior evolution of the preparatory phase to the war, at least in Europe. It was, in fact, in the United States that bloomed with vigor a new way to proceed to the training, with the definitive passage from the professional army to one typically of mass. The units that fought in the first months the American civil war were for the largest part voluntary and seriously inadequate to sustain a conflict that was announced of large scale. The amelioration in the weapons with the introduction of the rifled barrel that allowed an extreme precision of shot and consequent increase of the losses in battle pushed the Union to shorten the period of preparation and exercise reserved to the new recruits. The time devoted to the life in common with their own fellow soldiers and to an efficient comprehension of the techniques of war became extremely reduced with an ulterior increase of the victims rather than its diminution.

The same behavior was kept on all European fronts from the nations involved in the First World War. The soldier had lost their own identity to become only “gun meat.” The positive aspects that had been lost during the too brief period of training were regained during the life of trench, at least for those people that were enough fortunate to survive for a time long enough from to make friendship. The losing of importance of the human component was due partly to the wrong conviction that a technical-mechanical prevalence was enough to win a war. Only during the Second World War, when it was understood that the air supremacy was not enough to have reason of a well-disciplined and ready-to-the-struggle enemy, there was a clear and precise inversion of tendency. The great allied landing in Normandy was prepared for long months in the English bases, granting a large amount of time so that the soldiers knew each other and they created that spirit of comradeship that under different conditions would be expressed in the first line and only eventually, being possible (and it happened for the French troops forced to cohabit in the fortifications of the line Maginot) that the long cohabitation under the threatening of the enemy could be deleterious rather than salutary.

The training and the preparation to the war, however, are not always enough so that a unit responds to the expectations of the Head Quarters. As the troops of the Old Guard of Napoleon had to withdraw for the first and only time under the pressure of the British cavalry on the field of Waterloo, so whatever organized group has to know how to face the most awful aspect of the battle, that is the death's possibility. A military unit is very more efficient as more it is able to fight coherently operating with the other analogous units. The staircase "squad-platoon-company-brigade-division" must be hierarchically respected by all the members to the lowest stair so that the orders are performed with good results. The dull compliance to the orders that in the past was considered a merit, it has been in more recent years object of a vast attack in many texts of military tactic. It has been affirmed, in fact, that the prewar exercise would have to serve to develop in the soldier that mental “elasticity” that would consent him “to interpret” the received orders in conformity to the concrete situation on the field. Which is the psychological motivation that holds back the soldiers from running away in front of the danger to lose his own life it has not been however yet individualized with precision. Neither it has been possible to find if such aspect is more or less transmissible through a period of long training.

In recent epoch different movies have described the fields of training and the trainers as lagers and jailers, underlining the most negative aspect of this phase of the military reality only, that is the necessary limitation of the rights of the individual and his personal liberty in reason for a collective collaboration. In the brief historical report to which we have proceeded, it can be noticed that the phase of passage between the condition of citizen and that of soldier (where the two concepts are separable) can decidedly involve also some positive aspects. Indeed, the comradeship that is created could make up for the today's lack of social communication. In addition to this, there is the possibility of cultural exchanges among subjects coming from different reality that would hardly take place if the proximity were not forced by the military activity. Finally, the transmission of ideal and principles acquired during the military training can consent a more fast diffusion of them in the civil society (the French Revolution is the better example of it).

In conclusion, analyzing what pros and cons can subsist in preserving a period of military preparation in the contemporary epoch, it can be said that there is an equivalence of them that would have to let reflect those people that advocate the creation of professional armies composed only by voluntaries. In fact, if an army composed from fewer men could seem less dangerous, this method would not necessarily avoid the risk of wars that could be fought in any way through an obligatory conscription of emergency. In such case the losses in terms of human life would be greater for lack of preparation and it could not even serve for the perspectives of communication quoted above. The end of the juvenile obligatory conscription in many states, among which Italy, even though greeted from more parts with joy, it will deprive of a part of that cultural patrimony that can never be despised even if tied up in strong way with the world of the war.

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