Army made me a man
Derek Bock of Green Point’s letter “SANDF a laughing stock” (Weekend Argus, February 16) is to be applauded.
I, too, was drafted into the army in the early 1960s and served nine months of intense training followed by various camps during the ensuing years. There was no choice, we had to go.
Being in the military changed my life forever. The discipline, pride in being part of the military machinery and the do-or-die attitude for your country was drummed into us.
It was up at 4am, swimming in freezing pools, gym till 7am, then breakfast, then all-day marching sessions till we became hardened no-questions-asked machines.
We learned discipline, to think as one, and that one man’s folly affected 500 others.
I was transformed from a skinny civilian into a proud soldier.
Today’s military are a joke by comparison. Troops are overweight, ill- disciplined and a disgrace to the armed forces.
This so-called party that Bock writes about was a disgraceful, disrespectful aberration of the military code, and those responsible for allowing it, participating in it and organising it should be courtmartialled and removed from the military.
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23 Février 2008 à 12:02 dans
- zsandf (anglais)
