Reflections of My Service Prt 1

Now that I'm getting out of the military, I suppose I am reflecting on the experience, and much as I have painted the whole of my experience as bad, it really wasn't. I started my Basic back in February of 2006. Seems like forever ago now. Back then I really didn't know better about what I was getting myself into, and the instructors did nothing to dissuade me of my illusions. In fact, I think they went out of their way to reinforce those illusions of grandeur that I and others like myself probably felt about the military. At the time of my enlistment up until I passed Basic training and seeing my instructors all done up in their uniforms with their medals, I thought how awesome it would be to be like that, to command the respect that they had, to have done things and gone places like they did. Well, three years later and my feelings on the subject have changed.

I won't bash the people who are in the military still, who resigned contracts. They have their reasons for wanting to stay. Some acknowledge that now wouldn't be a prudent time for them to leave the Canadian Forces -- they just don't have the means to support themselves in a civilian job at the moment. I can understand that. Me, though, I've come to realize that the military is no place for me. I've decided to go back to school, get a degree in English. We'll see how that pans out, but I'm hopeful. As for my time in, well, it had its ups and downs.

Like I had said previously, I started my Basic Training back in February of 2006. It was a long course, three months long. I can't remember the exact date I finished, but it was sometime in May. During the course, I had to deal with persons who didn't like me and told me I'd never cut it, told me I should drop out. It's funny because one of my biggest opponents, the man who told me I wouldn't make the cut, ended up being cut only four weeks into the course. Not even a full month in and he was taken off the course. But, through it all, I prevailed. Thinking back, I actually believe Basic to be one of the easiest courses to pass, and the more I think about it, the easier I think it was. I think that were anyone to put their mind to it, they could do it.

My next course was my Soldier Qualification. I started that in July after spending time on PAT (Platoon Awaiting Training). Two months of PAT does things to the mind. It's painful, but then, it's a lot like being in Battalion with my unit -- much the same thing, but I didn't know that at the time. SQ was more difficult than Basic, but that was expected. Only a few people failed off the course. A girl who was dropped on our second day of the seven week course, one other because he didn't want to do it anymore, and a third who ended up having his knees shot to fuck from the severity of the course itself. But in the end, I passed. The last course was my Basic Infantry Qualification, or BIQ. I went through that, and actually found it easier than SQ by a long shot. It was easier -- but I think the reason for that was because the weather made the course more difficult in and of itself. Temperatures that are forty below do enough to make lives miserable, especially out in the field. Staff didn't try to make it worse, was no need. Once that was completed, it was off to Battalion to join my unit. I would become a member of the Second Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry -- 2VP or 2PPCLI for short.

And that was when I began the arduous wake-up call as to what I had really signed on for. You see, courses are a bit of a closed environment. Everything you see, hear and do are regulated for you by your staff. They do this in such a way as to shield you from what military life really is and what it is that you'll really be doing. In all honesty, you're being lied to a little, because you think that Battalion is the greener grass on the other side, but in all honesty, I prefer the regimented lifestyle of being on course, even though it sucks in its own right.

Battalion, yeah, it was something.