I did a year of mandatory service in Finland, and despite it being somewhat different from the Egyptian system, I guess I can share some wisdom.
First and foremost, a good group spirit (esprit d'corps) gets you through almost anything. Especially when that's on the squad and platoon level - in a wicked way, you can be sworn enemies with the neighbouring platoon and then best friends with them against the neighbouring company, and that again on the higher echelon, at least here it worked up until the brigade level. But sub-squad-level rivalry (ie. rivalry between squadmates or fireteams) is bad, you should help your squadmates always when possible, the same applies to your platoonmates pretty much, because they are the guys you spend most of your time with. If someone starts stepping on others' feet for personal advantage that's pretty certain to **** up the squad dynamics.
But if you have working squad dynamics, it'll be a lot easier. You cover up each others' errors, you carry each others' gear if someone doesn't have the strength to do so any more, stuff like that to do things as quick as possible (to get a little more rest) and lighter for everyone. An extra daypack to carry is less of a burden than the problems you get if you are late, and the benefit of getting extra time to chill is worth it. Everyone has to understand that.
What to expect:
- strict time schedule
- a lot of time waiting around in a fancy drill formation (at least here everyone always had to stand in attention in a platoon formation when waiting for the CO or a class lesson to begin or to get into any building or when going to eat)
- a lot of getting ready for waiting
- hurrying for the very smallest things
- when in barracks, time goes slow
- same for when on the field
- when you are on the field you want to be at the barracks
- when you are at the barracks waiting just doing nothing you start getting bored
- when you get bored you want to go on the field to do something
- when you are in the barracks and in a hurry, you don't have any time to breathe
- almost everything's more lax on the field
- constant hurry during the basic training
- no privacy at all
- no possibility to keep in good touch with the civilian life
- tiredness, you almost have to sleep on the free time
- the wakeup is hell
- even the simplest tasks are practised over and over, until you can do them immediately when awoken in the dead of night, this includes:
- gun cleaning
- gun field strip
- loading the mag
- muzzle control and gun operation
- practising the trigger pull
- crawling
- high crawling
- running (of all sorts) etc.
- grenade throwing
- landmine setting
- digging foxholes
- movement training
I'm not sure how it goes in Egypt, but we got our first range day at the end of the first week (all clear mental cases are discharged and exempt from service over the first few days), and we trained shooting a lot. I got to shoot thousands of rounds in very varying exercises, from range days to late-service live fire combat simulation with authentic movement in both advance and retreat, with explosives, vehicles and RPG's in the mix, akin to this
Youtube video (sorry for the music) from other Finnish servicemen.
A lot of the tolerability of the service time depends on your leaders also, especially those closest to you. In Finland that works pretty well as a lot of the arbitrary stuff has been weeded out and the military trains leadership through example nowadays instead of shouting. We never had any serious hazing problem in the military but nowadays there's pretty much none of it left. About Egypt, I don't know, but if you ever become a leader of anyone, think what will happen if you some day are sent to war with the men you command. If you treat them like ****, are you going to be an effective unit or not? Will you be better off at the end of the war by treating them with disrespect? Of course not.
What I learnt during service:
- the obvious simple military stuff (shooting with an assault rifle, using AT weaponry, using different kinds of explosives, creating IED's)
- other things about military
- tolerance and understanding towards people from different social backgrounds and of different political opinions (after all, a conscript unit represents a pretty wide spectrum of the society)
- cold and bad weather endurance
- proper leadership (I went into NCO course, then from there to RO course and was finally trained to be an ATGM platoon leader)
In my personal experience and in hindsight it was actually pretty good time. I still keep in contact with my platoonmates and NCO course friends on a semi-regular basis and have met up with them several times after. I also got contacts that might be important in the future (some of them were lawyer students etc.), and almost a profession out of it (I almost ended up in the career officer course through my own will, if I had't get in the medical school I would have gone there). Some of my buddies went to become career officers, one trained and enrolled into the special forces and such. At least in Finland the military service is also a pretty common topic when young men strangers to each other meet, within the first two hours of discussion a lot of it concerns what they did during their service time, and I've heard from my Israeli friends that it's the same way there (tho they also have women in service so it's not only young men who discuss it).
I imagine doing service is good experience for one's growth. Not necessarily career-wise, but as a person developing some kind of discipline and wisdom, is it not?
At least in my experience, it didn't help me to develop self-discipline much. The military discipline is in almost any situation very external, ie. there are punishments (for us, it was through a system where the unit CO would investigate and if guilty of any breach of the military code, you'd get either extra work tasks, a leave arrest or in a worst-case scenario a criminal sentence if it went into court) or other ways (informal collective punishments like leaders making us arbitrarily to do extra physical exercise and such, also you could get picked on in the future by the leaders, including having to do all the extra ****** little tasks there always are) to get you in trouble if you screw up, which form the basic level of discipline, and then the collective discipline, where your peers start picking on you if you screw up and cause trouble to them too.
Self-discipline starts to develop only if you are willing to perform well, either through competitive spirit between squads/platoons/companies/whatever which can only develop well if the esprit d'corps is high enough, or through wanting to achieve some personal goals in the military.
. 8 months is a lot of time.
Keep it up!
everyone. On to the next adventure.
