Is Basic Training free from abuse?
I joined the RAF Regiment in 1989, and back then, the answer was a resounding yes.
Bad treatment of recruits was always in the news, and there were always anecdotal stories about how back in the day, Basics was really hard, how all sorts of bad stuff happened to recruits, and how the current crop were wimps and that standards had dropped, largely because it was suddenly against the regs to beat up recruits.
It’s a thing in Russia, no shocks there.
I remember one of my Corporals saying that he regularly got twatted by his instructors when he went through Basics.
Whether it ever happened in the British military, I have no idea, but in 1989 it most certainly didn’t.
Sure, there were isolated incidents. Always have been, always will be, but they were very much unofficial, and usually (and quite rightly so), career ending for the perpetrator.
Kicked out of the army for forcing recruits to strip naked and box each other.
Basics was very closely monitored, and so it was always the safest place in the military, in terms of not being abused. And let’s be clear, abuse, hazing, bullying, sprog bashing, it’s counter-productive any way you look at it, but even more so in Basics, for the simple reason that until you passed out and got posted to a squadron, it was actually pretty easy to leave. They called it D by P, Discharge by Purchase, and it cost about a hundred quid, if memory serves.
That being so, even if you were the keenest recruit ever, getting the shit kicked out of you by your instructors is a sure fire way to have a whole bunch of recruits D by P-ing, quickly followed by reports to the scuffers, and the papers, as likely as not.
The infamous mortar tube incident.
I’d like to say that abuse and harassment doesn’t happen on the squadrons, but that would be wrong. Outside of Basics, abuse and bullying remains a problem throughout the military for two reasons. Firstly, the armed forces employs more than its fair share of wankers, and secondly, victim blaming remains a cultural thing. It starts with ‘it was only a joke,’ ‘it was just banter,’ then moves on to ‘you took it the wrong way,’ ‘you can’t take a joke,’ and on to ‘if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined up,’ and finally ‘it’s your fault for taking it the wrong way.’
And that’s the thing, because in petty much every other occupation, for years now, abuse is as defined by the victim, not the perpetrator.
Apart from the military, where perps still get away with it a lot more often than many would imagine.
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