From: dvp@getafix (Dave Parry)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Viloence in british military schools (Help for anthro. study)
Date: 7 Nov 92 13:14:11 GMT
Followup-To: sci.anthropology
Organization: ICL, Bracknell, Berks, UK
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

th2_oate@csd.uwe.ac.uk (Tom Oates) writes:
> To the best of my knowledge there are no 'military schools' in the UK.
> There appears to have been a misunderstanding. Perhaps the original
> poster was referring to military camps/establishments where adults are 
> trained eg. Sandhurst, Cranwell etc. Life there is nowhere so unpleasant 
> as in a US 'boot camp' eg. Parris Island. 
> 
> -- 
The nearest thing we have to a Miltary School is the Army Apprentices 
Colleges, taking youths at 15 (could be 16 now) and providing them with
further education i.e. maths english etc. together with military training.

I'm not sure if the RAF has anything similar or even of the Royal Navy do,
although they used to have HMS Ganges, a land based training establishment,
which closed @1973. They took youths from 15-16 and combined standard
schooling, together with military and technical trade training.

I spent 6 months at Ganges back in 1969 and whilst the regime was (looking
back) extremely tough, I can recall no instances of bullying from
higher ranks. There was plenty of peer bullying - the weakest did,
unfortunately, tend to get picked on, but not to the extend that regularly
appears in the papers these days - more of a piss take really than any
actual physical violence. 

I do now recall one instance of 'bullying', although the actual act was
according to 'Ships Regulations'. During our first six weeks, we were
messed in an annexe to Ganges, where, I was told later, the purpose was
to 'break you down' and 'build you back up again as a Naval Rating'. This
involved an initially harsh regime, which included the following
punishment: A lad in the bunk next to mine had been getting plenty of
flack from the mess Chief Petty Officer because of the state of his kit.
We had regular 'kit Musters' where every item of kit had to be laid out
on the bunk, folded to 'ship's book size' and pressed. Boots had to
be gleaming etc. etc. This day, this lad had had all his kit thrown
out the window by the CPO and told to present it for inspection again
in 1 hour. This he did, but not to the satisfaction of the CPO, who threw
it out of the window again amidst much shouting and screaming and said he'd
be back in another hour. An hour later he came back, more screaming and
shouting and this time the lad, who by now was in tears, could take it no
more and told the CPO to fuck off! At this, the CPO told him to stand to
attention by his bunk and stormed off, to return about 15 minutes later
with one of the ships doctors carrying a beaker of what looked like
(and was) detergent. He then ordered us to hold the lad down on his bed
whilst he forced the mixture down his throat. Within 10 minutes, the
lad was violently ill, and remained so for the rest of the morning.
It was another 24 hours before he was able to eat, and in that time he
had to muster his kit at the guardroom (I can't remember the naval term
for it) at 18.00, 21.00 and 0600, for inspection.

Okay, no long term harm was done, the lad wasn't really physically abused -
in the sense of being beaten up etc., but, to us, it seemed horrifying.
We realised then, that we were, to all intents and purposes, at their
mercy and they could really do whatever they liked.

Nothing like this occurred again, but the effect of it stayed with us
for a long time afterward, as I'm sure it was meant to do.


Dave
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
------ Dave Parry  ICL, Bracknell, Berks, UK | "Send more paramedics.."--
------ email = dvp@oasis.icl.co.uk           | 
------------------------------------------------------------------------