Raubvogel: You develop skin boils after a week?! Must be something in your genetic code, because we went as long as a month without a shower and I never heard anyone complain of skin boils.
Fortunately, I personally did not. Being overactive child I had an inordinate amount of scraps and cuts compounded by dirt. I was also into mountain-climbing and hiking which is the closest civilian thing to the army life. Or maybe due to my genetic code.
But most of my comrades did devellop bad sores and boils - especially in the first months of cervice.
...we went as long as a month without a shower and I never heard anyone complain of skin boils.
Which is understandable. The tendency to develop skin boils, infections and other immune problems is triggered by change in habits, environment and stress but it is greatly determined by nutrition. The better-fed a recruit was before service, the worse he tended to suffer in the first few months.
Good food is greatly preferable to clean living.
Being forced to endure food and hygiene hardship because of poor logistic support has nothing to do toughness.
Being forced to endure hardship certainly has nothing to do with toughness.
Being able to survive being forced to endure hardship has everything to do with toughness.
Do you really think that makes those troops any "tougher?"
Mostly it just insures that those troops are tougher - though considerable amount of toughening does happen to those capable to survive the initial hardship.
Imagine the whole bunch of young guys being thrown into a forest in sub-zero weather in wet clothes, without time or chance to sleep for days and with scarce and inferior food. How many of the regular US army grunts - not special forces - would not fall appart? Precious few. Among soviet grunts with more than 6 months of service it was nothing to write home about.
To me it just means they were forced to endure unnecessary morale-lowering conditions. Just my 2 cents.
Unnecessary? That depends. If you want a guy to be ready to give his life for something he does not understand and be a vicious killer as well, you are much better making his life hell than plying him with orange juice and facials.
We are talking about the draft army here, remember - something the US may yet experience. There was much less "moral decay" and disciplinary incidents among troops having the easy life than among those living in hellish conditions.
They were definitely of much better use in Afghanistan.
The technological superiority is great but when you need to put some troops with rifles on the ground, there may be not enough special forces guys to go around and the regular undertrained and pampered army grunts may be worth less than people were led to expect.
miko
