As you may or may not know, one of our senior players Alkis Voliotis is currently on an enforced leave of absence while he does his National Service in Greece. He has been sending updates which I will post here for you all to enjoy….
MISSIVE FROM A ROOKIE #1
Dear all,
My warmest greetings to everyone, I hope all is well,
It has been a while since I left London so I though it is high time I wrote something regarding my first experiences with the Greek army.
I am writing from Athens where I have come to spend a five-day (mandatory) leave from the army training centre in Kalamata , Southern Peloponnese. For the first two weeks and until we took the oath last Saturday we weren’t allowed out of the base so now it feels really good to be out in the “real” world again – it doesn’t take long to forget that there is a different world outside the army where people wear normal clothes and shoes, food is not served in metal trays with dips and where permission to visit the loo is not required (and no one will come looking for you there if you take too long!). At least the base is built on a hill which gives great view to the town and the bay below; this is more consoling that I had originally imagined, as it makes you feel less isolated.
The first two weeks in the training centre are customarily used for acclimatization to the peculiarities of the military life: the fact that you have to salute and obey anyone with at least one star on their lapel, even if they are 5-6 years younger than you, to wave goodbye to any notion of privacy awake or asleep, to become hardened against the Dolby surround of orchestrated snoring in the dorm and to appreciate the olfactory delights of army boots. On the bright side I have already made good friends and I have found interesting people to talk to. And dogs. There is a dog in the base – formerly stray but now one of the most well fed and protected dogs in the country for sure – who’s name is General Stelios and he is the most senior “person” in the base., at least 10 years old and with huge people management experience. Everyone respects him and in return he howls every time the bugle sounds (reveille, raising and lowering of the flag, lights out). The army provides endless opportunities for amusement….
Physical training is practically non existent, for the moment at least, besides the fact that we drop and take push ups under every possible excuse. There is an obsolete outdoors gym but to my question whether we can use it during free time I was told that it is allowed only under the supervision of a doctor and an officer(!) (the same for jogging) – apparently everyone is horrified by the bureaucracy in case one of us gets injured. So I assume in case of a war (touch wood) we will definitely beat the enemy in push ups but we will get injured the moment we try anything else!
We only start training on arms and the rest of our military kit this Friday so for the last two weeks we were basically drilled…in parading, endless at ease – attention transitions, and general military protocol (it takes a while to coordinate the right hand and left foot to salute and to spot officers in time to salute and from a safe distance). Thus my only weapon until now has been my….cutlery and my biggest enemy my army boots. Seriously, I had to sign for and receive a fork and a spoon which I have to carry around with me all the time – if someone forgets his the whole company (~200 people) has to wait for him to fetch them – there is always the chance of a surprise lunch or dinner ambush I guess, one has to be prepared. The army boots are stubbornly hard and it will take a lot of overnight waxing for the leather to soften…
Due to age and experience I have been given some advanced tasks and responsibilities which, for the moment at least, have allowed me to keep clear from the mountain “Potato”(but all other chores are shared equally – the most dreaded being the visit to the resort “toilets”).
Overall, I have been quite fortunate with my division as I have been assigned to the Signal Corps where the average age and educational level of most people in my intake are quite high. I share a dorm with 16 others (the ones in the attached photo – oath taking day – a bit of lunging always helps), seven of us are over the age of 27, and generally most people have at least a degree in some technical discipline. The other night I had to guard….the toilets with a dorm mate who has just finished his PhD in orthopaedic mechanics.
Rumor has it that my specialization within Signal Corps will be that of Operator of Means of Electronic War (seems exciting but as it usually happens,it will probably be something reversely glamorous to how it sounds) and I will be sent to the town of Larissa for one-month training. After the specialization training is over I will most likely be sent to an island in south eastern Aegean ( Rhodes or Kos…) for about five months. I will keep you posted in case anyone fancies visiting me there. Unfortunately I won’t be able to offer the luxury of army bank beds and gourmet army cuisine but there is a chance that I will rent a room in a village to sleep on nights off duty. All the above of course contain a fair amount of speculation and hearsay and I won’t be certain until I actually hold the transfer document in my hands – I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually ended up somewhere near in the northern Greek-Turkish borders!
Although it is still very early days (i.e. I haven’t rolled the dice many times yet) I can already testify that the army board game from the last newsletter is more or less faithful to reality.
Stay tuned….
Regards,
Alkis
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