At a Military Base

Reykjavik. I am staying with a family whose daughter works on the American military base. Yesterday, when I asked her how I could enter the base, she shrugged her shoulders and said. “It’s impossible, Dada. Unless you’ve got special permission.”

“Then how do you get in?”

“I take the staff bus.”

This morning at 7:00 I donned civilian clothes and walked alone to an unmarked bus-stop. When the bus came, I boarded; no one asked for either identification or fare. I suppose the driver and employees were too sleepy to notice me.

The bus cleared the check-point at the main gate of the military complex.

Inside the base, it made a number of stops, dropped off passengers, and negotiated two more security posts. At its final stop, deep within this strange land within a strange land (treeless Iceland itself reminds me of nothing short of the moon), I stepped down.

I looked around, wondering where I might find my destination. Picking the area where the buildings were packed together most densely, I maneuvered between jeeps, top brass and sentries. Perhaps because I walked as if I knew where I was going, no one questioned me.

When I had sufficiently penetrated the maze of match-box wooden structures and concrete cubes, the moment for my biggest gamble arrived. I approached a passing officer.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Yes, sir. How can I help you?”

“I’m a bit lost. Can you tell me where the anti-insurgency training section is?” I asked, wondering if there was any such place. “Who did you want to meet there?” he asked. Beautiful! “The chief training officer,” I said.

“The man dealing with that material has an office not far from here. Let me have a look at your pass to make sure you won’t have any problems accessing the area.”

Without hesitation, simply depending on Baba, I said, “I don’t have any pass.”

“What? Then how did you get onto the base?”

“I just walked here, and no one stopped me.”

“Astonishing! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! Excuse me, sir, but can I know your purpose?”

“I’m a social worker, and I have an interest in developing a course to discipline my staff. I think there’s much to learn from military discipline.”

He looked at me intently. “Excuse me for saying, sir, but you look a bit like Jesus Christ.”

“Many people say that…”

“You entered without a pass! I can’t get over it. Well, perhaps there’s a special force behind your work. Let’s go to my office. I’ll issue you a pass myself.”

After completing the formalities, he telephoned the training section and arranged a jeep to take me there. When I got down from the jeep, a soldier met me, saying, “Come this way, sir.”

He led me to the office of a man introduced as a two-star general.

“Sir, in what way can I be of service to you?” the general asked

“I’m responsible for training social workers,” I said. “In my experience I’ve found 2 qualities missing in many of our cadre.

1. I want my men to be systematic and to move together as a disciplined work force.

I want to help them kill whatever tendencies they have toward disorder. Each of them should develop the ability to both lead and follow.

2. I’d like them to acquire some of the qualities of guerrilla warriors

As you know better than I, the revolutionary army’s make-up is different from that of regular troops suited for conventional warfare. Regular troops are usually drafted or primarily interested in the economic and social benefits of working in the army. Guerrilla soldiers, on the other hand, receive minimal pay. They mix with the general population, breathing in and out the problems of the common people. They face constant temptation to give up their fight and return to the security of normal life. So they must be fully aware, ideological, self- willed, creative and, above all, inspired.”

“… Mr Jackson. Really impressed, both with your straight-forwardness and with your sincere intentions. And I do understand. Yes, indeed I do. You’ve put your finger on one of the labyrinthine problems of the military forces—how to encourage fighting zeal and individual initiative, while at the same time maintaining strict lines of order and discipline. Yes, I’m sympathetic and will try my best to help you. Yours is a truly novel approach to social work. Can you wait here a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

When he came back, he had a two-foot pile of books in his hands. We spoke a bit more, he praised me again, and ordered a jeep to return me to the main gate. From there I took a taxi. Once inside the cab I started looking through the titles of the books he had given me.

Great! I thought. Books on discipline, morale, understanding guerrilla warfare, physical training, collective psychology—perfect. But what’s this? He must have become over-enthusiastic when I said I wanted to help our cadres kill their undisciplined habits—he included a book titled Rifle Training.