Australian Army Journal

OPINION
On the Culture of the Australian Army
Love
This may seem a strange one to include. 41 Let’s get the inevitable out of the way:
I’m talking about the ‘It’s about the men next to you, and that’s it. That’s all it is’,
speech from Black Hawk Down. 42 That kind of love.
This is hardly the first time this has been identified in popular culture. For a longer,
more detailed exposition, read Maclean’s HMS Ulysses. 43
In Australia the term mateship is popular. It could be substituted for love in this
context, for soldiers rapidly form close bonds when they are thrown together by the
Army. It’s not a question of personal friendship or likeability, it’s a survival instinct,
a way of managing the turmoil and uncertainty of army life.
Soldiers on operations depend completely on one another for their success and
their safety. This has long been the case, and the Army has learned to include
it deliberately in training. The team is everything; individuality is sacrificed to it
(this is one of the cultural features quite distinct from most contemporary social
norms protected by the Army’s insularity).
This, sadly but logically, leads to many of the unfortunate and sometimes downright
unacceptable incidents that plague the Army. Soldiers quickly identify those who
are unable or unwilling to submerge themselves fully in the team. These individuals
are ruthlessly cast out from the pack, usually with the object of creating such
discomfort that the unwanted individual leaves the vicinity, the team, the unit and,
ultimately the Army, entirely.
That is the general intention, at least in cases not motivated by simple thuggish
brutality. Unfortunately, not all soldiers are sufficiently discerning judges to
appropriately suggest to a peer that he or she might do better elsewhere.
Plenty of problems have begun that way that might well have been avoided. 44
So the love is that of proud creatures who have earned their place. Once an
individual is well on the road to full membership of the team, people will share
their last mouthful of water and carry one another on their backs like Frodo
and Samwise struggling towards Mount Doom. 45 But before that point, acts of
compassion and generosity are determined by the individual kindness or otherwise
of the soldiers concerned.
This love is strange. We see the condition that it is shared with those belonging to
the team and not necessarily outside it. But even stranger is the soldier’s facility for
dissolving and re-forming new teams, complete with the strong bonds of love.
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 236