Soldier Box by Joe Glenton

Author:Joe Glenton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I had been to Australia before but never to Sydney. Walking through customs was movie-scene tense. I had managed to obtain a visa with unexpected ease. I’d gone online and ticked a few boxes – the only question which had been a concern was the one which asked if I’d ever been in a military force or been trained in weaponry or explosives. I clicked no. The visa came through within a few days. I’d heard that Australia had an immigration policy like Nazi Germany, but I suppose I was white and English-speaking and had not come on a boat. I checked into a hostel in the red-light district.

Dan had put me in touch with some people in Australia, including a girl named Clare. We met after a few weeks and we drank the terrible Australian beer which tasted only of cold. It turned out she was on the run too, in a sense, having moved out for a fresh start. She worked in the legal profession, which I thought might prove useful. More importantly, she was good company. After a few weeks, I told her my story. She got it, but the military system sounds so ludicrous to civilians. She couldn’t understand why they would make you go if you were opposed to it. She compared it to having a job out in the real world and being asked to do something you didn’t agree with – you’d leave. Why would they want to hold on to people who no longer believed in what they are being told to do? She was right. Why would you want to take someone with you who had objections? I guess that’s why the military are always parroting lines like ‘mine is but to do and die’. Well, fuck Tennyson.

I still didn’t have a solid plan. I still kept my distance from people and found it hard to engage. They would ask me about the army and I would deflect their questions. I really didn’t want to talk about it. I was in a difficult position because although I was aware of the shortcomings in the system I maintained my sense of loyalty to my mates. I didn’t try to contact them because they might have gotten in trouble if it was found out.

During my time in Australia I was in limbo. I carried my secrets quietly but they were a burden. It is uncomfortable to view yourself as a deserter and sometimes I did just that. Of course, the truth was that I was only a deserter according to a set of one-dimensional rules that had been tailored by the other party to suit them. The military had done its job of indoctrination well, but not so well that I couldn’t unpick it. The army has its traditions and I had found diverging ones, much like the deserters and draft dodgers who had fled to Canada and Sweden in years past, only I had ended up here. The modern United States is in part built by draft dodgers who fled imperialist wars in Europe.

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