[jambutty]

Knowing that you can up and leave when you want gives them an edge over the real thing.

However as far as the real thing is concerned there were no kicking ten bells out of a recruit in the Navy Tinkerbelle. They had much nastier ways of bringing people into line. Like running twice around the parade ground (about a mile) with a Lee Enfield .303 rifle at the slope. As you ran the rifle bounced up and down on your shoulder and if your collarbone didn’t take a pounding, which it did, your shoulder got very, very sore. Clever people, if they were right handed, would slope the rifle on their left shoulder so that when it came to rifle shooting the butt wouldn’t be slamming into an already very sore shoulder. The less cruel GI’s (Gunnery Instructors) would make a non-conforming sailor hold the rifle at arms length above the head and go for a run around the parade ground until told to stop. The GI often forgot the pour soul staggering around until someone plucked up enough nerve to remind him.

However we did have some lighter moments on parade like when one of our class (platoon) was a few minutes late for his first parade.
“Where’ve you been” roared the Chief GI his face getting redder and redder and the veins standing out on his temple as if they would burst “you should have fallen in five minutes ago.”
“Why what happened” came the innocent reply.
The Chief GI practically exploded but saw the funny side of the remark and calmed down.

Misbehaviour when not on the parade ground would mean donning a respirator (gas mask) and going for a run over the earth shelters, about 20 of them – there and back. You can only just breath normally in the old style gas mask so imagine what it was like when you ran and wanted huge gulps of air that wasn’t there. One dose of that torture was enough to convince me and others that misbehaving was not an option.

There was a time back in the forties and fifties harwood_red where the alternative to being sent to Borstal was joining the army. Nowadays they don’t want criminals but people who can be taught a proper trade and how to be a British Soldier, Sailor or Airman.

I doubt if a spell of National Service would do the yobbos any good. All they had to do was to practice civil disobedience and refuse to do what they were told and that would be that. They couldn’t be forced to do anything by force. The only option open would be to throw them out after a suitable time in chokey.