In 1886, one hundred and thirty-nine years ago, Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was published. In his book, Stevenson explored the idea that most people, especially men, have competing impulses within them: Good vs Evil, Truth vs Lies, Love vs Hate and Friendliness vs Aggression.
Stevenson’s book depicted the kind and caring Jekyll drinking a special potion and changing into the inhumane and violent Hyde. At the start Dr. Jekyll, who’d developed the concoction, can control his conversions into Mr. Hyde. Later, however, he begins to lose control, and the transformations increasingly happen in an involuntary manner.
The Jekyll & Hyde of Soldiering
Perhaps, the potion Dr. Jekyll took acts in a similar way to army training? After all, many family members often comment how a spell in the army has changed their son, husband, father etc. – ‘It’s made a man of him’, they often say. They usually regard this as a good thing, but can start to question it, if they experience the sudden turn-ons to violence many veterans return with, especially after serving in conflicts.
Military training is designed to mould squaddies into the Army’s way of thinking and sense of purpose – and ensure the recruits bond with their fellow soldiers. Surgeon Commander Morgan O’Connell, then a Navy psychiatrist just back from the Falklands War, explained the process to the Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee:
“Yes, we indoctrinate them in the forces. Otherwise, they wouldn’t fight. That’s why we cut their hair the same, make them wear the same uniform, make the same salute, and march together. We indoctrinate them in order to enhance group cohesiveness. That’s how you get people to fight.” [Guardian, 1st Nov. 1982]
Seeing Red
Army training and indoctrination is also intended to replace ‘civvy softness’ with ‘military toughness’, to produce soldiers who will kill, or die, when ordered to do so. Frank Percy Crozier, who became known as a WW1 ‘war-dog’ front-line army commander, later wrote about the combat training of his battalion. Describing the British soldier as ‘a kindly fellow’ he then added ‘it is necessary to corrode his mentality’ and Crozier went on to describe the part indoctrination and training took in this process:
“I, for my part, do what I can to alter completely the outlook, bearing and mentality of over 1,000 men… Blood lust is taught for the purpose of war, in bayonet fighting itself and by doping their minds with all propagandic poison. The German atrocities (many of which I doubt in secret), the employment of gas in action, the violation of French women, the ‘official murder’ of Nurse Cavell, all help to bring out the brute-like bestiality which is necessary for victory. The process of ‘seeing red’ which has to be carefully cultured if the effect is to be lasting, is elaborately grafted into the make-up of even the meek and mild … The Christian churches are the finest ‘blood lust’ creators which we have, and of them we must make full use.” [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by F. P. Crozier, Cape 1930]
This training was accompanied by a propaganda campaign in all the country that turned the Germans from friendly neighbours into ‘brutal Huns’. Stereotyping of enemies – ‘the other’ – has continued and increased in our own time. With ‘gooks’ in the Vietnam War, ‘micks’, or ‘paddies’, in Northern Ireland and ‘ragheads’ in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Warrior-Janissaries
In modern conflicts, some soldiers, intensely trained and indoctrinated for tours-of-duty often became hyped-up, aggressive time-bombs – ready to explode at any minute. In his book, Shoot To Kill, Michael Asher outlines his experiences in the Parachute Regiment. In graphic detail he wrote about his tours of duty in Northern Ireland and described how some Paras were affected by the extremes that training, conditioning and alienation brought out:
“One group of soldiers would hold so- called ‘gunge’ contests. They sat round in a circle and tried to outdo each other in acts of gross obscenity, like eating shit and drinking urine. During house searches they vented their anger on their victims, smashing down doors and breaking up furniture, kicking and rifle-butting anyone who resisted, making lewd suggestions to the women of the house and threatening the children.” [Shoot To Kill – A soldier’s journey through violence, by Michael Asher, Penguin Books 1991]
Throughout the period of this conflict and just before their tours of duty, soldiers were given an increasingly more intensive period of ‘upped-training’. This occurred inside ‘Tin City’ mock-ups of an Irish estate, which were built at army base-areas in Britain and across the world. First known as IS (Internal Security) training, the drills at these locations later became known as NITAT (Northern Ireland Training Advisory Team) training and many veterans have vivid memories of their times there. In his book Asher depicted how this type of training and the circumstances of their tours-of-duty had turned them into ‘savages’:
War In Angola
Probably, the worst thing you can do as a civvy is to go out and kill another human being. A soldier, however, is trained to kill – and is expected to do so quickly and effectively. Costas Georgiou was a soldier who excelled at this, both before and after he became a mercenary known as ‘Colonel Callan’. Using that name, he came to world attention, when, on 10th July 1976, four mercenaries, who had fought for armed opposition groups in Angola, were tried, found guilty and executed by a government firing squad.
The civil war in Angola happened a few decades after World War 2 and occurred during the global ‘Cold War’ period. Then, there were many ‘proxy wars’, and after the country won its independence, rebel groups in Angola were armed by the CIA and backed by the US, UK, the then apartheid South Africa and Western business interests. While Angola’s Government forces fought them with the help of Russian tanks and Cuban soldiers.
Within a few years most of the mercenaries were rounded up and imprisoned – or shot by Angolan Government firing squads. Three of the executed men, Costas Georgiou (Colonel Callan), Derek ‘Brummie’ Barker and Andy McKenzie were
former members of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment and veterans of the Northern Ireland conflict. The fourth man, Daniel Gearhart, was a US ex-Special Forces Vietnam veteran.
The John Wayne Syndrome
Costas Georgiou came from a family in the large Greek Cypriot community in north London and before he joined the British Army he had been described as: ‘A quiet, introspective youth’. During Georgiou’s initial army training, as experienced NCOs hammered the recruits into line, he responded resolutely and threw off his quiet, introspective side:
“Once in the army… a more aggressive side to his character emerged. He seemedndetermined to prove himself the best soldier in the entire British Army. And, for a time, he came close to achieving his ambition: during training at Aldershot, he picked up awards as best machine-gunner, best Self-Loading Rifle shot and best al- round recruit in the camp. Not content with this, he became a fitness fanatic, soon excelling at the physical side of army training.”
[Fire Power, by Chris Dempster and Dave Tomkins, Corgi 1978]
Costas Georgiou responded in kind to his training and adopted a hard persona:
“He went out of his way to develop a tougher, more aggressive image than anyone else in his unit. He spent hours in front of a mirror, perfecting the toughest, meanest scowl he could devise. When off duty he adopted a solid, swaggering walk that John Wayne might have been proud of. Such stunts were crude, but they paid off – his officers took notice of him. Of all the men in his regiment, Georgiou was the one chosen for the prestigious position of bodyguard to his Commanding Officer in Northern Ireland.”
[Fire Power, by Chris Dempster and Dave Tomkins, Corgi 1978]
From Costas Georgiou to Colonel Callan
While serving in Northern Ireland, Costas Georgiou had received a dishonourable discharge and a prison sentence in a civvy jail for an attempted Post Office robbery. He arrived in Angola a few years later as Colonel Callan, a name he’d taken from a ‘tough-guy’ TV character.
Georgiou, like most soldiers, joined the army at a young age, and the military, not having access to Dr. Jekyll’s potion to unleash his blood lust, relied on their tried and trusted training programmes instead:
“The shock of the first couple of days was intentionally brutal… in a system of basic training designed to suppress individuality, restrict freedom in every possible way, install instinctive obedience without a question of any kind, increase physical fitness, and generally so depress the conscript into a common mould that he would instantly serve the force’s purposes in anything that it asked him to do: to the point of killing fellow human beings, or of offering himself to be killed. The forces had learnt how to train men quickly and intensively in the Second World War; the absolute necessity of training them to this zombie-like state had been taught in the trenches of the First, when an order over the top to almost certain death had to be obeyed instinctively or it would not have been obeyed at all.”
[All Bull: The National Servicemen, from the introduction by B S Johnson, Quartet Books 1973]
Around one hundred-and-ten years ago, it was training like this, combined with indoctrination, that produced the ‘brute- like’ soldiers for Frank Percy Crozier’s ‘Great War’ battalion – and for many more conflicts since. Over fifty years ago, it was training and indoctrination, combined with a tour-of-duty in Northern Ireland, that
changed Costas Georgiou into Colonel Callan and made him a good and efficient killer. And, as he walked out to face his firing squad, he had ‘MADE IN THE BRITISH ARMY’ stamped all over him.
So, what had changed the quiet Georgiou into the brutal Callan? If army training is designed to dredge up hate and aggression in recruits in order to turn them into efficient killers, perhaps, it does do what Dr. Jekyll’s potion did to produce Mr. Hyde? As well as tough and brutal training, Paras are encouraged to regard themselves as superior to other soldiers, whom they scornfully call ‘craphats’. But, if military training draws out the negative qualities in
recruits, like hate and aggression, to make good and efficient soldiers, does the MoD not have some responsibility to help turn them back to more positive qualities, when they go back to Civvy Street?
Conclusion
It is certainly true that, after conflicts, some veterans back in Civvy Street struggle to retain the Jekyll part of their old selves, but find the Hyde part keeps turning up instead. Some may even be proud of what their army training has turned them into. As a fellow veteran viewing the case of ‘Colonel Callan’, however, all I feel is anger and sadness – mainly, for his victims in Ireland and Angola, but also, for the loss of that ‘quiet, introspective youth’, the pre-army Costas Georgiou.
