Guard Duty

It was 3 AM when Victor’s alarm woke him. He slid out of his sleeping bag and into his uniform. He was groggy and tired, taking his time to lace up his boots. The bland, yellow light from the room kept his eyes half open. The guard’s quarters had a sterile stench that did little to improve Victor’s mood. He went to the hallway that was on the side, grabbed his vest and rifle, adjusted his beret in the mirror, and then informed the commander of the guard that he was starting his shift.
 “Private Bergeron is already in the guard box, hurry up,” the commander gruffed.
 “Sir.”
 Walking out of the guardhouse and being met with the cool Alpine air helped Victor feel more alert. He paused for a moment and took in a deep breath. He made the 150 metre walk over to the entrance control of the barracks in about a min. The entrance control building was a small structure with darkened windows all around. When you got up close enough you could see through the glass but from afar it was hard to see what was going on inside. They building was colloquially called the EC box or guard box. It controlled the main gates into the building and it was his duty to guard it during the weekend. A whole company of soldiers to choose from and he just so happened to be chosen for guard duty that weekend. Why him? He wished someone else was in his stead so he could have gotten leave that weekend.
 He tapped his badge on the door’s electronic lock and entered. Pvt. Bergeron was indeed there, along with the two soldiers he was relieving, Pvt. Foch and Pvt. Zarlenga.
 “About time,” Zarlenga teased.
 “Yeah, yeah. Anything happen during the day?” Victor asked.
 “No, nothing really… Oh! There was a strange car that showed up and idled outside the gate for a while. Foch spoke to the driver.”
 “Yeah, he said got lost and was just looking at a map where to go,” Foch said, “but the strange thing was that he had a license plate from Cembra.”
 “Why is that strange?” Victor asked, “I’m not too familiar with that province.”
 “They kinda tax the shit out of cars over there, so you usually only see tourists with those license plates,” Bergeron clarified.
 “I see… Yeah, that’s pretty weird. Anything happen after that?”
 Zarlenga shrugged. “Not much. We wrote down the plates in the CJ and that was that. Up to the commanders if they want to do anything with it.”
 “Anyway, see you guys later. Don’t let the trees run away,” Foch said as Zarlenga and he left.
 Victor propped his rifle against the wall and took up his post on the old chair in front of the desk. It was covered in call kinds of scribbles from past soldiers who had spent many an hour in the EC box. ‘There is no concept of time in the EC box’ wrote one soldier. Nothing had rung more true to Victor. He grabbed one of the brain teaser books but it had been mostly filled out. The puzzles that weren’t solved were too difficult; although he had nothing better to do, he felt too lazy to solve them. In resignation, he tossed the puzzle book to the side and let his head hang back in boredom.
 “Man, why did we have to get selected for this,” bemoaned Victor.
 “Well, someone’s gotta do it,” replied Bergeron.
 “Mmm. Why do we even have to do military service, though? It feels so archaic.”
 “It’s tradition.”
 “Right… I mean… like, where does the tradition come from? Who’s gonna attack us? The Elbonians?”
 Bergeron thought for a second. “They might. Maybe not today or tomorrow, who knows what will happen in the future. It’s better to be prepared. The best offence is a good defence—and all that crap.”
 “True, but in the meantime it feels pretty useless. We’re just wasting time sitting in this box doing jack all. Nothing ever happens,” Victor said.
 “Haha, complaining about it isn’t going to change anything. It’s all about how you look at it. You can complain or try and look at it in a positive way.”
 “I fail to see how us sitting here, guarding the barracks, at 3am is in any way shape or form positive.”
 “Well, I guess you got me there; but again, I’ll just tell you it’s tradition. And in the event of an actual war, you’d need guys like us keeping a lookout on stuff.”
 “There you go again with the tradition. It’s not like this is a Christmas-like tradition,” Victor said.
 “No it’s not, and it doesn’t need to be something like. That’s a bit surface level. Alright, okay… doing this isn’t really cool and is just a waste in a way, but at least it’s something every twenty-year-old in this country does, so it’s certainly a shared experience.”
 “Other countries do the same thing and it doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal to them, or part of their culture.”
 “They’re not like us, we chose to make it a part of culture. That’s the difference,” Bergeron said very matter-of-factly.
 “But it’s always men, too! You notice that? Why is it us?”
 “It must be that male privilege women always talk about,” Bergeron said with a smirk starting to break out on his face.
 “I’m going to shoot you,” Victor said while trying to hold himself back from laughing.
 “Haha! Yeah…”
 “I know you’re gonna say something like ‘men are built for war’ but I’d challenge you on that.”
 “What do you mean?” asked Bergeron.
 “Okay, you know how men have always done the majority of fighting ever, right?”
 “Yeah.”
 “Right, so what if we’ve all just been lied to this whole time? You hear people say things like ‘it is manly to go off to war and die’ or ‘you are not a real man unless you kill someone in war’. But what if all that is just a lie?”
 “That’s kinda extreme, I don’t know anyone who says that,” replied Bergeron.
 “Fine, but you know what I mean, right? This kind of macho mentality. What I’m trying to get at is what if this is just something used by the guys in charge to manipulate us. Think about it. Back in the caveman days the chief probably convinced a bunch of guys that they need to go off and fight and die for the tribe, and if they didn’t do that they weren’t really men.”
 “Okay, I see your point. Give me a second to thing about it.” And Bergeron pondered it for a minute before replying. “That could be true, or could be false, we don’t really know. Yeah, maybe others use that to control us, but it could simultaneously be true that it does make us less of a man.”
 “Elaborate.” Victor’s interest was piqued.
 “Maybe the chief of the tribe noticed that men who didn’t do any fighting were ‘directionless’, if you’ll permit me the term, and by that I mean they didn’t seem to be active or want to contribute to the tribe. However, the men who did go off and prove themselves from hunting or killing some enemy tribe did better in terms of their contributions to the tribe outside of those immediate things I just mentioned. So the chief puts two and two together and realizes that men need that drive. Does that make sense?”
 “Yeah, that makes sense, so it’s certainly plausible. It could also be the case that the chief did this to get rid of other males who potentially could challenge his rule. Do you think that’s maybe where this idea, this meme, that men have a secret–or explicit, for that matter–desire to die heroically in battle comes from? I’d argue the same as my previous point, that this has been instilled into us by others in order to control us,” Victor argued back.
 “I think at one point that might have been true. Now I would say that it has become a part of men, a natural instinct that’s been bread into us over successive generations.”
 “How can that be? It’s not like it’s an actual instinct.”
 “I don’t know… It could be. I’m sure this it’s possible to inherit this stuff. Some people seem to take after their parents, like their temperament, so maybe this same kind of thing was passed down until it become a permanent genetic component of our DNA,” Bergeron said, but he didn’t sound sure of himself.
 “I have a hard time believing that. That feels like something so intangible…”
 “Well, how do birds know to fly south for the winter? Maybe it’s something similar.”
 “I suppose that could be the case. I’d have to ask some evolutionary psychologists about that.”
 “Anyway, do you mind if I take a nap for a little while? Bergeron asked. “We still have a long shift until we’re relieved. You can wake me up in a few hours and then I’ll cover for you.”
 “Sure, man. Goodnight.”
 “Goodnight.”