Alcohol And The Soldier

Anshruta Banerjee 
SYBA 2019

At the carnival in a small Spanish town in 1491, a woman called Garcia fried some traditional pastries using pork lard. She offered one of them to Marina but she politely declined. A few years later Marina found herself accused of heresy by the Spanish govt. and was put on trial for secretly practicing Judaism. Included in the evidence was Garcia’s story about how Marina had once turned down a pastry.

Throughout history food and drinks have been beyond than just feeding ourselves. ‘Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are’ - goes the French aphorism.  Are we really what we eat? Well in a way, yes.

 Abstract: Alcohol has been associated with armed forces for centuries, with many iconic historical blunders and victories being attributed to it. Through this article I attempt to anthropologically delve into this attribute of the defence lifestyle. I present an emic perspective, and understand fully that alcohol consumption is a mere strain of the entirety of the military culture. I only write from my lived experience of 19 years in the Indian Navy starting from the year 2000.

Everybody recalls Joseph Heller’s creative spoon of soldiers from Catch 22 who delve into some of humanity’s deepest and darkest trenches – drunk out of their minds. This fiction turned real when in 2017 thousands of whiskey and gin bottles were found at the remains of a WWI British army barrack in Israel.

It is unbelievable to outsiders that from the day I developed an understanding of the world around me, I’d been exposed to – Liquor, Liquor and more Liquor (with an occasional pack of cigarettes thrown in). My world is full of alcohol- not a single meal can go without it- at home, mess or a club. All sorts of it are available- alcohol from overseas, from South India, from the rest of India, vintage wines, alcohol for non-drinkers, alcohol for people trying to quit and so forth. As far as I can stretch my memory back to, I was probably five to six years old, I remember my father falling on the streets after these grand dinner parties and his friends, almost equally sloshed helping him up. This was normal, and still very much is.

Yes, you guessed it, I belong to the military.

Defence forces, in India and abroad, historically and presently, possess a fascinating culture of drinking liquor that not a lot of people are aware of. The first point of interest is the difference of this system within the military itself in the ‘officer’ households vis a vis the ‘sailor’ ones. The former, a higher rank hierarchically treat it as a domestic experience and for the latter it’s more of a formal protocol. This is David E Harris’s idea of origin of people; there are different approaches to life by virtue of which household you’re brought up in. My narrative (as an A class officer’s daughter) of alcohol as a culture would be drastically different from that of a sailor’s daughter of the same age. This includes a distinction in terms of economic and cultural access/exposure to liquor due to the power distribution in the hierarchy. (The sailors don’t have lavish dinner parties, club access, due to lower economic prowess (no haute culture/education) - most families tend to be less “modern” and more tradition where in alcohol will be perceived as a “bad” thing rather than a social obligation.

Bordieu’s argument that creation of ‘cultural fields’ often take place at bodily levels is illustrated by the location of alcohol consumption. Rarely does one find a defence personnel getting sloshed at nightclub or a fancy bar, where most civilians do. No, they would get a drink either at their own defence clubs, military restaurants/bars or at home- no place that can be easily accessed by the civilians, because the difference needs to be maintained. This is Bordieu’s idea of social distanciation, drawing social boundaries between us, the servicemen and the rest by not socially drinking with them.

This distanciation is further reinforced by the kind of liquor – purchased at subsidized rates from the military canteen which again, cannot be accessed by a civilian. There is an earned sense of pride, for good purpose of course, when pouring from a bottle that reads “sold to defence personnel only”. Such is the reality of this reinforcement that when my mother got married to my father, then a young officer, my maternal grandparents were aghast that he had to get a drink every night as formal protocol. It was a huge shock for these pure Bengali Brahmins, for whom drinking was a practice as taboo as prostitution and the like.

Harris is correct in arguing that transformation of capital is relatively easier/natural for the traditional elite while others have to compromise and contradict to innovate their capital. Within this example, at 19 I know the nomenclature and composition of most cocktails/alcohol brands because I’ve been exposed to it which will act as a lifelong upper hand for me. In the services, categorizing alcohol consumption as ‘work’ or ‘leisure’ is impossible, e.g. an officer drinking with a higher ranked official in the evening – the fact that he would’ve drunk otherwise as well qualifies it for leisure, but the fact that its obligatory in this instance makes it protocol.

In my experience, it is only since the past decade that it has become the norm for women to drink alongside ‘servicemen’, their husbands in social settings where both are present. I would like to mention that I’ve had limited contact with a vast population of female defence personnel that exist, and thus wouldn’t comment on their behaviour. I’m considering wives (working and non-working) here. Earlier on, only the women that worked (mostly corporate jobs) used to request for a drink and the man in charge of the bar would utter a reassuring ‘of course sweetie’ in the tone of – she’s so progressive and I like it, because we, the service personnel are the most progressive of the lot. This bygone dynamic has changed drastically with factors like pop culture, more jobs, feminist movement etc. and presently the men wouldn’t touch their glasses till all the women have been served freshly made aromatic cocktails. Serving the women alcohol before the men is an act of chivalry now, in good purpose indeed.

It’s interesting to note that this unlimited access to alcohol applies all age groups within the community, except offsprings. This certainly has something to do with the ethic of hard work and responsibility so intrinsic to the military psyche- we can drink because we’ve earned it, our children can’t because they haven’t. These children are stopped being perceived as ‘children’ the day they start earning- from that day they can consume alcohol in the presence of their parents. However, due to liquor being an important part of the military household décor, adolescent deviancy kicks in faster as compared to civilian communities. Kids have easy access to huge amounts of liquor - it being right inside their living rooms, where in the risky underage ‘purchasing’ part can be omitted entirely.

Across the world, the traditional use of alcohol in military has been to cope with intense stress of war, to lift the soldier’s morale and aid social cohesion by preventing adjustment problems. It is perceived not only as a mark of respect for the ‘fellow servicemen’ with common identity, but also a social bond with them- something that can be trusted and never betrayed. This is the famous soldier brotherhood that my dad tells me about, he says that by virtue of their training, any serving personnel belonging of any rank in the hierarchy will be ready-has to be ready to give their life up for another personnel, just like that. I think that is incredible.

After 50+ years of serving, when families transition into the civilian life, this culture of excessive drinking turns out to be problematic – both for the men and their wives. They have to adjust in a society that perceives liquor to be ‘deviant’, certainly not an everyday business unless one is an unemployed slum dwelling man who drinks ‘tharra’ from the Desi Daru shop. It is a common site to see ex-servicemen coming back to canteens for subsidized rates, for shops in the civil sell too expensive, something we’re not used to.

A question that often pops up, in this discussion, is that do we then need to rid the services of this habit? No, not at all. How can one possibly transform an entire culture established over hundreds of years across so many national groups? Alcohol has played such a significant part in the service culture for so long that any attempted intervention will only take the form of a war of attrition.

 

References

1.     Davies, A. (1908). The Influence Of Alcohol In The Services. The British Medical Journal, 2(2484), 307-310. Retrieved January 26, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/25278602

2.     Berlien, I.C. (1944). Alcohol and the soldier. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 5, 405 – 412.

3.     PHILLIPS, R. (2014). Alcohol: A History. CHAPEL HILL: University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved January 26, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469617619_phillips