A little bit of time outside of the training field gives you strength, lets you feel like a civilian, and that means free. The army is trying to make you get used to a routine and discipline, but at first, this is a lost cause. In a month, one cannot achieve this; there is no way to break one’s will or to compensate for its absence. Eventually the soldiers do grow accustomed, of course. They make peace with the circumstances, become integrated into the system, become its part, though not an inherent part, and sometimes even redundant. They sit on the benches near their tent, smoke, tell jokes,
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