"As a soldier, you have accepted a solemn obligation to defend the ideals of freedom, justice, truth, and equality as found in The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Whether you are serving a single term or making a career of the military, your actions should never be contrary to the ideals and principles upon which this nation was founded."

- Department of the Army, Soldier's Handbook (62)

In February of 1991, Bravo Troop of the 5/15 Cavalry stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky Training Facility performed a ritualized, ceremonial examination of its new recruits. The recruits arose at four a.m. and marched till eight to arrive at a small, secluded building surrounded by forest. The recruits stood in a single-file line facing the entrance of the building, eyes forward, feet shoulder width apart, hands folded in the small of their back. Approximately one hundred and twenty recruits stood peering through the lenses of their protective masks, watching fifteen soldiers enter the building. Once inside the building, the fifteen recruits stood at attention, fingers cur

inapt body, the machine required [could] be constructed; posture [was] gradually corrected; a calculated constraint [ran] slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning silently the automatism of habit; in short, one...'got rid of the peasant' and '[gave] him the air of a soldier.'" (135)

b. On the command, "Order, arms," the soldier-

It should be noted that the separate actions of 'sling arms,' 'the hand salute,' and the 'position of attention' all have their own particular movements meticulously mapped out elsewhere in the Soldier's Handbook. As Foucault correctly notes, each minute act is broken down into its smallest element. All parts of a recruit's body are articulated and given a specific role to play in the combined exercise (151-2). Military regulations and a Drill Sergeant's obsessive attention to detail leaves the recruit's body no improvisational space, no chance for internal control. Drill and ceremony also subjects the recruit's body by imposing what Foucault refers to as a precise system of command (166).

A recruit's body must strictly conform to twenty-five pages worth of regulations that govern movement as part of formation (Department of the Army 25-55). Below I have included the directives for a simple maneuver as an example. I have chosen to include a simple set of actions, known as 'present arms/order arms', solely for the sake of brevity, as it appears in The Soldier's Handbook. Most procedures are certainly more complex:

Previously I mentioned that a 'smart' recruit kept a low profile by remaining hidden. There were few, if any, opportunities for subversion and one, if they meant to resist, was naturally inclined to philosophical resignation and simply biding one's time. This tactic of remaining hidden, I realize in retrospect, was, in many ways, nothing less than an illusion, a self-imposed form of surveillance, the calculated end result of the forces at work within this disciplinary space. By making a conscious attempt to remain hidden, one adopted docility and became an accomplice. At the time, there seemed no choice except docility; to deviate meant immediate punishment. If one decided to continually deviate, the potential of becoming a military prisoner or an inmate of Fort Knox' psychiatric ward existed. Despite the protection of stoic resignation, this self-imposed/ imposed docility was extremely painful psychologically; to be acted upon and not act for three months heralded a systematic 'quiet death' for each and every recruit. In essence, one became the ultimate object, which was, for me anyway, the true terror of boot camp.

Operating within enclosure, the first week of a recruit's life at Fort Knox is spent in a central processing area known as 'Reception.' The primary purpose of this space is to file more bureaucratic paperwork on the recruit and 'prepare' them for the permanent drill instructors that arrive to pick up their recruits once the processing is complete. Here the socialization process forces the civilian to emit the 'proper signs' of a new recruit. The recruit's head is then shaved and the civilian clothes are replaced with military issue uniforms. Although the recruit has, as of yet, no real conception of military bearing, the recruit is at least forced to emit the external signs .

These signs systematically work to displace the ego as the body of a new recruit begins its transformation into the clean canvass upon which the ideal of military bearing is written. Since the shaved head is particular only to the indoctrination process, it serves no real purpose other than a humiliating method of normalization; a humiliation that even the military prisoner escapes . Pride in one's former appearance is muted as the recruit's once familiar self-image is transformed. Shorn and placed in fatigues, the civilian body is reborn into strict uniformity with the rest of the group. Normali

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Approximate Word count = 5121
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page double spaced)