Friday 10 February 2006

How to get out of Norwegian military service

Wednesday night is wine and cheese night at the hostel. We all love it 'cos it means that
A. We get free food
B. We get free wine
C. It always turns into a bit of a party.

One of the many pissed up conversations had during the night was about National Service - sounds like a shit topic eh? Well it was until the Norwegians chipped in with stories of how their fellow conscripts managed to worm their way out of it and get sent home a few weeks into training - by wetting the bed.

Apparently The Norwegian Army does not like bed wetters and if you can convince your commanding officer that you have chronic nocturnal enuresis you are promptly excused from basic training and sent home to Mummy and your plastic under sheet.

Unfortunately for new recruits the Officers have cottoned on to the fact that the new recruits use bed wetting as an excuse to get out of military service and have devised a number of cunning ways to catch people out.

The story goes that there was once a conscript who determinedly wet the bed every night until he was excused from service and sent home. The Army even bought him an overnight train ticket back to his home in the Far North of Norway. But, unknown to him an Officer was also traveling on the train, with the sole purpose of catching him out. So when in the morning the officer checked the boys bunk and found it bone dry the lad was promptly marched back to camp to complete his training.

This being an effective but somewhat costly and time consuming method of detection the Officers now more commonly administer sleeping pills to the soldier in question, thus determining if he's genuinely loosing bladder control in his sleep or doing it on purpose while awake. However, this does not deter those guys most determined to get out. The answer to this problem I was reliably informed is to get your mate to wee on you in the middle of the night.

Quite frankly if someone is that desperate to avoid military service I think they deserve to be let off.

2 comments:

  1. Surely a bit of random drug taking would be much more effective - and maybe fun?

    ReplyDelete