Does misery breed humor?

I was rereading Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield last night and I came across the passage below. It has always struck me as my favorite passage, because my experience has reinforced the validity of it, but wonder what some of you other veterans have to say.

I’ve talked to Brown Neck Gator several times about how our visit to Camp Blanding, Florida to be OPFOR for the 48th out of Georgia was one of my most fun experiences in the Natty Guard. Honestly, it was so ridiculous it actually transcended believability. It rained almost every day we were in the field. Our fighting positions were dug by tractors, and then immediately filled about half full with rain in the first 24 hours. I remember one of my fellow team leaders sitting in a fighting position with water up over his waist, and he was clinging to a metal pole that once had held the poncho up, but the deluge had rendered that point moot. When I pointed out to him that lightening was striking nearby and that clinging to a pole in water was not conducive to extended life, he said “F it. If I get hit maybe I can come out of the field.”

At our train up for Afghanistan our Battalion CO managed to not lock on water resupply. I probably don’t need to tell you that this is a bad thing at Fort Polk in June. We had gone about a day with very little water, and were continuing to press forward to where we needed to set up defensive positions. I was moving up and down the line checking on my troops as we humped down the road. It was unbelievably miserable, which for some reason always makes me somewhat giddy. I made it to the back of the line and found my Alpha Team Leader, Sgt Magnanelli walking away and making weird hand movements with his pinky finger straight and the rest of his hand somewhat curled. I asked him what in the holy hell he was doing. He told me that he was doing the hand arm signal to thank me for throwing such a delightful tea party. While it doesn’t seem as funny now, at the time I was near paralyzed with laughter. From there on out, everytime things got to be ridiculous he would thank me for inviting him to the tea party.

In the Guard we had a LT that seemed to attract misery. LT Bilko. One time he voluntold us we were playing OPFOR for another unit, and we walked in about 20 miles and set up an ambush. It didn’t take a meteorologist to just KNOW it was going to piss rain on us, and karma being what it was, it was an unbelievable torrent. Bilko showed up at our AO about 4 hours into the diggin in a humvee. He waved me over to his humvee, and when I got there saw that he was eating pizza. He informed me that the FTX had been cancelled on account of rain, and I was to walk the men back out, but that we didn’t have barracks, so should camp out in front of one of the buildings. He proceeded to drive off. From there on out, we referred to the “Bilko Misery Index.”

Anyway, here is the passage. I’m wondering if other guys felt there was a connection between misery and humor, or if I am just a twisted bastard.

It is a common misconception among the other Hellenes, and one deliberately cultivated by the Spartans, that the character of Lakedaemonian military training is brutal and humorless in the extreme. Nothing could be further from the fact. I have never experienced under other circumstances anything like the relentless hilarity which proceeds during these otherwise grueling field exercises. The men bitch and crack jokes from the moment the sarpinx’s blare sounds reveille till the final bone-fatigued hour when the warriors curl up in their cloaks for sleep, and even then you can hear cracks being muttered and punchy laughter breaking out in odd corners of the field for minutes until sleep, which comes on like a hammerblow, overtakes them.

It is that peculiar soldiers’ humor which springs from the experience of shared misery and often translates poorly to those not on the spot and enduring the same hardship. “What’s the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker?” One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment. “The king sleeps in that shit-hole over there,” he replies. “We sleep in this shit-hole over here.”

The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes become, or at least that’s how it seems. I have witnessed venerable Peers of 50 years and more, with thick grey in their beards and countenances as distinguished as Zeus’, dropping helpless with mirth onto hands and knees, toppling onto their backs and practically pissing down their legs they were laughing so hard. Once on an errand I saw Leonidas himself, unable to get to his feet for a minute or more, so doubled over was her from some otherwise untranslatable wisecrack. Each time he tried to rise, one of his tent companions, grizzled captains in their late 50’s, but to him just boyhood chums, he still addressed by their Agoge nicknames, would torment him with another variation on the joke, which would reconvulse him and drop him back upon his knees.

Category: Politics