There's nothing noble about being a soldier (idea)

The very existence of this node is predicated on the assumption that some people find soldiering noble; a node entitled 'There's nothing noble about being a proof-reader' would not have attracted any debate, it would be laughed off as a joke. I speak from the perspective of the UK, where proof-readers are not generally held in high regard. Many of the opinions above concentrate on the internal rationalisation people have for becoming soldiers; I concentrate on the external perception of soldiering. Kipling's verse, reproduced above, illustrates the fact that not all people perceive soldiering to be noble all of the time.

There are several reasons why military service is perceived as being noble, chief of which is that it is a service; for £13,000 and three years of their lives, men and women are potentially risking their lives for other people, for myself, for people they might not like but who they are not allowed to forsake. Firemen, policemen, doctors and nurses are also public servants, and some of them risk their health more often than many soldiers, albeit that the risk is of a lower intensity. Soldiers cannot choose to serve one section of their society more than another. If soldiers are ordered into the line of fire, that is where they go. They cannot choose not to fight. A policeman who refuses to respond to a call, or who walks off the job, will be demoted, suspended or dismissed. A soldier who does likewise will be shot or sent to military prison for a very long time. Soldiers therefore also attract nobility from a sense that they are victims, underdogs, a Kipling-esque sense of guilt at the back of the civilian mind that all this is for one's own benefit. Guilt partially from the fact that one is not a soldier, and partially for the fact that, when the chips are down, it's the rough men out in the night who will be shot at, not us.

At least in the UK, various branches of the armed forces have demonstrably preserved our government and way of life, in some cases within living memory. During the last century all three branches of service have held off foreign invasion, to an extent that cannot be understood by the American voices above. The RAF prevented Germany from achieving air superiority over British skies at a time when London was being bombed by professional terrorists. By keeping open supply lines, the Royal Navy prevented mass starvation and disease of a kind it had caused in Germany during the First World War. And the British Army fought in Africa, Europe and the Far East, often in situations where it could simply have sat back and waited for the enemy to collapse, or for other armies to do the fighting instead.

There are other reasons. Very few professions in the western world demand or encourage the physical fitness of its participants, and many of those that do - pornography, entertainment, the diet industry - seem base, narcissistic. Soldiering is one of the few jobs which builds people into something they were not beforehand. Notwithstanding the presence of women, it is one of the few elements of society in which manly men can still be manly. Soldering is one of the few professions which trains its members to kill. Only professional criminals are expected to have as pragmatic an attitude towards life and death as a soldier. Just as we respect gangsters, so we respect soldiers, for they are trained to kill, and to restrain themselves from killing.

On a less logical but more literal level, the Royal Family are figureheads of the armed forces, and several of their number have been soldiers, sailors or airmen. In many countries soldiering is seen as a suitable career for the extreme ends of the social spectrum, the upper and lower classes (the middle classes become the politicians who formulate policy, and the voters who vote for them). The participation of actual noblemen and noblewomen casts an air of legitimacy over the armed forces, even if only on an unconscious level. Ridiculous as this might seem in an age of Goretex and the Segway Human Transporter, it is nonetheless the case.

Ultimately the first poster hits the nail on the head when he or she says that soldiering "...should evoke the kind of respect one may feel towards binmen - it's not a beautiful or clean job, but it's necessary". To my mind at least, this is nobility. Nobody believes soldiering to be beautiful or clean, not even the most militarist man's militaristic father. But it is necessary. Very few things in modern life are necessary. My job is not necessary.