UvA students in military service: “It is a boyhood dream after all”

The UvA international relations student himself spends about two days a week at various staff units of the military police. Van der Vliet’s current duties include being a deputy (attaché) to the DC. “I recruit people, attend military events, and also go, in a blue beret, to student associations.” After all, Defense wants more contact with society. “Such a uniform attracts people. Students always ask: What is the blue cap for, and the green one, and the red one?”

In addition to following the paid program, those interested can become an officer in the military reserve, the army unit that does not serve permanently. Although you don't become a full-fledged professional soldier, that training saves a three-year bachelor's degree at the Royal Military Academy (KMA) in Breda. “With this shortened course, which I do in addition to my master’s, I also go into the field very often, on bivouac,” Van der Vliet continues. “Having a good time with the other working students in the woods, that's what I like best.” 

One year military police

To further increase the accessibility of Defense, last September the ministry also established the “Serving Year” program. It foresees that 150 young people do a year of full military service in the Marechaussee, the army, or navy. Daniël Janssen (25), for example, was not quite sure whether he wanted to work in the Zuidas after completing his master's degree in private law. He went to work for the military police. “I am doing this program now with 10 guys, most of whom have just come out of high school and have the same attitude that I do: We don't want to be in school, but we do want to contribute to society.” 

Van der Vliet feels the same. “You can also become an ambulance driver or a firefighter, but this is my way of carrying the burdens of society. Yes, you are in the army but you are also making sure there is peace in the world.” 

Janssen thus sees a role as an officer-lawyer for himself later on. We also take military police lawyers in “green”—in other words, in army uniform—to Gaza or Lebanon, for example, to check whether UN soldiers are complying with the mandate regarding the use of force during missions. 

Patrolling Schiphol Airport

Janssen and his class of military personnel will start as Marechaussee Third Class at Schiphol Airport in January. “There are daily incidents at Schiphol, such as people who are difficult at customs, drunk people, and suspicious luggage on the plane. Or people who leave their children behind in the departure hall.” As a short-tracked military police officer, Janssen will mainly check passports. “That is still pretty difficult. The military police intercept almost 1,000 fake personal identification documents a year throughout our country.”

He views his upcoming shift at Schiphol a bit daunting. “We are well trained in checking dangerous people, including restraining someone by their elbows, wrists and such.” However, unlike other military police patrolling the airport, the service soldiers are not given a gun or truncheon. “If people do attack us, I would feel very threatened,” Janssen says somewhat tensely.  

Introductory period

Quirine Weesie (28), a lieutenant commander and student in the military law specialization program at the UvA, sees equal danger in such shortages. “Actually, for these new programs, we don't have enough instructors. The government made huge cuts to the Defense Department several years ago, and that means we have to pull it from somewhere else in the military.” Only a few years ago, for example, did they provide enough money to work with ammunition during training and not have to yell “bang bang.”  

During his first physical training, Janssen also noticed that military training has changed over the years. In September, he began the three-month General Military Training along with a group from the army. “We expected the instructors to break us down,” smiles Janssen. In practice, the initial training sessions dealt primarily with social safety, integrity, and sexual harassment. “Instructors said that this change has to do with ‘Gen Z,’ the generation that has become softer.”

No discussion

Janssen is not yet calling the landing completely soft. “The instructors still completely dump out your closet if you put something down wrong. And you have to dig a foxhole—that’s a hole in the ground—within eight minutes, which is hard work. But, for example, we don't have to do push-ups anymore if you do something wrong. While I am very fit, the military police is not the most athletic army unit,” laughs the muscular lawyer.   

Weesie maintains that there was no question of softness during her training. In 2018, also after studying law, she began her training as an officer in the navy. “When I ‘came up’—started, so to speak—we went to Texel. That's means sleeping outside, crawling through the mud, and no phone. You build up real camaraderie with your ‘bak’—that’s what it is called in the navy, those in ‘your year.’ I still go to weddings of ‘bakmates’ now. Besides, you have to learn to deal with the still fairly hierarchical structure within the military. Janssen agrees. “With my student background, I still sometimes had discussions with instructors. The army quickly strips you of that overly critical attitude.”

Naval instructor

Weesie herself now teaches law at the navy in Den Helder to aspiring officers. “I still have a year of ‘after-service,’ the mandatory service within the Department of Defense following training.” In doing so, she finds it inspiring to interact with new students. “It's so crazy that often they weren't even born during 9/11. While politics always affects the navy, my classes are purely legal, I always say. Defense is a tool of the government.”

Although the navy does not carry a political role, it does have responsibility, she discovered this past year during her training at the UvA. “You learn, for example, that if a soldier is late too often, they can be prosecuted under criminal law.” In times of war, a soldier can even be sentenced to prison for too many absences as a result. 

War

Van der Vliet feels just as much responsibility. “When I am in the car in this uniform, I can not drive too fast.” Likewise, Janssen argues, on public transportation. Just today I was in uniform on the streetcar when a man became unwell. Then I have to be the first to offer first aid and stay with him until he is taken to the hospital, even if there are already a lot of people there. But, the lawyer adds, “eventually I want to do something with responsibility anyway, like advising on human rights or the spectrum of violence in operations.”

Those operations are what Weesie likes best about her job. “Sometimes I get to go along on maritime exercises, practicing ‘live’ advice in military law. We go on the ship, first ‘slogging in’—throwing up for a day until you get used to the swells—and sleeping in ship's cabins holding sometimes as many as nine people.” Then Weesie has large-scale training exercises, like the recent one with NATO in Portugal.

Surely such war operations constitute the exciting part of military life for the three. “During my study exchange in the U.S., I saw these armed soldiers standing ready to go to a square as early as six in the morning. Very American, but it attracted me,” said a grinning Janssen. “It's a boyhood dream after all,” Van der Vliet says cheerfully. “Honestly, shooting is just super cool, too.” 

But standing at attention at six o'clock in the morning is no longer necessary, according to Van der Vliet. “The real strictness has gone.” His beret now fits properly. “Are you sure?” he asks. “For the military, your weapon has to be plainly visible, you know!”