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hy as a horse. In the past, military service was compulsory for everyone -- as long as the basic medical tests didnt show anything that would disqualify them. Now its doctors that are the masters of service and war -- specifically, the Military Medical Board. In my personal archive, the biggest pile of paper comes from the Board in Warsaw. I have a bunch of different health certificates and statements of fitness for service, depending on what regulations were in force at a given time. It never occurred to the MON[3] machine that a soldier might be deployed to operations abroad more than once, not to mention many times at short intervals. Each and every time, before you go anywhere, you have to appear before the Board and get a full range of medical tests. Regardless of the fact that every soldier -- like any other employee -- undergoes mandatory annual check-ups, you will be tested in detail. You have to be fit as a fiddle to go off to war. Of course, vaccination is supposed to help keep you healthy -- OK, I understand that; what Im driving at, though, is that the whole medical system is poised and ready to test soldier after soldier almost at the drop of a hat. Here you dont have to sign up and wait your turn for months -- but its completely different if youre sick, or, even worse, wounded, as we saw by Strażaks example; more on that later. Why am I writing about this? Because the amount of time spent by a countless number of soldiers, including myself, sitting or standing by the door to some specialists office is certainly noteworthy. These specialists could use their time to see people who really need help -- and the healthy military, instead of sitting around in clinics, could be undergoing training, and learning useful skills relevant to their work. Every soldier must be examined thoroughly: blood, urine, hearing, eyesight, heart, head, bone, skin -- and a few x-rays on top of that. You must be fit like an eighteen-year-old recruit. So you stand in a winding line of perfectly healthy guys waiting to visit the internist, the cardiologist, the laryngologist, the dentist, the neurologist, the dermatologist, the ophthalmologist, the psychologist, the After returning home, you go right back to those same lines to get tested for any injuries sustained during the mission (that much, at least, makes sense). Im not complaining about the check-ups -- but consider this: I come back from a mission at the start of the year, so I get a full round of tests. Im a combat diver, so I go to the Navy Medical Board in Gdynia, hoping they rule that Im still fit for the job. The tests are nearly identical to those I had a month earlier after my return from the Gulf, but the doctors in Gdynia dont accept the results from Warsaw. I only succeed in persuading them not to x-ray my chest since I have such a nice photo of my lungs from a month ago. I come back to Warsaw only to get a letter calling me to appear before the Military Medical Board if I want to qualify for another round abroad. Its not the same institution that examined me upon my return -- so the whole process is set in motion all over again. Had I come back from the mission before the end of the year, I would have had a fourth set of tests. Of course, in the meantime, I have undergone regular check-ups, because our HR department records need to be kept up to date as well. For some unknown reason, no one seems concerned by the fact that Im about to start glowing in the dark from all the x-rays; that, instead of training, I spend four weeks every year standing around in queues at healthcare institutions. Medical boards have their own regulations, and if you depart too much from their definition of healthy, they may decide you cant go to war since youve lost one tooth too many or have a crooked nose. Yet, as soon as you get back, theyll try their damndest to prove youre the picture of health, just to avoid having to spend a dime or two on your rehabilitation. During medical tests, we did what we could to try and simplify things. Doctors are people too, so sometimes we managed to get inside in groups of two or three and get the stamps to confirm our fitness for duty, earning the gratitude of all the actually sick people waiting in line. Sometimes it took creativity to demonstrate that we were fine and fit -- whoever had better eyesight would go to the eye doctor, while those with better hearing waited in line for the laryngologist. One day in Gdynia, a nurse asked for my friends last name to enter it in the patient record, and the only answer she got was "uhhhhh," followed by the creak of the door shutting behind him. "So nervous he forgot his own name," she must have End of this sample Enjoyed the preview? Buy full version 2 MIO - Maritime Interdiction Operations - naval operations aimed at delaying, destroying, or disrupting enemy forces or supplies on their way to the battle area. 3 Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej (MON) - Ministry of National Defense, Poland.