There is nothing quite like being dressed to the nines, G3 rifle rests on your shoulder, your arms swing in time with your legs marching in unison with your comrades in four columns. The army band behind provides the tempo.

The crowds line the road, the kids excited, the parents keeping them firmly in hand. You stare ahead, a look of stoic determination, meanwhile inside you feel a deep pride and excitement.

It is all pomp and solemn silence as the flag is raised in Mytilini’s main square. The national anthem is played and then everyone goes home.

Long ago, I was a Greek army conscript, fresh from Zimbabwe. I was doing a six-month stint as a foreign-born Greek. I wish I could say it was all marching bands. It wasn’t. A lot of the time I felt like an alien who had been parachuted into an existence I had little idea about. It is not that I could not speak Greek, I did but with an accent and I had and have trouble understanding the more formal Greek used in the media or the accents from the various parts of Greece.

In 1988, I was 25 years old and I wanted to see the world. My father advised me to do national service and earn Greek citizenship to help me find my way in Europe. So I went to the Greek embassy in Harare and informed the officials of my intentions to do the six-months of military service as foreign-born Greek.

On arriving in Greece later that year, I travelled to Yiannina and presented myself to the military office. I chose to do my army stint the following April and that seemed fine. That summer I worked in Porto Heli to build up my understanding of Greek and the culture of modern Greece. I then travelled to London to see friends.

In April, 1989, as agreed, I returned to the Yiannina army office to find out where I needed to go for army training. I was greeted by the same recruiting officer I had seen the previous year with the news that I had been declared a deserter because I had not arrived on a due date that only he seemed to be aware of. That was the beginning of six-month bureaucratic nightmare that was to taint the whole experience with an underlying anxiety that I could well be stuck for two years of service, not six months.

The desertion order was rescinded and I was told to go for basic training to the artillery base in Thiva.

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One does not associate comfort with army training but the comforts were minimal. The bedding and uniforms dated from the 1950s. The blankets were as abrasive as sandpaper. My comrades were kids just out of high school and I felt a long, long way from home.

But it is in times of shared misery that friendships are formed. Achilleas Raptis was a soft-spoken man from Florina and we looked after each other during that period.

Achilleas was a self-effacing, gentle guy and only after I had known a him a while did he let slip that he was a black belt in karate. Although he never showed off his skills, despite plenty of provocations from the loudmouths. When he leapt onto the top of a wall that was about 1.8 m high from a standing position wearing the heavy army boots, I realised he had exceptional skills.

Achilleas’ friendship kept me sane as I realised that I had received no official document to say that I was in the army on a six-month stint and not the full two years that was the requirement for Greek-born males. When I asked about it I was told that I had to go back to Yiannina to find out. At the end of the six weeks of basic training, we were sworn in. Once you are sworn in, you are committed.

I used my leave to return to the army recruiting office in Yiannina to speak to the same officer I had already met twice before. There he was behind his desk, smiling as I explained my concerns. I asked what did I need to do.

His answer was short and contemptuous: “You know what to do.” I asked him again and again he simply answered: “You know what to do.” When I asked a third time he told me to get out or he would have me arrested for questioning an officer.

I returned to Thiva and was told I was to be posted to the artillery barracks near Mytilini on the island of Lesvos. Unfortunately, Achilleas was posted to Rhodes and I have never seen him again. I still would love to meet him all these years later because he made that much of an impression on me in the six weeks that we were together.

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The beauty of Lesvos overrode my anxieties. I consoled myself that while it was not the ideal way to see the islands it was most certainly a unique form of adventure tourism that I had embarked upon.

The commanding officer at my new barracks, a colonel, was a man of evident qualities. He shouldered his responsibilities with a calm authority. I took my concerns to him and he immediately gave me leave and a pass to travel to Athens and see the top official in the ministry.

As is often the case with bureaucracies, there are the many who make a show of doing the work and the few who do the work of many. It was in an office in Greek parliament building where I met the lady who finally eased my anxieties. Her office was beset with supplicants. I waited my turn and eventually presented myself to her and told her my tale.

She listened to me and then picked up the phone and called the embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe. She calmly proceeded to tell the official on the other end, that they had processed my papers under laws that had been replaced by new regulations several years ago and politely requested that they go about rectifying their error.

A minute later, my angel put down the phone and informed me that I return to barracks and serve out my six months in peace. Although I was never to receive papers confirming that fact until my last week in the army, her authority convinced me to relax and see out the rest of my time in peace.

If looks could kill there would be no need for big national defence budgets. Being ordered about by everyone including the photographer of this picture was not easy to take for the writer, Alex Economou. Photo: Supplied

There are worse places to do military service than Lesvos. The most crushing thing was the eternal guard duties that kept the new recruits up for three-hour stints at night and during the day. I remember a constant desire to get enough sleep – I could nod off in a quiet moment to steal back some sleep even when wearing the heavy metal helmet that American GIs wore in World War Two.

But there were moments of beauty that have stayed with me.

There were still, magical nights on guard duty with the olive groves lit by the full moon.

The sight of hundreds of pilgrims silently walking past our barracks in the dead of night on their way to Agiasos to celebrate the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God on 15 August.

Nor will I ever forget the day women soldiers visited our camp. One soldier watched the women in their tight, khaki uniforms walk past him with his mouth wide open – a fly could have used his tongue as a landing pad and he would not have noticed. When they went to the canteen it seemed half the barracks was there to silently watch them. It was at times like this when you realized how much you miss the company of the fairer sex.

The life of the barracks ran on a strict timetable, each shift in the day was announced by a bugle call. When the lunch bugle sounded it was expected that you rushed to line up in your platoons before marching in to get your tray filled with food that was not too distressing to eat.

The American daytime TV soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful, was an instant hit in Greece. When episodes were screened at lunch time, the country ground to a halt – including in my barracks – while the show was on. Everyone rushed to the canteen which housed the only television and we crowded round before it to watch. I noticed the colonel subtly altered the time of the lunch call to coincide with the rolling of the credits rolling at the end of the show.

There was also the experience of being part of the crew manning the M55 self-propelling howitzer – basically a tank with a really long cannon that could lob a shell 17 km away. I just missed out going on military exercises when the gun was actually fired.

Our training during the day was in learning the principles of artillery the ways to ensure the gun was accurate each time it fired. It was not easy after a night of guard duty to sit in the sun taking in principles of geometry that last bothered your brain in high school when all you wanted to do is let your head drop and snatch back some of the sleep you lost doing guard duty.

The men who were really in charge of the equipment were career soldiers and they could not have been kinder or more considerate to the recruits. They were endlessly patient with us as they were capable and efficient when we were not.

I was given charge of the canteen for a few weeks which broke the monotony of guard duty. I threw myself into cleaning the common room and ensuring the library was well stocked and I felt my efforts were appreciated. Although there were some who muttered that my family had used “meson” influence with the higher ups to get such a “cushy” job.

When September came, the winds that had blown all summer suddenly dropped and the heat that we had avoided in that time suddenly became apparent. As did the invasion of mosquitoes from the saltmarshes of the shallow Gulf of Geras a few kilometres from the barracks. In that onslaught your new best friend was the standard heavy army khaki clothing which the mossies could not penetrate. With sleeves rolled despite the heat, the mosquitoes could only attack exposed faces and hands in their hundreds.

Luckily for me my papers had finally come. I left that first week in September to resume life in my time and to my pace and strategic planning.

While it was not an experience I would happily repeat, it gave me a wealth experience about the people of Greece that no book could ever provide. The army experience threw people of different backgrounds together: rich and poor, city dweller and villager, Greek and foreign-born Greek. We all went through it together.