Portugal’s need to plumb the depths of its manpower to feed the war machine means that, since 1961, a conscription system has been in place, pushing the vast majority of young men hitting the age of twenty into a two-year mandatory stint in the Army and thus into the thick of the war. In 1971 the conscription age is lowered to eighteen–and by 1973 a significant majority of Portugal’s male population of ‘recruitable’ age is fighting overseas. A proportion of that conscripted stock is put through a short officer training course and allowed, for the duration of their two-year service, to hold officer rank and command a company. Many of these militia officers are held in some degree of contempt by the full-time staff officers, not having undergone the full four-year training and not having initially chosen the military as a career. Their relationship to the war is different by default, being able to return home after their two-(or, later, three-) year service rather than thrown, repeatedly, into the relentless meat grinder the African front has become for the majority of full-time officers in the Portuguese military. It’s militia officers that make up the bulk of those addressing the Congress of Overseas Combatants–their return to civilian life means pushing the argument for continuing the war effort, under the guise of ‘not betraying the Fatherland’, is easier. As the war progresses and the officer stock depletes, those conscripted officers who had done their duty in the early to mid-’ 60s and returned to civilian life are occasionally called back in to fill the vacancies, after another short training course. Some are made to do so ten years after their initial conscription, when they are handed the rank of captain and sent, terrified, unprepared and unwilling, into the front to command a platoon of forty men in the African bush.
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