DURING an impromptu coffee break, I found myself talking to my mentor about how headstrong I could be. She then shared her experience of having a relative in the armed forces, before putting a question to me: “Why are the children of ex-servicemen always so rebellious?”
I was not sure whether she was being serious or whether the question was rhetorical, perhaps even meant to tease me. Nonetheless, I offered what sounded like an explanation or perhaps just a rationalisation.
I told her that we were not bad children. We were just pushing back against the kind of discipline that hung over our homes like a shadow.
As I reflect on it now, I realise that what we called “rebellion” was our way of asserting ourselves in families shaped by military service. Our fathers had
been trained to obey orders, endure pain, and above all, survive. That kind of upbringing left its mark on us (pun intended), whether we wanted it or not.
When we were young, the rules seemed endless. Bedtimes were strict, manners were enforced and any slip was met with sharp correction. We rebelled not because we were wild by nature but because we were searching for space to breathe.
But with age comes perspective. I began to understand that the distance we sometimes felt from our fathers was not a matter of coldness or lack of affection; it was the product of experience. Service personnel – in the armed forces and police – had faced things most civilians could not even begin to fathom.
They had been shot at, including my father, who served during the communist insurgency in the late 1980s. His platoon survived but one of his buddies took a bullet straight through the thigh. They were trained and deployed in hostile terrain, pushed to their limits in ways no textbook could ever explain.
For me, this understanding became real when I learned more about my father’s service. He served in the Royal Signal Regiment but he was also an excellent marksman – so skilled that he spent much of the later years of his career at the shooting range. The many medals displayed in our home were a quiet testament to that.
He was even close to representing the country but instead chose to retire peacefully in his hometown. We had no idea what those medals truly meant because he was not much of a talker but behind those shiny medals, was a price paid in silence.
In those days, soldiers were not provided with proper ear protection – no earmuffs or safeguards against the constant thunder of gunfire. My father’s ears began to bleed and eventually he lost hearing in one ear.
The worst part is, I just learned about this more than a quarter century after his retirement, simply because I began writing about his service in the newspaper about a year ago and wanted to make sure I got the full story.
All my life, I had thought of him as strict, sometimes distant, always commanding but suddenly I saw another layer – I now see a man who had silently carried an injury born of duty. What is remarkable is that he never once complained, spoke of the pain or used it as an excuse.
We often speak of sacrifice in metaphors – of blood, sweat and tears – but for our fathers, the blood was real. What astonished me was that when my father finally revealed he had bled from years of service, he spoke of it nonchalantly, as though such a sacrifice was nothing more than routine.
Growing up, my siblings and I knew our father struggled to hear. We practically had to shout at him whenever we wanted to talk but we never really knew why. We resigned ourselves to the fact that he was deaf in one ear – without question and without understanding the sacrifice behind it.
Military life is not built on ideals of comfort; it is built on endurance. Servicemen are trained to march, rain or shine, and to react without hesitation when danger strikes so that others may sleep in peace.
As such, they do not get to complain or indulge in weakness. When they return home, some of that hardness lingers. For a child, that hardness can feel like distance – it can feel like disapproval or even rejection.
Looking back now, I see it differently. Our fathers carried the weight of experiences they could not always share, bound by the Ikrar Kesatria (the Warrior’s Pledge), which includes the vow to “menyimpan rahsia negara dengan seketat-ketatnya” (to keep the nation’s secrets with the utmost stringency). With that silence came scars – some visible, and most, I suspect, invisible.
Those scars did not remain only with them; in many ways, they shaped the atmosphere in our homes and the way we grew up. I now realise that the “rebelliousness” of servicemen’s children was also a form of resilience.
Growing up in such households meant learning to adapt, test boundaries and read moods quickly. We became skilled at navigating tension and creating our own fun.
It was not always easy but it forged character. Yet, it also left its traces. Many children of ex-servicemen grow up with complicated relationships with the authorities. Some overcompensate by becoming highly disciplined while others swing the opposite way, resisting structure wherever they find it.
Therefore, to my mentor and to anyone who wonders why we were “naughty”, the answer is this: we were testing the edges of the discipline that defined our homes. We were finding our voices in the echo of commands that once barked across parade grounds. And we were, in our own ways, paying tribute to parents who had faced
the unimaginable and returned with strength and scars. This is why empathy matters.
Behind every strict household is a soldier who once stood guard against unimaginable dangers, and behind every rebellious child is a story of adaptation to a parent’s silent sacrifices.
When I finished, my mentor paused for a moment before nodding. “Hmmm,” she murmured, softly. “Your explanation does make sense.”
Dr Mohd Zaidi Md Zabri is the interim director at the Centre of Excellence for Research and Innovation for Islamic Economics, ISRA Institute, INCEIF University. He has no other childhood memory than growing up in army camps across Peninsular Malaysia and later attended a boarding school within one. Those experiences continue to shape his reflections today.
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