I was in a conscription army. Everyone fit for duty gets called up. I think we can assume that the very extremes wouldn’t be fit. But anyone 80+ from the lower side of that bell curve would be there. It’s a good mix of the whole country.

I think in most cases you wouldn’t realise that someone was on the side of the bell curve unless they had serious problems with social cues.

This one guy didn’t know how to shower. He’d strip down, cover himself in soap and then shower it off. I knew this guy from school, and he was bullied a lot. He’d rage out about any little thing, so bullies got a kick out of it. I guess it was a chicken and egg problem.

One guy was nervous about getting drafted, so he showed up shitfaced on the bus that rolled in. As the rest went to stand in line to get signed in and get their gear, he ran and hid in a bush until the MP:s came to get him. Nice enough guy. He hung himself in the forest a few years after conscription.

Another guy really tried to get out of serving by complaining about his knees, hoping to get deemed unfit for service. He got assigned lighter duties, which were to service the fleet of bicycles the army has. When time came around to use them, they all had issues.

Another had been driving trucks before conscription. He claimed he hit 110km/h due to having the sun in his back. He was quite the mythomaniac in general. He didn’t make any friends, didn’t pick up on social queues and could not clean up his dialect enough to be understood by half of the people there. He came by my bunks asking about a helmet and shovel his friend had borrowed from him, and was supposed to leave with us when friend was discharged. Turns out his “friend” broke into his locker to “borrow” the gear to return for his discharging. I got called in as a witness in that incident, but I hadn’t heard anything about it until dumb guy came along for his stuff.

Edit: i just remembered movie night with that last guy. We had a classroom with a TV up front and a microwave on the windowsill for heating snacks. He was sitting by the microwave and his sergeant passed a pack of microwave popcorn down the row to be microwaved. Dumb guy asks for instructions - “just toss it in and set it for three minutes”. Three minutes in it starts smelling burnt in the whole room. Turns out dumb guy left the plastic wrapping on.