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For a few years during the 1990s, the US Navy did issue "stress cards" to new recruits, but they weren't the "Get out of jail free" coupons military lore has since turned them into. Rather, these cards listed names and phone numbers of resources the newcomers could contact "if things pile[d] up." The cards were strictly for informational purposes: they informed recruits of available support services.

Navy trainers began reporting that some of the recruits had taken to raising their cards while being disciplined, as a way of signalling for time out. It's unclear whether any of those enduring basic training really thought that was the purpose of the cards or whether this was just standard armed forces jackassing, but the Navy took no chances and got rid of the cards.

This short-lived experiment with providing recruits with clear information about whom to contact when things went bump in the night has morphed into an unflattering and unsettling illustration of today's soldier as a creampuff. Notice how the story has mutated into one where the drill instructors are portrayed as honor bound to obey the cards when they are displayed to them, an aspect that wasn't part of things during the real cards' short life. The story has also widened its net; what was a Navy hand-out has, in the world of rumor, become a card issued to Army and Marine recruits, making this an Armed Forces-wide phenomenon.

Why was such a story so happily seized upon? We always want to believe anything we've been part of was the biggest, the baddest, and the best. One of the ways we bolster that belief is by looking pityingly upon the current crop who have since taken our places. The high school teams we played on were the toughest and most feared, with today's iterations only pale imitations of the ones we were part of. Likewise, the music of our youth has it all over today's stuff, and schooling in our day was rigorous and thorough, with the hike to the schoolhouse uphill both ways through the snow.

That sentiment, that need to feel superior through disparaging comparison, is part of what underpins this legend about stress cards. In any vet's mind, the armed forces went careening downhill the moment he left. Throughout the history of human endeavor, people have looked back to note with satisfaction how things have gone to hell in a handbasket since their glory days, be they bridge players, churchgoers, parents, or soldiers. It's just human nature.

Change is also threatening, and any shift in how things are run will always bring out the doomsayers, those who will feel it their duty to point out everything is about to come apart. They will hold up any small misstep and repeat any wild tale that seemingly confirms their gloomy prognostications. Just as the influx of women into the armed forces raised misgivings often expressed in "Told you so" kinds of tales, so the "stress card" canard quickly caught on in military lore because it captured the essence of what many believe, that today's army has gone soft.

Barbara "ice cream soldier" Mikkelson