Military March Part 2: Blisters

(This essay is a continuation of the Military March Part 1.)

You will never guess the feeling of boundless happiness of freedom after walking 30 miles with a 70-pound, overstuffed, weighty backpack in 100-degree Fahrenheit humid weather. This happiness is maximized, especially when taking a shower. Right before showering, our soldiers are already excited, wrestling with their sweaty combat shirts that cling stubbornly to their skin as they try to strip them off as fast as they can. In the Korean military, they distribute to you soap made with cucumber and mint, making your body temperature cool down and giving a fresh scent. Inside the showering place, which can have up to 30 people, is soon covered with hot steam and cucumber scent. The hot water washing down our sweat with soap through our swollen calves and thighs…feels like waking up in the sky.

After a profoundly satisfying shower—one of those rare moments of relief that make you forget you're stuck on base—I stepped out and walked through the crowd. But something didn’t feel right. With each step, there was an odd pressure under my feet, like walking on uneven cushions. Curious, I looked down—and stopped. My feet were covered in blisters. From the tops of my toes to my heels, swollen bumps had popped up everywhere. I could count at least five on each foot without even trying. They weren’t exactly painful, but they made walking uncomfortable and awkward, like I was stepping on marbles.

I limped back to my bunk like a wounded animal. One of my fellow soldiers noticed and asked, “What’s wrong?” Wordlessly, I lifted my foot. “This is wrong,” I said. He nodded with calm certainty. “I know what to do.”

He walked over to his gear without hesitation, rummaged through his bag like a medic in a war zone, and pulled out a sewing kit and a cigarette lighter. Without a word, he grabbed a needle, flicked on the lighter, and held the point to the flame until it glowed faint red. Then, gripping my right foot with the confidence of someone who’d done this before, he aimed—and tried to drive the needle in.

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? "I'm trying to get out of his control," and he said, "I know what I am doing," he said. Suddenly, I realized what he was before he came to the military. He was a student who majored in Oriental medicine, which is tough enough to get into, like medical schools. So I gave him a chance to handle my foot situation. 

He again heated the needle and readied to poke my foot with it. When he quickly pinched it, it did not hurt as much as I thought, but unexpected pus-like water came out from my foot, a lot. Very disgusting. After pinching most of the blisters, he used a Band-Aid and enough covering to cover my feet. His logic was that due to stretched skin because of the pus, you have to stabilize the skin, not relapse. 

Blisters are your skin’s way of throwing a little tantrum after too much friction and pressure. Every step from the march sends my skin sliding against my socks and shoes, turning my feet into a waterslide. Add in a sauna-like environment of 100°F with high humidity, and you’ve got sweat pouring like a leaky faucet. This moisture softens your skin’s outermost layer, which is normally tough. When it gets soggy, it loses its strength against friction. The combination of mechanical stress from the load and the moisture weakening the skin barrier causes the layers of skin to separate and fill up with fluid—aka, a serum—your body’s dramatic way of cushioning and protecting the damaged area. Serum—a clear fluid that leaks from nearby blood vessels when your skin gets damaged. Think of it as blood without the red cells. 

My main question, however, is this: Was it wise to pop blisters? And more importantly, did my fellow soldier know what he was doing? The answer lies just below.

From what I found, popping blisters with a needle can be okay if done carefully and hygienically, but it’s usually best to leave them intact to reduce the risk of infection. Popping the blister highly depends on its size. If a blister is small and not painful, leaving it intact is better because the skin acts as a natural barrier. But if the blister is large, painful, or in a spot where it’s likely to burst anyway—like on the sole of your foot or where your shoe constantly rubs—it’s better to drain it safely than let it pop in a dirty sock or muddy boot. One more characteristic of a blister is when there is more friction on my blister, the blister gets bigger and bigger, filling with serum in the gap between my skin layers. 

The military, however, isn’t exactly a place where there’s room to worry about my feet. They have to stick to the schedule, especially in a training camp with over 300 people, where everything runs on a tight timeline. In other words, finding time and space to properly treat my blisters was nearly impossible, which might lead to small blisters getting bigger. After popping a blister, it’s also important to keep the skin stable; otherwise, the blister relapses in a larger size. 

Thus, the decision he made to pop all the blisters on my foot and cover it with a bunch of bandages seems pretty reasonable to me. 

The way he went about removing the blister, though… I couldn’t agree with it. It was absolutely barbaric—so barbaric, in fact, that it felt perfectly in line with the military itself. I’ll give him credit for being creative—using a sewing needle instead of a proper medical lancet was an improvisation. But for someone who’s supposed to be almost an expert in first aid, it was kind of funny to watch. And to top it off, he heated the needle so much that the spots where he poked my blisters left red burn marks—literally little dots of pain to remind me of his treatment.

Whatever the process was, the outcome was successful. A couple of days later, my feet returned to normal, just like they were before the march. After the march, we prepared for the completion ceremony, and my fellow soldiers were assigned to different bases. Although I am serving in the military far away from him, I am still keeping in touch with him. I’m going on leave soon and plan to meet him then. I hope he has a bunch of blisters on his feet, then it will be my turn to take care of him.