it's to minimise the talktime a recruit can have at nite.
Wait till he gets to the unit. In my time, without handphones, a
number of diehards used to hog the public phones & talk
throughout the night. Even the camp prowling guards give up on
challenging them after some time! Instead, the old birds taught the
new ones to recognize their faces instead.
But, thanks to their ingenuity, the rest of us got free calls (by
just pressing the wires together, I swear).
