‘How is he?’, ‘I’m sorry?’, ‘How
is he?’, ‘How’s who, Sergeant-Major?’, ‘Lord Lucan, last seen in your hair, get
a haircut!’ A typical moment of NCO
humour means I will never forget the first day of my abortive and very short
lived stint in the Territorial Army.
The British Army is an
extraordinary institution constituted of some of the finest people this country
produces. In many respects it is the
British institution par excellence. Part
of me understands the allure and lustre of being, however insignificantly, a
member of it. But sadly the
international events of my adult life have compellingly illustrated the harm
caused by an army put to wrong uses by politicians without the faintest idea of
what soldiers are for and the limits of what they can achieve.
I signed up in the autumn of 2002
having just left university and embarked on my law conversion studies. I thought, embarrassingly in retrospect, that
joining up would be a good way to get fit and participate in some of the
outward bound activities that army advertising continues to suggest is a major
component of an army career. Adolescent
notions of service and camaraderie also played their part. Finally, in my callowness, there was a
nebulous feeling that without a spell in khaki mine would not be a real man’s
life: seduced by a fanciful attraction to warrior scholarship. Needless to say my mother, rightly, did not
find any of these to be good reasons for putting myself in harm’s way.
Two things I had not given any
proper thought to at all though were killing and obedience and, above all,
killing through obedience. Without
having had any experience of army training it is very hard to describe how
effectively the army fractures civilian notions of entitlement and
autonomy. Subordination of personal
freedom to the demands of the unit are paramount. In some ways this abdication of
responsibility is extremely attractive; your life becomes a succession of
orders to be followed. Obviously this is
felt most acutely at the outset of training when resistance to the army way is
at its highest. But even the Chief of
the Defence Staff is obligated to follow orders despite decades of experience
and countless promotions.
As the weeks wore on prospective
recruits to the regiment fell by the wayside.
Ostensibly dropping out carried no judgement, however it was always a
quiet and furtive process. The following
week there would be fewer faces at drill but they were not missed or commented
upon. But those that remained definitely
felt within themselves that they were succeeding where others failed. As time passed and the battle camp neared
that marked the final stage of the selection process I grew increasingly
anxious and conflicted about the whole undertaking. I knew that a time was fast approaching when
pride would prevent me from walking away and all throughout that period Bush
and Blair hastened an ominous beating of the battle drums.
It seemed obvious to me, as to so
many back then, that 2003 meant war in Iraq come what may. It also seemed obvious to me that Saddam
Hussein posed no threat to me or to my friends and family. There were weapons of mass destruction but
they were in the hands of US, UK and other cobbled together coalition forces. We often overlook how recent a phenomenon the
deployment of soldiers as peacekeepers is and that is certainly not what
soldiers were sent to Iraq for. It is
also an uncomfortable truth that no soldier joins up hoping never to fire their
rifle. Soldiers are trained to fight and
when there is no fighting there is nothing for soldiers to do but train for
fighting. I remember a farcical moment
on an early weekend exercise, when we weren’t even entrusted with blanks,
running around a field in Hampshire with a rifle shouting ‘Bang’ until a
corporal ordered rapid fire and we had to shout ‘BangBangBang’ like lunatics. Very silly but it was clear that one day soon
there would be live bullets in the magazine.
Iraq was a war I did not want to
happen and it was certainly not a war I wanted to fight in. And so one evening, before it was too late, I
asked for a quiet word with the Sergeant Major and asked to leave. He asked me what my reason was, I had been
fit enough, I hadn’t been causing the NCOs any aggro or given them lip, I was a promising candidate for selection. Absurdly I found myself answering that I
didn’t think I could kill someone. He
gave me a wry smile and suggested that perhaps I should have thought of that
before signing up.
Since leaving the barracks for
the last time that evening two of my school fellows have been killed on active
service. One very soon after the Iraq
War started in April 2003 and the second in the last months of the main
deployment to Afghanistan. Both of them,
I do not doubt, will have repeatedly reminded the soldiers under their command
of the purpose of their mission, of its utility and its virtue. How those reassurances shared with men on the
ground can be reconciled with the encyclopaedic and devastating conclusions of
the Chilcot Report I do not know.
Mercifully we are not living in
an age of conscription nor even one of National Service. Soldiering is the preserve of volunteers and
all soldiers that sign up, from Field Marshal to Private, are free to make
their own assessment of Britain, its place in the world, its politicians and
the uses to which they and the army they join will be put.
The sad truth is though that over
the last 15 years the brave men and women who have made that choice have been
dishonoured by their political leaders.
Britain and its army has been diminished in the eyes of the world by
involvement in an engagement both impossible and illegal. 2.6 million words can’t explain to the
bereaved families of servicemen and women why their sons and daughters died
beyond satisfying the vanity of a politician who had not one day’s experience
of soldiering.
The Chilcot Report makes for a
very long cautionary tale for anyone now minded to take the Queen’s Shilling.