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GyG1345
01-26-03, 01:56 PM
http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/01/26/do2607.xml

War is hell - for soldiers who don't fight

By Kevin Myers

(Filed: 26/01/2003)

As war with Iraq approaches, and prayers for peace are said everywhere, there are prayers too in British Army barracks across the land: and most of them will be a devout supplication to the Lord that the peace initiatives come to nothing. For war is what soldiers long for and what they train for. As one para declared last week: "The boys aren't worried that a lot of the public are against the war. Just that they might stop it."

Yes, some retired generals have expressed concern about the political and moral validity of the war, but these merely echo the conversations in a great many officers' messes. As for the actual business of war, regardless of all other considerations, the battalions earmarked for action are probably exultant at the prospect of action, and the opportunity to prove themselves as fighting men in a fighting organisation.

Of course, there will be apprehensions about how things might turn out. But this is only natural: war, after all, is a matter of life and death, and soldiers naturally hope they get the former and the other chap the latter. This is not blood-lust, but common sense.

The British Army prides itself on its professionalism; but the modern army seldom gets the opportunity to engage in a contested battle-group attack. Iraq folded in the last Gulf War, after only a couple of British soldiers were killed by enemy action. Indeed, it is all of 21 years since the last serious fighting done by the British Army, in the Falklands.

None of the commanding officers in the units destined for Iraq served in that campaign. These are a new generation of soldiers, anxious to see how well their fighting system works, how well they have trained their men, how good their equipment is. For soldiering is a job, and no professional wants to acquire expertise and never put it into effect. A heart surgeon might dutifully attend to your in-growing toenail, but what he really yearns for is to break open your ribcage and get amongst your ventricles.

For all that soldiers might profess to hate war, war none the less is their trade. And being human, they tire of hypotheses, of manoeuvres with referees, of computer models. Nothing compares with the real thing. Moreover, a good war is far better than winning the National Lottery: medals, promotion, knighthoods; Prime Ministers abjectly simpering in one's presence; women touching their hair, wetting their lips and looking meaningful. These are the prizes that await the successful soldier in war today, as much the same awaited a triumphant general returning to Rome.

Not that there isn't a powerful peace lobby in the Army. There is indeed, whose passionate devotion to non-belligerence exceeds even that of the protesters at Greenham Common. They are the ones being left behind. For example, the 1st and 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment are part of 16th Air Assault Brigade. Which probably means that the senior officers of the 2nd Battalion have formed an anti-war group in Aldershot, which will organise nightly Morris dances for peace and, in conjunction with the League Against Cruel Sports and the WI, will hold prayer meetings Against This Evil War.

Who can blame them? If their highly-principled quest for peace is unsuccessful, they are going to have to spend the rest of their careers enduring the reminiscences of veterans of a conflict that they watched on television, as they ground their teeth into commercially-viable deposits of chalk, and strangled the cat in a frenzy of frustration.

Soldiers know that active service provides an incomparable test of manhood, and the sound of the guns does something unique and liberating to a man's heart. But it is not just those peculiar male hormones that make war popular with armies. Soldiers preparing for combat are suddenly spared the stringencies of peacetime. Suddenly, a cornucopia of military goodies arrives, with quartermasters wandering round, rubbing their eyes in joy, like children on the best Christmas morning of their lives.

For war is the only time when soldiers feel truly cherished. No such affection attends other military duties. Peacekeeping is thankless, as more than 30 years of blood-soaked ingratitude in Northern Ireland have shown; fire-fighting irksome; and day-to-day soldiering repetitive. Iraq promises the real thing: the adrenaline of danger, the camaraderie of action, and the ultimate test of how good their training has been. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the war, the only people not to feel sorry for are the soldiers going into action.

To be sure, death and hardship might lie ahead for some. But this is to be expected. This is why men join the military. There is no soldier as bitter as the one who sees the end of his career approaching without ever having been in action. So, if you want to feel compassion for soldiers, then spare a thought for the warriors of 2 Para based in Aldershot glumly praying for peace. If war occurs, their lives after it are going to be pure hell.