Why do people join the army....? and why should we honour them?

[LittleRedSparke]

Ok - i have my tin hat at the ready, and am ready to be flamed.....

This is genuine (i post a bit so you can see this is not my first and i havent nc'd)

First off - I appreciate those who fight for the rights of my country.... but I am not sure why we should raise them to a 'god-like' status, like you see on facebook etc

Yes, they're doing a good job - but no one forces them to do it, as far as I know (prepared to be told i am wrong of course) they join up of their own free will? I read 'how wonderful they are, and how they only do it because of some saint like calling they have'

I dont mean to offend anyone - but I have a friend who is ex-forces, and on occasion he mentions stuff about forces being let down by the government - even though he wasnt there for long, only joined up as he didnt have anywhere to live and no prospects, he's come out - and now has no prospects and has some kind of (non army related) injury, and I just got to thinking.....

The Irish in WW1 were part of the United Kingdom and not 'at war with the British'.

Because they are basically writing a blank cheque for their life.

I like that " I salute them as I would any normal, decent person who decides to get off their arse and do something g they believe in. Whether that is hailing yourself to a tree, marching for CND or fighting for your country."

I think that sums it up nicely - so many people sit around moaning about stuff and never try and make it better, either for themselves for for 'the greater good'

The Irish wanted home rule, how do you think NI and The Republic of Ireland came about?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-28897647

Suffice to say that the Irish were not 'at war' for 'home rule' before or during or indeed after WW1. You're mixing up all sorts of things there.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising

My teenage Grandad got an OR A medal for this, old IRA, he was no coward, he wanted to love freely in his own country and no be ruled by people who came from abroad.

Just the Army, OP or are we talking Navy and RAF too?

DH has recently left after 24 years. A lot of that he spent in Close Protection, protecting VIPs... Some civilian (ambassadors, for example).

His Army comrades nick name his lot 'organic sandbags' and 'bullet catchers' because they literally may have to take a bullet for someone.

Would he have killed someone who was trying to kill his principal? Yes he would.

Wonder if that makes him a murderer?

I joined the RAF as a registered nurse - I just wanted to do something a bit different from working in the NHS. I've no mental health issues nor was I trying to escape anything and it's incredibly judgemental to suggest that people join the armed forces mainly for those reasons. I don't know any service personnel who agree with those stupid Facebook posts or who consider themselves heroes.

In answer to your question OP

He joined in 1990 when the political landscape was very different. He had few qualifications and wanted to do a particular 'trade'. His quals weren't enough to get him in the civvy field and his parents insisted he get a job after school. No further study. The Army was attractive due to the gratuity and immediate generous pension on leaving after completing service.

So he joined the Army. Despite the generous financial incentives the plan was just for a few years until he could join the civvy lot.

Then, in his early 20s he got cancer. He was too ill to get a job anywhere else and even in recovery he felt no one would take him on.

Then Iraq and Afghan happened. He did 5 tours in 8 years.

But the pensions and gratuities have now changed (been slashed) so the incentives aren't there any more the Army wanted to reduce down to 82,000 in the SSDR but because fewer people are now joining, it's going to go lower than that.

Let's hope enough people still make the decision to join I can't see it somehow....

A question was asked on another thread some time ago, about the Iraq war in particular. When the troops went in, the belief was there were WMD and that these were going to be used.

It later transpired there weren't.

What were the troops supposed to do at that point? Walk home?

how to my teenage grandfather fought in the Easter Uprising too, at the GPO in Dublin.

People join for all kinds of reasons. Their reasons are their own and no, it won't be a direct "so other people don't have to join". But of course the result is just that, and we should all be grateful for that. ( although DH is in the army and sometimes I feel like I am too by the amount my life is controlled by it). I have no idea why people so frequently want to question their choice to join though.

Why should we honour them? Short answer is you don't have to, no one is forcing you to. Observe Remembrance Sunday or not, as you wish. We have the freedom to do that because we're a free country - we wouldn't be if we had been overcome in WW2. Be thankful you can make that choice, and are free to start to this thread and comment on it freely.

As for those that say they respect and honour the conscripts in WW1 and 2, but not so much the volunteers - I'm afraid the reality is that without the already standing forces to add the conscripts to, we would have been fucked. You can't just build an army/navy/ Air Force from scratch at the touch of a button and expect to be defend yourself, anyone that thinks that is utterly naive.

Egosumquisum

"And wasn't neutrality great in WW2? Did you know that Allied pilots who were shot down defending the UK were interned in Ireland if they landed there? Next to Germans who landed there. One pilot managed to escape and went to Northern Ireland. He was forced to return."

You're only giving half-facts. While some Allied personnel were interned, most were returned to the Allies via NI...."while Luftwaffe pilots who crash-landed in Ireland and German sailors were interned,?Royal Air Force (RAF),?Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and?United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) pilots who crashed were usually allowed to cross the?border into British territory."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality

And why on earth would an Allied pilot, having "escaped" to NI, be "forced to return" to the Irish Free State? Who would "force" him to return? You do realise how implausible that sounds? Sounds like you're believing too many hoary old myths about WW2.

I was thinking about this thread last night as I was trying to get to sleep.

I wondered whether the change in attitude is duets the changing nature of the job. When I grew up, you could join the forces knowing that you are fairly unlikely to face serious war (apart Northern Ireland). Then the Falklands came along, but even then people didn't come home maimed and missing limbs (Simon Weston was the most publicised casualty of that war).

However, more recently we've had the gulf wars, etc and people started to get hurt, come home wounded, missing limbs etc. The wars seem a lot nastier now. The Internet and better reporting also gives us more images of what happened. In the past, soldiers were buried where they fell. Now they are re-patriated, another reminder of war.

So I wonder if the changing attitude to soldiers etc is a reflection of the change in their roles. In the past, we lived,in a relatively more stable and peaceful time, and now things seem more volatile.

(Sorry if this has been mentioned before, haven't Updated myself on the thread yet since I went to bed last night).

(Re - Falklands - I know people were seriously hurt and killed in the Falklands, but I don't recall it being portrayed so vividly on our screens. Maybe it was, and I've forgotten. I certainly don't remember so many amputee soldiers like,you get today. I've just re-read my post, and realised it sounded a bit flippant. Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone).

With regard to the fighting in wars that people do not support. I heard a fascinating discussion on radio 4 the other day about this. The problem is that I can't remember the actual war being discussed, I can't remember if it was the first or second world war. But it was basically that if the UK had entered into some other war (sorry, can't remember which one) a couple of years earlier, the entire world war most likely would have been avoided and millions of lives saved. But if they had done so, it would have been unpopular, the leaders of the time would have gone down in history as blood thirsty war mongerers and people would have looked back on it as a brutal, unnecessary conflict.

I thought that was really interesting, the whole 'what if...'. I have never supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but at the same time I can't honestly be sure if they have made the world more dangerous or more safe, if they have made life in those areas more dangerous or more safe for those who live there. My gut feeling is that they have done both - some people feel safer than before, some feel less safe, for various reasons. Thats the problem I suppose, it is never black and white.

The Wolfe case was highly unusual and diplomatically complex (an American stripped of citizenship in the RAF) - it is not a good rule of thumb to judge the treatment of Allied airmen.

'Historian' Dan Snow made a big deal of it - that's why it's the first thing that comes up on Google , he's a very effective self-publicist - but the more serious treatments of Ireland in WW2 (Girvin, Wills, even Fisk) are more reliable.

So Ego, that guy was able to walk straight out of the internment camp (wow, really high security there), grab a meal in a nearby hotel, (apparently without fear of capture for an escapee on the run) and get a train from Dublin to Belfast. And it was his OWN superiors who persuaded him to return. It looks like the Irish authorities weren't too pushed about this guy escaping.

themselves

I honestly believe the two wars in the Middle East (particularly Afghanistan) have made it safer for the citizens over there. The taliban in Afghanistan were basically a less well publicised version of Isis, they made the lives of many, many citizens absolute hell.

Before British/US forces were invited in by the afghan government, there was basically no police force, which essentially allowed the taliban to go unchallenged. They imposed all sorts of rules (mostly on women and children), invented their own "tax" which you had to pay or they would kill you/your family, and frequently randomly killed people to increase their power through fear. The taliban would force women and children to become suicide bombers under threat of killing members of their family. Some of the things that went on in taliban held areas of Afghanistan are too horrific to mention, and let's not forget we were INVITED in by the afghan government as they couldn't overthrow the taliban on their own.

Now, whilst the taliban are still out there, there is at least a reasonable police force (trained and set up by us) and there aren't taliban strongholds anymore. Citizens live in less fear in general (I appreciate there are some exceptions) then they did before we went over there.

The soldiers under my DH are itching to go back to Iraq, despite knowing there will be significant casualties on our part. Why? Yes some of them see some sort of glory in war, but most of them want to defend the thousands of citizens who's lives are being destroyed by Isis and protect the women and children who currently have virtually no rights under Isis.

I appreciate this is a view that most won't agree with, but for me, how can we sit back and ignore what is happening in the Middle East? Ignore the oppression, murder, rape and slavery of women who have nobody to defend them. Because if we do nothing, that's what will continue and spread. Tell me, what other way is there to stop Isis doing these things?

I think it is unfortunate that we are holding back from deploying to Iraq due to a he unpopularity of the previous two wars when there is a lot we could do to help those people.

Because entering a conflict on the side of a former colonial power would have been politically impossible, given a recent war of independence/civil war/partition?

Because many other European countries were neutral in WW2 (most others were invaded)? Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Portugal to name a few.

Because not even Britain joined to war to combat Nazi atrocities? It was about European aggression, not concern for persecuted Jews and other minorities.

Your argument is very ill-informed.

Lucybabs would obviously preferred to have left standing a regime that took great delight in murdering vast quantities of Kurds (with chemical weapons), southern Shias and other ordinary Iraqis. Between 1988 and 2003 the Iraqi Govt was directly responsible for the deaths of around 400,000 Iraqis, a figure supported by Human Rights Watch, which even went so far as to publish a report entitled 'Genocide In Iraq: The Anfal campaign against the Kurds' in July 1993. Any basic understanding of neoconservative philosophy would make you realise that the invasion of Iraq was profoundly ideological, above and beyond anything else.