joining tharmed forces..can't believe how harsh some views are when families say how anxious they are

[zippitippitoes]

..just listening on the radio to family of armed services personnel serving in eg Iraq and people saying well hard luck they knew what it was like when they mariied a soldier, let their son join up etc and it's not as bad as the ww1 and ww2.

I was shocked at how low the pay is for an ordinary soldier and still feel for the youngsters thrown into it at 18

I can't believe that people have this serves them right for being mugs and joining up attitude

another story, this one from Gulf war 1

Dh was there flying tornados. They were due to be there for 6 months. At the time we all paid poll tax...remember that? so popular!

If you away for 6 months from the UK you were exempt for the time you were away. We were told, and I am being 100% serious here, that if our husbands/wives were killed before the sixth months were up we would be given a bill for the back poll tax.

Nice eh?

and we have it easy in the RAF compared to the Army and the Navy

my little brother is in Afganistan at the mo and i am super anxious about it.
Cant watch the news or think about it.
I have told myself that he is in a big tent folding blankets to give to the Afgan families, along with food parcels. TOTAL denial is how i cope.
It is his choice but those who say horrid things can fuck off if they think that its thier choice thats ok then, i will immediately stop worrying!

Dobean, that is what works for me, and just trying to stay as naive as possible!
Dh went a few years back to Sierra leone for a 3 month or so, and I was completely oblivious about the seriousness of it all, and thank god I was!
We watched ER a few years later and it was one of those Kongo episodes and only then did he tell me that that pretty much matches the situation in Sierra Leone....I was mortified, but glad I didn't realise at the time!
Obviously with Afghanistan I won't be quite as able to be this naive....

I never watched the news when DH was in iraq - I did to start with but resided myself to the fact that if the worse happened i'd know before the story broke on the news

the worst part I found was the no comms for a few days and then the news reports saying ppl had died but I couldn't speak to DH, he wasn't on the MSN it was a worrying time - althou very understanable.

(and we're one of the lucky ones DH's job means he works in an office most of the time setting up comms, and maintaining them - thanksfully we had good access to MSN, email and telephones - but even then he paid an extra £10 p/m on his CC to give us an extra hours worth of minutes a month - 20 mins welfare is laughable a week, esp if DH wanted to ring me and him mum he couldn't do both ont he minutes alone, so we had to pay the extra - althou as I say we were v v lucky he had a phone where he worked (quite randomly gave double minutes on a sunday) didn't stop me worrying thou.