I read Deborah Orr's article,
My disillusionment with the British Army in today’s
Independent, about recent revelations which show that our armed forces are a rather violent bunch of chaps at heart. Bearing in mind the kind of jobs that we ask these people to do, this is not such a bad thing. If there were hoards of Fuzzy Wuzzys goose stepping up Whitehall in highly polished jackboots, impaling babies on their bayonets and threatening the freedom of our press, the headlines in The Independent (and other paragons of truth and justice) would be rather different.
For the sake of balance, maybe Ms Orr should comment on the documentary
Shipmates on the BBC. Last night's episode showed the deployment of
HMS Chatham, a Royal Naval frigate, to Sri Lanka last Christmas following the tsunami. The ship was deployed there at very short notice to assist in the relief effort, cutting short some well earned R&R in Dubai over the Christmas and New Year holiday. The crew (salt of the earth types each and every one of them) of Chatham took this task to their hearts. They abandoned the Aladdin’s cave of a Dubai shopping mall, shrugged off ideas of beers and night-clubs, focussed themselves, got ready and steamed full speed for four days toward the Indian Ocean. Every one of the sailors interviewed saw this as a chance to do some good, every one of them accepted their task and got stuck in to it with enthusiasm: the detachment of Royal Marines on board put their sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial rituals on hold and made themselves busy training the crew in crowd control techniques. They arrived in Sri Lanka, not knowing what to expect and immediately got to work rescuing an orphanage from the ravages of the tsunami and erecting a security fence to protect the children from the threat of human parasites in the form of child traffickers. They turned a frightened, angry, hungry mob into an orderly, good natured, British style queue. The ship's chaplain, who I suspect has never been involved in sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial ritual (or maybe they are at priest school, I'm a civilian atheist, how should I know?), engaged the local kids in fun, play, music and games. The ship's medical officer, with the wholehearted help of a bunch of the British Armed Forces' finest, faced with a ruined hospital, simply rolled up their sleeves, raised it from the mud and started a clinic: all without the benefit of sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial, ritual combat. They did this in a professional, human, caring kind of a way, that we should all be rather proud of.
I would love to hear Ms Orr's view on how HMS Chatham fits into "the stuff about the British Armed Forces being the best in the world". I would suggest that it goes somewhere near the top of the list.
