While not that many people are excited by the war, I think we are much better at separating the war, which is a political decision from the troops who are basically just going to work. Only a really really tough work.

Mrs. Toad, I think you’re spot on. One of the hardest things Vietnam vets had to face was coming back to a country a large part of which treated them like murderers, even after all they’d faced.

Any British soldier in Iraq has to face a pretty depressing truth: that their presence has been potentially worse for the people of Iraq than the presence of Saddam Hussein, due to botched political vanity projects instigated by the likes of Blair and Bush. How the fucking hell do you even begin to deal with that?

I’m struggling to think of the last major war that anyone will all pat each other on the back and agree was “just” in the rear mirror of history (was the Falklands just or eminently convenient for a struggling government?) and I strongly suspect it won’t be our forays into Iraq and Afghanistan either. Bosnia we fucked up by only getting serious when people had already been massacred while the UN stood idly by looking cute in blue berets. Korea, Vietnam?

I feel depressed for the veterans of recent wars. Why would anyone join the Army now, illegal wars in sandbox client states that save nothing and no-one apart from Halliburton profits and contractors?

And for who? A government that instead of putting the economy on a war footing, can’t get round to ordering enough bulletproof vehicles or telling the industrial defence complex to pull its finger out its arse and create new kit in less in a decent procurement period. A government that is privatising army training and selling off decent army housing while neglecting the rest.

Again, I suspect many escape a fate they view as worse but if you are just in it for three square meals and camaraderie, prison has more home comforts these days and probably attracts more well meaning busybodies and funding than underequipped squaddies stuck in the arse end of Kandahar.

The year before he died he sat me down and talked about the trenches as I was covering the Great War in history, he spoke quietly and sometimes with a faltering tone but I will never forget what he told me. My view of my grandfather changed that day, I thought then that I was a pacifist and still don’t think that i could kill another human being but I have the greatest respect for those who fought and died in both world wars. So every Armistice day I observe the 2 minutes silence out of respect for that dignified but grumpy old git who used to knock my cats off the chair with his walking stick and all the others like him

Less than 8 years after fighting for King and Country, he was on a picket line trying to get decent wages and conditions for all workers. How quickly the ruling classes forgot the sacrifices those young men made.

What a waste.