Be the worst
BY FERN LANE
The lack of new recruits to the British army is now so desperate that the Ministry of Defence is considering sending recruitment officers into young offenders institutions in an attempt to fill its 5,000 personnel shortfall.
The reasons being offered for the decline in recruitment, at a time when the British army is at its most active for some time - 15,000 troops in the Six Counties, some 9,000 in Bosnia and Kosovo - are varied, including the theory that the type of young man traditionally drawn to the armed forces is less interested in a ``peace keeping'' role than in a less complex and more violent combat role. In today's geopolitical climate, however, such action is proving relatively hard to come by. Consequently, according to one source, retaining soldiers is also problematic partly because, being simple souls, they find the theoretical and practical restraints on who they can and cannot fire on in a peacekeeping situation impossible to cope with, and become ``traumatised'' in the process.
This analysis raises and then neatly sidesteps the fact that such restraints have, of course, been in scant evidence over the years in the Six Counties, where in theory British soldiers should not shoot unarmed civilians, but where in practice they have done so with alarming regularity and apparent relish, to the implicit approval of their superiors.
So, in order to attract those traditionally most at home within the British army, the Ministry of Defence is turning to the criminal element, excluding, it says, those who have convictions for drugs, racism or sex offences. Presumably they have to wait until they are safely ensconced in the barracks before they are allowed to engage in those vices
The news was greeted with roars of outrage from the Conservative benches of Parliament, many of whom fondly imagine that the army consists of fine, clean-living, decent young men ready to fight and die for Queen and country. What they overlook is that fact that the army was and remains a haven for young and no-so-young offenders of the lowest sort; Thain, Clegg, Fisher and Wright are the names of four convicted murderers, still employed as soldiers, which spring readily to mind. Perhaps the recruitment slogan should be changed to what in the experience of many Irish people was always the case; ``British Army: be the worst''.
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