story-type: article

Three Days on the Western Front: A student’s experience of a school trip to the First World War battlefields

An account of a school trip in 2015 to the First World War battlefields by Joe Brydon, who was in Year 13 at the time. It raises various important questions about some of the ways that school students are being encouraged to remember war.

Monday 29th June 2015

Our first meeting with the tour guide, an ex-police officer, summarised fairly well the tone of my school’s trip in June 2015 to some of the First World War battlefields. “Remember,” she instructed us, “every time we take a photo we want smiles because they died so we could have freedom.” Nothing about capital and empire for the moment, but that would be too historically accurate, as she explained; by focussing on individuals, it becomes “less of a history lesson and more interesting really.”

The particular individual on the DVD we were shown was a man called Horace, whom she claimed “serves his country today, just as he did all those years ago by fighting and dying for it,” before immediately contradicting herself with the afterthought “all we really hope for is peace.” Horace, we heard, always wanted to be in the army.… Read more

Troops to Teachers scheme failing to entice ex-soldiers into the classroom

It was supposed to address teacher shortages and instil a military ethos in schools, but take up is tiny and dominated by non-graduates.

A few years back, Colonel Edward Newman, 48, was commanding 3,000 troops at the end of a 30-year career in the Royal Logistics Corps. Today he’s teaching a year 7 class about slavery. There’s a well-burnished shine to his shoes and a straightness in his stance which hint at his military background, but otherwise he seems supremely comfortable in his new surroundings.”People keep asking if I miss the army, and I really don’t,” he says. “In some ways it’s very similar really, getting stuck in; lots of things going on. It’s just that I’ve gone from being the one in command to being in the classroom,” he grins. “And doing my own photocopying.”

Newman clearly relishes his new role: “I’d been a station commander in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, and at 46 I had 10 years left. The next job would have been behind a computer in HQ somewhere. I’d always wanted to do something else. I didn’t want to finish my time just having had one career. Teaching was perfect, and it just came together.”

Newman was a beneficiary of an early incarnation of the coalition’s Troops to Teachers programme – part of a drive by the then education secretary Michael Gove to inject a “military ethos” into schools.… Read more

Military Recruitment, Work & Culture in the South Wales Valleys

This article explores how social and cultural life in the south Wales valleys, an area of economic deprivation within Britain, has been shaped by the British military and militarism, in ways that are both specific to the area and shared with other regions throughout the country.

In particular, it argues that the convergence of several factors – including the processes of Welsh devolution and Welsh nationalism, the rise of the US-led war on global terror, the efforts of the British government to reshape civilian-military relations in the country, as well as the continuing economic struggles of the south Wales valleys themselves – has led to a resurgence of military presence and militarism in the region over the past decade.

The article focuses on the ethical dilemmas of military recruitment in areas of economic deprivation. It also contributes to the literature on the everyday geographies of militarisation and militarism, a literature that argues that we can only understand how militarism is structured and rooted in the broader fabric of national society and economy if we examine closely how it is differentially embedded within and shaped by a myriad of social relationships and institutions at the local and regional level.… Read more

On Army’s importance, differing views among young and old

As the British Army struggles to recruit new soldiers, YouGov polling finds that Britons tend to think less of the army’s importance the younger they are

The British Army faces a recruitment crisis as the government’s decision to close dozens of recruitment offices and hand a £440m contract to outsourcing firm Capita is failing. New research by YouGov finds that the further down the age-scale you go, fewer Britons see the Army and the Army Reserves as important.

While 90% of 40-59 year olds and 93% of those over 60 see the army as important to Britain’s national interests, 82% of 25-39 year olds and 54% of 18-24 year olds feels the same.… Read more

Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?

The Red Cross has told the BBC that it wants military-themed video games to adhere to real-life international laws

Don’t shoot the civilians. This is something military games have been telling us for many years. I remember my first go on Taito’s explosive arcade title Operation Wolf – it was the late-80s and this frenzied blast-’em-up, with its jungle environment and hostage rescue missions, was clearly gunning for a generation of Rambo II fanatics. It even let you control the action with an Uzi-style sub-machine gun bolted to the cabinet. But what it wouldn’t let you do was kill passing civilians: collateral damage of this sort took a big chunk off your health bar.

Of course, this was really more about mechanics than ethics: players were being tested on their reactions and visual awareness, and failure meant a reduction in game time rather than a few moments’ reflection on innocent victims. These days, if you accidentally (or otherwise) shoot a civilian or comrade in a military shooter, you’ll probably get a ‘mission failed’ message and a one-way trip back to the last checkpoint. What you won’t get is a military tribunal and a dishonorable discharge.

In a BBC news report earlier this week, however, Francois Senechaud from the International Committee of the Red Cross told a reporter that, due to the increasing verisimilitude between first-person shooters and real-life combat, games should start to abide by the international laws of armed conflict.… Read more

ForcesWatch response to the Ministry of Defence’s statement, 22 August 2013

In response to the paper, ‘Young age at Army enlistment is associated with greater war zone risks’, published by ForcesWatch and Child Soldiers International (August 2013), the Ministry of Defence have issued a statement containing a number of claims all of which are either inaccurate or not relevant to the study’s findings.  Here we respond to each claim in turn.

MoD: The report uses estimated figures for some soldiers.
The study is based on 209 fatalities among British soldiers in Afghanistan.  For 199 of these, the enlistment ages and enlistment dates were known and we could assign them to their enlistment age groups accordingly.  For the remaining 10 individuals, the enlistment age group was uncertain but could be estimated based on the year of birth and date of enlistment.  We ran the calculations including and excluding these 10 individuals and the results were the same.  So the report does use some estimated figures but its results do not depend on these.

MoD: The figures are not recognised, not correctly sourced, and not based on official statistics.
We used official Ministry of Defence statistics throughout (including published intake data for the ten years we investigated and the official fatalities listing on the MoD website) with the exception of data on 27 individuals (13% of total) whose date of birth and/or date of enlistment was not recorded in the official fatalities listing. … Read more

Conscientious objector Joe Glenton on being jailed for refusing to fight

Joe Glenton, a former soldier in the British army, has served his country and risked his life in Afghanistan.

He’s also been called a coward. The reason? After returning to Britain after his first tour of Afghanistan, he became a conscientious objector (CO) and refused to go back.

‘It’s not like you make a choice to be a conscientious objector,’ he said. ‘It’s something that develops over time and goes against the grain of your being.’

Glenton, now 31 and author of Soldier Box, published today, was 23 when he went to Kandahar in 2006 as a logistics specialist and driver.

He’d joined the army, he says, like many, to earn money, as ‘a way out of a boring lifestyle and menial labour’ and also to serve his country, ‘the idea of Britain as a force for good, liberty and democracy’.

His tour lasted seven months. His experiences changed how he saw Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan.

‘We knew civilians were being bombed and how the war was being conducted,’ he said. ‘It was conducted in a climate of racism and indifference to the Afghan people, completely at odds with how it’s sold at home. I came back and because of those things, I thought, “No, this isn’t right”.’… Read more

Recruiting British soldiers at 16 isn’t just morally wrong. It’s bad economics

The Ministry of Defence wastes £94 million every year training minors for army roles which could be filled more cost-effectively by adult recruits, says a new report launched today by human rights groups Child Soldiers International and ForcesWatch.

Britain is the only country in the EU, the Council of Europe or among the UN Security Council Permanent Membership to recruit sixteen year olds into the military. They may not drink in a Pub, smoke, or vote in General Elections. They cannot have commercial contracts enforced against them. They may not join the Fire Service, but they can join the British Army and on their eighteenth birthday risk being killed in combat.

Recruitment at 16 is a scandal. Wars in Kosovo, Iraq and now twelve years of armed conflict in Afghanistan make the danger of being killed in battle an every day reality from the day a young recruit turns 18.

The moral case against recruitment of sixteen year olds is compelling. Eighteen is the age of legal responsibility. Those below that age are considered too young to make decisions that may lead to putting their own lives or those of others at risk. Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has criticised the recruitment of minors.… Read more

Nuclear Weapons and Militarisation in the UK

A society has to be militarised for a government to justify the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons to its citizens; militarisation creates a culture of acceptance. It popularises military euphemisms such as ‘Defence’, ‘Security’, and – particularly relevant to nuclear weapons – ‘deterrent’, and makes it hard to for those challenging these to be seen as credible.

Militarisation’ means the ways in which the presence and approaches of the military (typically state armed forces and Defence Ministries) are normalised in a society. Military solutions are prioritised, and the military is privileged in various ways.

A society has to be militarised for a government to justify the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons to its citizens; militarisation creates a culture of acceptance. It popularises military euphemisms such as ‘Defence’, ‘Security’, and – particularly relevant to nuclear weapons – ‘deterrent’, and makes it hard to for those challenging these to be seen as credible.

The indicators of militarisation used in the Bonn International Centre for Conversion’s Global Militarisation Index 2012 are comparisons of: military expenditure with gross domestic product (GDP) and health expenditure; the total number of (para)military forces with physicians, and the overall population; and the number of ‘available’ heavy weapons with the total ppopulation.… Read more

When soldiering gets sexy: the militarization of gender equality and sexual difference

How does militarism change social and cultural expectations of gender roles and relations? This is a huge question. This article by Vron Ware considers three areas.

Regardless of what they say about a man in uniform, it’s clear that some of them have a particular appeal when they’re half naked and preferably holding a gun.

The UK charity Go Commando which raises money for Royal Marines and their families, has recently launched its third successive calendar featuring marines in various stages of undress. The calendar went through official channels before being launched with acclaim in the national media. Its first print-run sold out within days.

In this now familiar genre, the black and white portraits of the calendar boys reveal them to be as muscly and virile as their female counterparts – who now include military wives – have tended to be demure and coquettish. Whether their nakedness is concealed by rifles, rugby balls, boxing shorts or the bottom halves of their uniforms, the marines’ rippling chests and arms suggest that the male military body represents new standards of idealised masculinity.

The appeal of the original calendar girls was that they were older women with real (that is to say, ageing, not thin and non-airbrushed) female bodies, consciously parodying the pin-up.… Read more