“It’s No You at the Gun Site” – A Loveable Bear

 Call it a coincidence but we’re now in the 10^th day of the war in Iran and it happens to be the 29^th anniversary of Exercise Swift Lion, when my SISPEC (now called SCS) bunk mate and one of his men were killed when the 155mm Gun Howitzer he was commanding, exploded.

Although the initial fear and sadness of the incident have long since passed, that incident is what you could call a watershed moment. It is something I can quite explain. It was like, we could be next, all for just doing your job.

I wasn’t there when it happened, I was in home base hopping not to go out and leading the specialist rebellion against going. Whilst I was lucky to have a battery commander who took the role of leadership seriously, I couldn’t help but feel that a system run by old men was more interested in protecting the system than taking care of us – the guys who were going out to fire the round that just killed our friend.

Sure, this wasn’t a war (a point which we made to the powers that be) but it was tragic and traumatic enough. It’s like this – weapons look cool when you’re a kid – then suddenly when you see your friend come back in a body bag, you realise the games have consequences.

I can intellectually tell you that sometimes war is a necessary evil. There are times when nations need to fight and lives need to be sacrificed. As a solider, you cannot say that you’ve discovered that you’re a pacifist once you’re called upon to face action.

However, if you ask me how I feel about military conflicts, I look at it through that incident I lived through so many years ago. I think of my late buddy Bryan Ng during the incident who made the point of saying to our battery commander, “Sir, you need to remember, I’m in the one at the gun site, not you.”

I was always the more articulate one but now that I look back, he said it best. Just look at any given society and you’ll find that it’s always the people (who are usually old), getting high on conflict are the ones sitting furthest away from the danger zone. In supposedly democratic societies, there’s this thing about keeping the military under civilian rule. Generals are portrayed as wanting war. The truth is this – it’s inevitably the civilian politicians who pick fights because, well, it’s not them in the war zone. Just remember, the only person who wasn’t not keen to invade Iraq in the Bush II Administration was the only career military man.

 

 I view people who think conflict is a joke with a certain degree of contempt. It’s easy to talk tough when you’re behind the front lines sitting in your airconditioned office.

Let’s just take a look at the current conflict in Iran. The Late Ayatollah Khamenei was 86 when he died. Donald Trump is 80. Bibi, is 76. To Trump, this is game, where you compare how many people have died and then treat it like the Super Bowl:

 

 To be fair, to Trump, he bought his way out of any form of military service. Daddy has money so it’s easy to get out of being anything in particular. Bibi is a different story. He actually served in a military that faces combat. His brother led the Entebbe rescue and practically wrote the text book on hostage rescue. He paid with his life but saved people. The younger brother wants to bomb the world and has no issues with ordinary Israelis dealing with missiles raining on them whilst he hides in the USA.

For me, a man who never fought or will (thank God) fight in a war, one incident of a friend coming home in a body bag was one incident too many. Too many old men talking about “big picture” forgetting that it’s the young guys who got pay for it. It was clear to me that the worst type of old man to be is the one that thinks its acceptable to act tough whilst getting the kids to face the consequences.