Remembrance day salutes man’s ancient instincts

05 November 2008

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War has a fatal attraction for men, says James Delingpole. Those who fall in combat are indeed the best and the bravest — and we shall certainly need their like again

And men do enjoy war, a lot of them. Probably a lot more of them than will readily admit it.

Even those survivors who have suffered terribly will tell you that they’d still go through the whole experience again because of the camaraderie they enjoyed in their unit. The British soldier — like most soldiers in fact — isn’t really fighting for King or Queen and country. He’s doing it above all for his mates and he’ll happily lay his life on the line for them because he knows they’ll do exactly the same for him. Altruism of this intensity is something we almost never experience in peacetime. Of all the things I envy in old soldiers, this is the thing I envy most.

It’s what most old soldiers will have in their minds this Remembrance Sunday when they mouth those words ‘They shall not grow old as we grow old.’ When they tell you that the best and bravest of their number were the ones that didn’t make it home, it’s not just survivor’s guilt that’s speaking here. In every wartime unit, a relatively small number of men undertook a disproportionately high level of the risk-taking and fighting. They were the young officers who would never ask their men to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves; the battle-hardened NCOs who knew that what for them would be dangerous would, for a green newcomer, be suicide; the ones who would insist on breaking the soldier’s adamantine rule, ‘Never volunteer!’

On Sunday, when we revere these magnificent men, as revere them we should, let us not delude ourselves that the wars in which they fought — and continue to fight — are strange historical aberrations that we will soon grow out of as we grow more civilised. Schubert did not stop the Holocaust. Acid House did not stop Srebrenica.

Today our armed forces are enjoying a surge of applications from young men (young women too) eager not just to serve their country and fight its enemies but to find out, as their mates have done, what it’s really like at the sharp end. Some of them won’t come back. Some will leave limbs behind. Almost all will suffer some sort of trauma. If you were an idiot, you might argue that this isn’t so bad because these people invited their own fate. I wouldn’t because I think human nature in all its complexity is something we should love and cherish, not reject and despise. And whether we like it or not, there is no occasion on which the best parts of human nature — courage, love, determination, sacrifice, duty, selflessness — shine quite so brightly as they do in time of war.

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P. McCormick

November 6th, 2008 3:45pm Report this comment

Superb piece.

Gina Herbert

November 6th, 2008 7:54pm Report this comment

Another wonderful article, sir. You have fast become the best reason to buy The Spectator.

ToM

November 8th, 2008 5:12am Report this comment

Another would-be warmonger (but, obviously, not warrior) trying to sell the innocent on the glories of war. Here's my variation on the author's closing argument for war: "... there is no occasion on which the worst parts of human nature — cowardice, hatred, indecision, cruelty, irresponsibility, selfishness — are exposed quite so glaringly as they are in time of war."

eric

November 8th, 2008 7:34am Report this comment

Sir, you are an idiot. It would take too long to explain why, and you wouldn't understand anyway.

Grandad

November 10th, 2008 10:20pm Report this comment

"there is no occasion on which the best parts of human nature...shine quite so brightly as they do in time of war."

Except, perhaps, on August 6th and 9th 1945?

ian skidmore

November 11th, 2008 8:50am Report this comment

a very fine piece of insightful writing. Thank you.

Zac Smith

November 12th, 2008 3:32pm Report this comment

I suggest that anyone who appreciates this doesn't buy his book. It's rubbish.

Bill Corr

November 12th, 2008 6:04pm Report this comment

"Most soldiers have a built-in antipathy to killing which only rigorous training can override," says James Delingpole.

Dig out a copy of "Letters from a ruined Empire" by Otis Cary and others. Raw Japanese recruits in China were frequently 'toughened up' for the grim business of hands-on close-quarter killing by the simple expedient of being ordered to bayonet bound Chinese prisoners-of-war. This procedure was said to be most efficacious.

Carey et al were interviewing / interrogating surrendered Japanese personnel in the aftermath of the capitulation and there can be no doubt about the facts.

Most Brits have been away from the land for three or more generation and most have never even seen a chicken killed - remember the squeamish fuss about a dead squirrel on the telly?

It's a miracle our police officers and SAS assassins - c.f. Gibraltar - manage to cope as well as they do.

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