Jonathan Foreman says that the focus upon the death toll in the Afghan conflict obscures the high numbers of soldiers who have suffered catastrophic wounds — and the scandalously inadequate compensation they have been offered once home in a land unfit for such heroes.Perhaps more radical change is needed, such as adding a large ‘nation-building’ civil affairs component to the military — as suggested by General Dannatt last week — so that it can effectively win hearts and minds in places like Helmand province where DfID, shackled by health and safety restrictions, has failed to have much impact.
Arguably the UK has tried to prosecute the Iraq and Afghan wars while making procurement and deployment decisions as if this were peacetime, with genuine military needs subordinated to industrial policy, gestures of EU solidarity, and some of the more irrational instincts of politicians and the services.
One requirement is certain. If the ‘covenant’ is not to be breached, leading to a collapse in the morale of our troops and their families, we are going to have to rebuild Britain’s military medical institutions.
We could do worse than to look to the United States for inspiration. Though the Department of Veterans Affairs (formerly known as the Veterans Administration) and the Walter Reed Military Hospital have been the target of valid criticism over the past few years, they do an excellent job of looking after America’s wounded GIs and Marines who are maimed in combat and come back to military hospitals where they are surrounded by their fellow servicemen (not civilian geriatric patients), where they are treated with respect and understanding, and attended by staff who are specialists in treating military casualties.
The VA, as it is called, draws its mission statement from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address: ‘to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan’. Its founders understood that in a democratic society if you are not serious about looking after your wounded troops then you are not serious about war. If you are not serious about war, then you have no business sending troops into battle. Moreover you are likely to lose.
Proceeds from this article will go to Help for Heroes and BLESMA.
Read The Rest Here
Arguably the UK has tried to prosecute the Iraq and Afghan wars while making procurement and deployment decisions as if this were peacetime, with genuine military needs subordinated to industrial policy, gestures of EU solidarity, and some of the more irrational instincts of politicians and the services.
One requirement is certain. If the ‘covenant’ is not to be breached, leading to a collapse in the morale of our troops and their families, we are going to have to rebuild Britain’s military medical institutions.
We could do worse than to look to the United States for inspiration. Though the Department of Veterans Affairs (formerly known as the Veterans Administration) and the Walter Reed Military Hospital have been the target of valid criticism over the past few years, they do an excellent job of looking after America’s wounded GIs and Marines who are maimed in combat and come back to military hospitals where they are surrounded by their fellow servicemen (not civilian geriatric patients), where they are treated with respect and understanding, and attended by staff who are specialists in treating military casualties.
The VA, as it is called, draws its mission statement from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address: ‘to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan’. Its founders understood that in a democratic society if you are not serious about looking after your wounded troops then you are not serious about war. If you are not serious about war, then you have no business sending troops into battle. Moreover you are likely to lose.
Proceeds from this article will go to Help for Heroes and BLESMA.
Read The Rest Here
Watching Men Burn: The Falklands War, and What Came Next a Soldier's Story
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