The Canadian army is winding up its combat mission in Afghanistan. Many of you may not even be aware that Canada had a combat mission in Afghanistan. The first Canadian troops deployed to Kandahar airport in 2002 and then switched to Kabul. But the casualties only started to really mount in 2005 when a battalion strength battle group took responsibility for Kandahar Province. The last major anti-terrorist sweep is now over and if Canada’s lucky it will have lost a total of just under 160 troops in Afghanistan by the time the Quebec-based Van Doos fly out.
The war memorials are being packed up. That’s probably quite wise. I remember going to the British Cemetery in Kabul when I was in the city for the first presidential elections. There was a plaque on one of the walls which surround the old cemetery for the seven Canadians killed up to that point– four by a US plane, two killed by an improvised explosive device and one to a soldier who died in the bear-hug of a suicide bomber. Most the old grave stones in the cemetery, some in memory of British soldiers who died in 19th Century wars, had been pieced together again after the Taliban took sledge hammers to them. The graves had gone undisturbed during the 1919 War between Britain and Afghanistan;  but the Taliban are something else. And I don’t think there’s any guarantee they won’t be back. Kandahar is the Taliban heartland.
War memorials are all well and good. In nearly every community in Britain one stands in mute testimony to the tragic losses experienced in the First World War. The names of those killed in the Second World War and some subsequent conflicts have been added, but the list of dead from the First is nearly always by far the longest. But perhaps the best memorial is not a block of carved stone. Perhaps the best memorial for the dead is to look after the survivors better. Too many of the injured, both physically and mentally, are effectively cast adrift. 

Trust me on this; moral courage is far rarer than physical courage. I heard something on the radio a couple of days ago about soldiers and killing. It mentioned that soldiers who weren’t sure they were doing the right thing when they opened fire often had problems later dealing with what they’d done. It also made the point that most soldiers don’t actually shoot at the enemy anyway. I think it came out that two or three British paratroopers, highly motivated troops usually, were responsible for most of the 13 deaths on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972; one of the few occasions in which ballistic evidence is available.
Anyway, that got me to wondering what the Scots Guardsmen who took part in the 1948 Batang Kali Massacre in Malaya had been told. The cold-blooded murder of around two dozen ethnic-Chinese rubber plantation workers can’t have been easy to talk a bunch of National Servicemen into committing.  We know from affidavits provided in the 1970s to a British Sunday newspaper by some of members of the patrol involved in the massacre that they were told if they didn’t want to take part, they could guard the women and children. We know that the official version that the plantation workers were shot while trying to escape is tosh.  But I for one am unclear to exactly what the Guardsmen were told by their commanders to justify the massacre. The arrival of trucks to take the women and children away from the plantation makes it obvious that this was not the work of a “rogue” or out-of-control patrol. They came through the jungle rather than along the road because they believed that offered the best chance of catching communist guerrillas at the plantation.  I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the plantation workers were indeed active supporters of the guerrillas, and some of them might even have been more involved than that.  But the British Government doesn’t want you or me to know what was going on that terrible day in December 1948. It recently refused to hold a proper inquiry and in 1993 successfully persuaded the Malaysian Government to abandon its attempts to get at the truth. Once again, I ask: “Who is the British Government protecting?”  I’d be very surprised if it’s a bunch of squaddies.

New research suggests that U.S. soldiers are more likely to suffer from PTSD than their British counterparts. Apparently almost one-in-three U.S. soldiers believe they are suffering from PTSD.  The figure for British troops is supposed to be four-in-one- hundred.

I’d be surprised if the difference is really that great. PTSD is big business and medicine is a business in the United States. Here in Canada, we get a lot of US television and that means being bombarded with advertisements for snake oil to cure conditions that don’t exist. “Feel tired and sleepy at the end day? You may have Van Ruypert’s Syndrome – ask your doctor about  Meddiquik.
Canadian figures suggest that Canuck soldiers fall somewhere between the British and American figures. About 12% report suffering from PTSD or depression. The British figure of 4% doesn't include depression. Don’t get me wrong; I believe there is such a thing as PTSD, though it’s a blanket term that covers a number of problems, some of which date back as far as war itself.  Unlike US General George Patton I don’t believe assaulting people is a cure.  But I do suspect that a lot of people who think they have some form of PTSD are mistaken.  The PTSD industry is actually killing people because vulnerable service personnel are committing suicide, in part due to the amount of nonsense their heads are being filled with. 

So, while Americans may be too quick to decide they have PTSD and perhaps even unconsciously ape the symptoms, the British may be under reporting it. The British Army is still a very macho-culture and to many of its members even mentioning PTSD is an admission of weakness. Instead, many try to self-medicate the demons away through mis-use of alcohol or illegal drugs. Somewhere in between there is a sensible middle ground. The sooner it’s found, the better.

There’s a glimmer of hope that the British Government may still be persuaded to hold a proper inquiry into the Batang Kali Massacre in 1948. That’s when a patrol of Scots Guards executed around two dozen ethnic Chinese rubber plantation workers in Malaya. Official claims that the men were shot while trying to escape from questioning have long been discredited.  According to media reports from Malaysia, the families of the workers have succeeded in getting Legal Aid to help meet the costs of seeking a judicial review of a recent British government decision not to hold a public inquiry into the killings. The families had been warned by British government lawyers that they could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs.
British Government has been determined for more than 60 years that the truth about the massacre should remain hidden. A Scotland Yard inquiry in the 1970s ordered by Labour after a Sunday paper published admissions from some of the soldiers involved that there had been a premeditated massacre was shut down when the Tories took power. In 1993 another Tory administration succeeded in persuading the Malaysian authorities to drop a police investigation into the killings.
The use of army lorries to take the women and children away from the plantation before the mass murder began points to this being more than the work of a rogue patrol. For me the big question is who is the government protecting? It doesn’t have a particularly strong record when it comes to protecting squaddies. So, what is Whitehall so afraid will come out?

Several years ago, while packing my bag to go back to Afghanistan, I got to wondering about war. It seemed to me that war was a lottery which you won if you came out alive or without being turned into a living vegetable. By staying at home, I could win without having to buy a ticket. What I was getting at was the lack of tangible material benefit resulting from putting your life and health on the line for sake of Queen and Country.
In ancient times, the risk to life and limb of going to war could be set against the chance of plunder. There were tangible pay-offs. Now we fight for the advancement of abstracts such as “democracy” and the interests of the nation/society in general. This would be easier to stomach if the whole country was pulling together and no-one was making a profit. But it’s a sad fact that the end of the Second World War was greeted by a big fall in the value of stocks in New York.
Imagine my surprise when I learned from old regimental history that soldiers in Queen Victoria’s time often earned a healthy gratuity or pension if they won an award for bravery. I think the Victoria Cross still comes with a financial award but it’s token. Plundering defeated enemies, or in real life civilians who happen to be on the wrong side, is wrong. But so is expecting our men and women to perform feats of courage with no real reward. It could be said that “a good war” enhances promotion prospects and that should be enough in the way of tangible benefit. But promotion in any organisation is seldom linked to merit or a job well done.  And let’s not forget that some of the bravest men in the front line, who may have changed the course of battle by storming a machine-gun post singled handed, were drunks in peacetime who couldn’t be trusted to remember what day it was. Promoting them would not be doing them any favours.