The real scandal about our troops'
by MAX HASTINGS - More by this author »
Every now and again, I ring up senior officers of the British Army and ask what is worrying them.
Sometimes the answer is recruitment, the helicopter shortage, or just lack of cash and political support. Most often in the past few years, however, I have received a one-word response: "Reputations".
Compelling: The Mark of Cain claims to reveal how even the best of our soldiers can be brutalised by war
No single issue causes more concern to the Army's leaders than that of preserving its image as an institution which treats its own people and its enemies alike with humanity and respect.
Over the past decade, a succession of scandals has tarnished that ideal: the suicides at Deepcut Barracks; allegations of bullying; and, above all, a series of high-profile court-martials for mistreatment, and indeed murder, of detainees in Iraq.
No matter that most of those charged have been acquitted. It has been undisputed that some prisoners were subjected to shocking illtreatment. Doubt has focused chiefly upon whether the right people were in the dock.
Lack of evidence, not lack of a crime, has prompted some "not guilty" verdicts.
If you love the Army, as I do, then you will find this Thursday's Channel 4 film The Mark Of Cain bleak viewing.
It is a fictional drama about the experience of an infantry section serving in Iraq, and the subsequent court-martial of one of its men for abuse of detainees.
In one sense, the film is grossly unfair: it gives one-and-a-half hours of screen time to the misdeeds of British soldiers.
How nice it would be to see a 90-minute Channel 4 drama about the doings of the 95 per cent of men who do a great job under appalling circumstances, neither losing their cool nor mistreating suspects.
But that is an argument against making films about villains in any walk of life. Bad guys make much more powerful viewing than good ones, and it would be naive to moan much about it. The Mark Of Cain is compelling television.
The Dambusters, it is not. It would make Jack Hawkins and John Mills turn in their graves. But it offers a gripping portrait of what Tony Blair's Iraq war is like for some of those who have had to fight it.
In an early scene, as newcomers to the battlefield, the soldiers are briefed about their role, and above all about the attitude which they should adopt towards Iraqis.
"These people are not "ragheads" or "wogs"," says their commander. "They have suffered terribly under Saddam. They are now entitled to enjoy the freedom that has been won for them, and freedom starts with respect. Let's leave this place better than we found it."
In this spirit, they set out to patrol the streets of Basra. When the section faces its first challenge, from a hysterical mob at a filling station demanding fuel and screaming that "the Americans have stolen our petrol", rocks fly and there is almost a shoot-out.
The situation is bloodlessly defused by warning shots and a display of calm resolution by the British commander. The crowd drifts away.
Much of the film is shot in the style of a news documentary, with handheld cameras. It captures superbly the fear, tension and bewilderment of Iraq, through the eyes of a British soldier. We see fiercely emotional local people shouting incomprehensible abuse at their "liberators".
Who can tell which of the throng on the streets are innocent civilians, or which ones are insurgents bent on detonating a bomb? The purpose of all terror campaigns is to promote mistrust, to provoke the occupiers into outrages against the innocent.
The strain is enormous, of patrolling streets day after day and week after week, never knowing at what moment, without warning, a handful of scuttling figures will try to kill British soldiers from behind the shelter of innocents.
If there is any "best thing" about conventional war, it is that everybody knows who is who. Sixty-five years ago, if you saw a German uniform, you recognised that its wearer's job was to kill you, and yours was to kill him.
There were rules and conventions, albeit sometimes broken. In most World War II campaigns, there was plenty of fear but little hate.
The hate has been unleashed in terrorist campaigns, Cyprus, Aden, Northern Ireland - and Iraq. It seems so monstrous to soldiers, that they walk daily among people whom they are doing their best to help, who smile and nod and fawn - then suddenly, one sunny morning, seek to murder them.
In The Mark Of Cain, the British section is on a LandRover patrol when it is trapped before a roadblock in a narrow street. There is a hail of automatic fire, then a rocket which hits the vehicle and kills two soldiers.
The next day, the unit is briefed to raid a village from which, according to "good intell", the attackers came. Commanders tell the men grimly that treatment of the villagers should be "vigorous - justice is coming their way, and some of it is going to be rough".
The scenes which follow are wretched, but believable: doors are beaten in, women scream, soldiers drag out terrified and volubly protesting men. One is found to have binoculars. "What's he got these for?" demands an NCO. "Birdwatching?"
The man is dragged into a vehicle and driven back to camp along with several other "detainees". An officer says formally to a sergeant that when the Military Police come to collect the Iraqis next day, they are to be handed over in the same condition as they were brought in.
They are not, of course. As the evening wears on, the soldiers psyche themselves into a rage towards the prisoners, talking of the ghastly crimes committed by Iraqis under Saddam's regime - "and now we're supposed to respect their human rights, eh?"
The detainees are beaten and revoltingly abused. One squaddie refuses to join in. He is warned that nobody will watch his back next time the section is sent onto the streets unless he does his horrible part with the others. It's a matter of loyalty, solidarity, you see.
The officers collude. The NCOs join in, one repeating mechanically as he kicks an Iraqi: "I'm in command! I'm in command!" The following morning, when the most reluctant participant goes to the unit chaplain to unburden himself, the Man of God shrugs: "Feelings were running high," and doesn't want to know.
When an Iraqi wife arrives seeking news of her husband, an officer says blandly that the man tried to escape, "resisted arrest, and received injuries which required treatment at a British military hospital".
The rest of the film is about what happened afterwards. Back in England, wives and girlfriends are horrified by the brutalised, traumatised men who return to them.
In a pub, one soldier is disgusted by his poor reception after fighting for his country in Iraq and reminds the barman that soldiers returning from the Falklands got a hero's reception. "Yeah, but we won in the Falklands," comes the response.
That last bit is true, and contributes significantly to the emotional troubles of veterans of the Iraq war.
Many British soldiers returning from Blair's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are dismayed, even embittered, by how little the public seems to care about what they have done and sacrificed in their country's name.
In the Channel 4 film, photographs are discovered of the assault on the Iraqis. One soldier confesses. Charges are brought - inevitably against the two most squeamish and unwilling participants in the crime.
Officers and NCOs collude in an attempted cover-up. They urge the men charged to take their punishment in silence, to refuse to "grass" on their mates. A sergeant tells one of the accused that loyalty to the regiment is what matters now - "it's all you've got left, isn't it?"
There is no doubt that in some real court-martial cases, there have been cover-ups and conspiracies of silence. But in this TV drama, credibility starts to drain away in the face of the grotesquely awful on-screen behaviour of absolutely everybody in uniform, especially the officers.
One of the accused kills himself before the trial. After the other has blown the gaff in the dock, refusing to keep silence and defiantly fingering the guilty, he is beaten to a pulp outside the court by his former mates.
Whatever you think of military justice, it is unthinkable that this could happen. Somewhere here, the movie becomes absurd as well as repugnant. Even at its worst, the Army is not this bad.
In one sense, I hated the whole film, because of the damage it must inflict on the battered image of what is still a great national institution. Few mothers who see it will afterwards pat their own little Johnnys and Jimmys on the head, and send them running to the
nearest recruiting office to sign on. Yet it is impossible to dismiss the programme as a figment of fantasy.
It contains important and painful truths. First, soldiers under the stresses of mortal peril do not always maintain the standards of boy scouts. In my own researches on World War II, I have often encountered examples of prisoners being shot.
Sometimes, this was because exhausted and frightened men facing the likelihood of imminent death found it intolerable to send captured enemies to the safety of a PoW camp.
On other occasions, prisoners were shot in response to alleged atrocities committed by the other side. The British Army's record in insurgencies is better than that of other armies - the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Israelis in Gaza.
But there have always been a few men who committed monstrous acts, because conflict itself is monstrous. In the old days, however, no one cared - not the high command, not the politicians, not the media.
You could kick an Adeni or Greek Cypriot or Kenyan Mau-Mau suspect half to death, even kill him, with little chance that questions would be asked. What has changed today is not the British soldier, but the climate in which he must fight his wars.
He is expected to maintain extraordinary standards of decency and humanity, while fighting foes who have no standards at all.
If he errs, exposure, disgrace and retribution are almost inevitable. The Army has always had its share of mindless young thugs, but their excesses are no longer tolerated.
No civilised person can regret this. Yet those of us who honour soldiers and understand the nature of their dirty job - to kill and be killed - pity their vulnerability in our squeaky- clean new world.
There is no mercy for little people who fall from grace. The stomachchurner is the manner in which the great criminals escape.
Tony Blair, the man who launched the Iraq nightmare, who committed the British Army to this war under false pretences, will soon walk out of Downing Street to make his millions and live happily ever after.
The burden of guilt, shame, punishment, falls solely upon such wretched men as are depicted in The Mark Of Cain. This is the real scandal, in which we are all complicit.
â¢The Mark Of Cain: Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm.
I'll watch it, but I have a feeling I'm not going to like it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by MAX HASTINGS - More by this author »
Every now and again, I ring up senior officers of the British Army and ask what is worrying them.
Sometimes the answer is recruitment, the helicopter shortage, or just lack of cash and political support. Most often in the past few years, however, I have received a one-word response: "Reputations".
Compelling: The Mark of Cain claims to reveal how even the best of our soldiers can be brutalised by war
No single issue causes more concern to the Army's leaders than that of preserving its image as an institution which treats its own people and its enemies alike with humanity and respect.
Over the past decade, a succession of scandals has tarnished that ideal: the suicides at Deepcut Barracks; allegations of bullying; and, above all, a series of high-profile court-martials for mistreatment, and indeed murder, of detainees in Iraq.
No matter that most of those charged have been acquitted. It has been undisputed that some prisoners were subjected to shocking illtreatment. Doubt has focused chiefly upon whether the right people were in the dock.
Lack of evidence, not lack of a crime, has prompted some "not guilty" verdicts.
If you love the Army, as I do, then you will find this Thursday's Channel 4 film The Mark Of Cain bleak viewing.
It is a fictional drama about the experience of an infantry section serving in Iraq, and the subsequent court-martial of one of its men for abuse of detainees.
In one sense, the film is grossly unfair: it gives one-and-a-half hours of screen time to the misdeeds of British soldiers.
How nice it would be to see a 90-minute Channel 4 drama about the doings of the 95 per cent of men who do a great job under appalling circumstances, neither losing their cool nor mistreating suspects.
But that is an argument against making films about villains in any walk of life. Bad guys make much more powerful viewing than good ones, and it would be naive to moan much about it. The Mark Of Cain is compelling television.
The Dambusters, it is not. It would make Jack Hawkins and John Mills turn in their graves. But it offers a gripping portrait of what Tony Blair's Iraq war is like for some of those who have had to fight it.
In an early scene, as newcomers to the battlefield, the soldiers are briefed about their role, and above all about the attitude which they should adopt towards Iraqis.
"These people are not "ragheads" or "wogs"," says their commander. "They have suffered terribly under Saddam. They are now entitled to enjoy the freedom that has been won for them, and freedom starts with respect. Let's leave this place better than we found it."
In this spirit, they set out to patrol the streets of Basra. When the section faces its first challenge, from a hysterical mob at a filling station demanding fuel and screaming that "the Americans have stolen our petrol", rocks fly and there is almost a shoot-out.
The situation is bloodlessly defused by warning shots and a display of calm resolution by the British commander. The crowd drifts away.
Much of the film is shot in the style of a news documentary, with handheld cameras. It captures superbly the fear, tension and bewilderment of Iraq, through the eyes of a British soldier. We see fiercely emotional local people shouting incomprehensible abuse at their "liberators".
Who can tell which of the throng on the streets are innocent civilians, or which ones are insurgents bent on detonating a bomb? The purpose of all terror campaigns is to promote mistrust, to provoke the occupiers into outrages against the innocent.
The strain is enormous, of patrolling streets day after day and week after week, never knowing at what moment, without warning, a handful of scuttling figures will try to kill British soldiers from behind the shelter of innocents.
If there is any "best thing" about conventional war, it is that everybody knows who is who. Sixty-five years ago, if you saw a German uniform, you recognised that its wearer's job was to kill you, and yours was to kill him.
There were rules and conventions, albeit sometimes broken. In most World War II campaigns, there was plenty of fear but little hate.
The hate has been unleashed in terrorist campaigns, Cyprus, Aden, Northern Ireland - and Iraq. It seems so monstrous to soldiers, that they walk daily among people whom they are doing their best to help, who smile and nod and fawn - then suddenly, one sunny morning, seek to murder them.
In The Mark Of Cain, the British section is on a LandRover patrol when it is trapped before a roadblock in a narrow street. There is a hail of automatic fire, then a rocket which hits the vehicle and kills two soldiers.
The next day, the unit is briefed to raid a village from which, according to "good intell", the attackers came. Commanders tell the men grimly that treatment of the villagers should be "vigorous - justice is coming their way, and some of it is going to be rough".
The scenes which follow are wretched, but believable: doors are beaten in, women scream, soldiers drag out terrified and volubly protesting men. One is found to have binoculars. "What's he got these for?" demands an NCO. "Birdwatching?"
The man is dragged into a vehicle and driven back to camp along with several other "detainees". An officer says formally to a sergeant that when the Military Police come to collect the Iraqis next day, they are to be handed over in the same condition as they were brought in.
They are not, of course. As the evening wears on, the soldiers psyche themselves into a rage towards the prisoners, talking of the ghastly crimes committed by Iraqis under Saddam's regime - "and now we're supposed to respect their human rights, eh?"
The detainees are beaten and revoltingly abused. One squaddie refuses to join in. He is warned that nobody will watch his back next time the section is sent onto the streets unless he does his horrible part with the others. It's a matter of loyalty, solidarity, you see.
The officers collude. The NCOs join in, one repeating mechanically as he kicks an Iraqi: "I'm in command! I'm in command!" The following morning, when the most reluctant participant goes to the unit chaplain to unburden himself, the Man of God shrugs: "Feelings were running high," and doesn't want to know.
When an Iraqi wife arrives seeking news of her husband, an officer says blandly that the man tried to escape, "resisted arrest, and received injuries which required treatment at a British military hospital".
The rest of the film is about what happened afterwards. Back in England, wives and girlfriends are horrified by the brutalised, traumatised men who return to them.
In a pub, one soldier is disgusted by his poor reception after fighting for his country in Iraq and reminds the barman that soldiers returning from the Falklands got a hero's reception. "Yeah, but we won in the Falklands," comes the response.
That last bit is true, and contributes significantly to the emotional troubles of veterans of the Iraq war.
Many British soldiers returning from Blair's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are dismayed, even embittered, by how little the public seems to care about what they have done and sacrificed in their country's name.
In the Channel 4 film, photographs are discovered of the assault on the Iraqis. One soldier confesses. Charges are brought - inevitably against the two most squeamish and unwilling participants in the crime.
Officers and NCOs collude in an attempted cover-up. They urge the men charged to take their punishment in silence, to refuse to "grass" on their mates. A sergeant tells one of the accused that loyalty to the regiment is what matters now - "it's all you've got left, isn't it?"
There is no doubt that in some real court-martial cases, there have been cover-ups and conspiracies of silence. But in this TV drama, credibility starts to drain away in the face of the grotesquely awful on-screen behaviour of absolutely everybody in uniform, especially the officers.
One of the accused kills himself before the trial. After the other has blown the gaff in the dock, refusing to keep silence and defiantly fingering the guilty, he is beaten to a pulp outside the court by his former mates.
Whatever you think of military justice, it is unthinkable that this could happen. Somewhere here, the movie becomes absurd as well as repugnant. Even at its worst, the Army is not this bad.
In one sense, I hated the whole film, because of the damage it must inflict on the battered image of what is still a great national institution. Few mothers who see it will afterwards pat their own little Johnnys and Jimmys on the head, and send them running to the
nearest recruiting office to sign on. Yet it is impossible to dismiss the programme as a figment of fantasy.
It contains important and painful truths. First, soldiers under the stresses of mortal peril do not always maintain the standards of boy scouts. In my own researches on World War II, I have often encountered examples of prisoners being shot.
Sometimes, this was because exhausted and frightened men facing the likelihood of imminent death found it intolerable to send captured enemies to the safety of a PoW camp.
On other occasions, prisoners were shot in response to alleged atrocities committed by the other side. The British Army's record in insurgencies is better than that of other armies - the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Israelis in Gaza.
But there have always been a few men who committed monstrous acts, because conflict itself is monstrous. In the old days, however, no one cared - not the high command, not the politicians, not the media.
You could kick an Adeni or Greek Cypriot or Kenyan Mau-Mau suspect half to death, even kill him, with little chance that questions would be asked. What has changed today is not the British soldier, but the climate in which he must fight his wars.
He is expected to maintain extraordinary standards of decency and humanity, while fighting foes who have no standards at all.
If he errs, exposure, disgrace and retribution are almost inevitable. The Army has always had its share of mindless young thugs, but their excesses are no longer tolerated.
No civilised person can regret this. Yet those of us who honour soldiers and understand the nature of their dirty job - to kill and be killed - pity their vulnerability in our squeaky- clean new world.
There is no mercy for little people who fall from grace. The stomachchurner is the manner in which the great criminals escape.
Tony Blair, the man who launched the Iraq nightmare, who committed the British Army to this war under false pretences, will soon walk out of Downing Street to make his millions and live happily ever after.
The burden of guilt, shame, punishment, falls solely upon such wretched men as are depicted in The Mark Of Cain. This is the real scandal, in which we are all complicit.
â¢The Mark Of Cain: Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm.
I'll watch it, but I have a feeling I'm not going to like it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
