Lest we forget how great our soldiers still are

This day of remembrance focuses our TAPs (‘thoughts and prayers’ has become such a cliché that the acronym should suffice) on the fallen, all those millions of human sacrifices at the altar of human folly.

However, if we do mean to add prayers to thoughts, we leave a world of death in life, to enter one of life in death. There is a celebration in every mourning, a feast in every plague, a triumph in every dirge.

So we should direct our TAPs not just to the million soldiers of the British Empire killed in the First World War, and not only to those other millions who fell in that war and all others, but also to the handful of servicemen who make up our truncated military forces.

There are only a handful of them because our government puts defence of the realm low down on its list of priorities. When the Leviathan of social services, the NHS and foreign aid demands another shovelful of fiscal nourishment, it’s the defence budget that gets starved.

That’s why it’s good to remember that the army, Royal Navy and RAF are the only British public services that can be ranked with the best in the world, the only ones that never let us down.

Moreover, I can’t think offhand of any other large group that embodies so thoroughly the very essence of Britishness: steadfastness, emotional continence, quiet courage, dry humour, calmness under pressure, self-sacrifice, patriotism deeply felt rather than loudly proclaimed – all those things that today aren’t so much praised as mocked.

That’s why they are dying out, and we are only ever reminded that they aren’t quite dead yet when some conflict is under way, with soldiers, flyers and sailors replacing social workers and NHS administrators on TV news.

Yet those who fight side by side with British soldiers know what they are about. Here’s the testimony of their American comrade:

“Those Brits are a strange old race, they show affection by abusing each other, they think nothing of casually stopping in the middle of a fire fight for their “brew up” and eat food that I wouldn’t give to a dying dog! But fuck me, I’d rather have one British squaddie on side than a whole battalion of spetznaz! Why? Because the British are the only people in the world who when the chips are down and there seems like no hope left, instead of getting sentimental and hysterical, will strap on their pack, charge their rifle, light up a smoke and calmly and wryly grin ‘well are we going then you wanker?’”

The syntax could do with a bit of work, but there is no gainsaying the sincerity of the American’s sentiment, nor the sharpness of his observation. Happy Remembrance Sunday!

(As I was writing this, the sound of a marching band drew me away from the keyboard and to the window. It was the ceremonial annual march along the King’s Road and towards Putney, with soldiers and RAF flyers leading the way, followed by policemen, Chelsea Pensioners and mufti-clad veterans of wars past. Thank them for their service.)