🇬🇧Young people of Britain, hear this....
Don't allow yourself to be persuaded that fighting in a war that's not yours to fight, is in any way noble or right!!
Whatever you're told, you won't be protecting your family, your country, your freedoms or any of those things that really mean anything to you.
You'll be expected to lay your life on the line and to end the lives of innocent people, who are in a position very like your own.. they come from families (like your own) who are patiently waiting and hoping for their safe return. These young people would be your friends under any other circumstances, but now you only know them as "the enemy". Sharing the same dreams and aspirations that you do, their presence and participation is rarely optional.
Since the late 16th century, conscripts have been press ganged. Organised groups of Royal Navy navies used various forms of impressment to physically coerce, trick and con unsuspecting victims for the purposes of crewing warships. Press-gangs are a frequent trope employed within film and literature, featuring marauding villains that roam the country, wielding cudgels and plying victims with alcohol, before wrestling them into submission and manhandling them and delivering them unto a new, seafaring life.
Naval conscripts could find themselves sitting ducks aboard a blazing vessel, with nowhere to run to. Or perhaps, crammed into a submarine, destined to lie forever in a silent,watery grave.
During the 1980s Falklands conflict, young Argentine shepherds held at gunpoint by senior officers, were compelled to go up against some of our nation's most formidable fighting forces. Ill equipped, untrained and wielding weapons befitting of a museum, their flimsy attire offered scant protection from the freezing Atlantic climate. Whilst many lay calling out for their mothers, sensing the spectre of death approaching; captives huddled together, shivering and terrified all about the barren terrain. Many more perished in the icy water, after their decrepit vessel was torpedoed as it attempted to retreat.
Don't imagine the vastly superior and experienced British troops would go unscathed. As always happens, families of the fallen received repatriated loved ones in coffins draped with a flag - one that has recently been appropriated to represent brutish hatred; the very antithesis of a soldier's sacrifice. Others suffered life changing injuries and unimaginable trauma.
Huge numbers of WWII frontline soldiers (from both sides) purposely aimed high, up above the heads of the human beings they had been ordered to murder. Dehumanising them makes the act of murder less burdensome on the soul.
It's highly likely that you'll witness terrifying atrocities being committed. So that those depraved individuals enacting said criminal acts feel secure, you may well find you have no option but to join in these grotesque acts of inhumanity, alongside them. Far from being a momentary lapse of judgement, that shame and guilt is indelibly seared upon your conscience.. you are then a killer and always will be a cold blooded killer.
You will in fact, be expected to make the ultimate sacrifice. In order to appease the over-inflated ego of a fascist idiot, sex offender and racist dictator; The leader of a failing terrorist state that bullies every nation in the world until they capitulate, you're expected to offer up everything you are and everything you will ever be.
From on high, up in the safety of their ivory towers, the orchestrators survey the gruesome spoils of this ruthless inhumanity, they coreograph. The sole value applied to your life is that of cannon fodder. Of the hapless, flippantly dispatched for the purpose of decimating one nation (and its people) after another; those who escape with the shattered remnants of their lives, may be found lining the city streets, living in makeshift shanty towns. Having outlived their usefulness, people parrot the phrase; "Thankyou for your service" in their approximate direction whilst averting their gaze from this pitiful sight, as if that somehow keeps them warm in the long, frozen nights. A nation and her people, the freedoms of which they'd imagined themselves defending, have come to perceive them at best, as an inconvenience - in many cases merely human detritus.
Skills acquired in service to King and country aren't typically transferrable to civvy street. Finding a place among society may feel impossible, as can be fulfilling the roles of a spouse or parent. The rates for divorce among battle weary troops is inordinately high. It's extremely common for such individuals to find life among other people untenable, forcing them to seek out opportunities that offer solitude. Alternatively, they might re-enlist because desite the horrrs, there's simply no other place for the anymore.
When the coffins of repatriated fallen are tenderly unloaded from the cavernous, replete belly of a lumbering Globemaster onto the tarmac, do you imagine the sons and daughters of kingpins will be laid amongst them?
Once upon a time, it was the one giving the orders themselves, who would take point and fearlessly lead the charge into battle. When did we ascribe such little worth to our own, personal mortality?
If you're fortunate enough to escape physically unscathed, you will absolutely suffer lifelong psychological scars. Whether you find yourself engaged in that ugly business of murder or not, as part of a company (in which bonds are uniquely fraternal) the suffering of one is felt by all. What's more, human beings are not emotionally equipped to end the lives of other human beings. With extremely rare exceptions, a fail-safe exists deep within the human psyche that prevents our doing this - or at the least, makes it incredibly difficult. Were that not the case, our species would have drifted into extinction long, long ago.
Death looks nothing like the sanitised image T.V. and movies present it as. A father desperately seeking a miracle whilst in his arms, holding what appears to be his baby daughter; until you realise it's actually nothing more than a scorched and bloodied head. People scrabbling in the dirt, attempting to gather the scattered remnants of a loved one..remnants that are indistinguishable from those of cattle, whilt all about them, missiles continue to fall and the acrid, metralic taste of blood and s#it hangs heavy in the air.
These were but innocents who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. These lives will not feature among the official "kill-count" declared each day by smooth talking generals. Their horror is without meaning. Yet these are the images that inevitably haunt the conscience of unsuspecting witnesses like you, night and day. When your own infant daughter looks to you, your realisation of what was held in that desperate father's arms, is inescapable.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Unless you have a very specific (and rare) psychopathy, expect horrifically vivid nightmares, night terrors, flashbacks, difficulty sustaining healthy relationships, holding down a job, suffering prolonged periods of profound depression, crippling anxiety, visual and auditory hallucinations, insomnia, spontaneous onset of extreme fear, guilt, shame and desolate sorrow, outbursts of uncontrollable sobbing and weeping, anger, pure rage, paranoia, panic attacks, psychosis, disassociating from reality (psychosis) - plus you're likely to have physical injuries and/or illnesses, that really never clear up and you don't just get used to having one arm, or half of your face. You'll forever be haunted by the faces of dead and mutilated children, young women burned to a crisp or with injuries that simply don't even seem possible; people who no longer appear human - the stuff of nightmares.. you'll see them every time you close your eyes, every time you hear a certain sound or smell a certain aroma, you will no longer have dominion over your own sensibilities or thoughts.
Then there's survivor guilt, that cares not for concepts like "duty", "responsibility", "self-defence" or "obeying orders". I personally know of more victims than I care to mention who simply couldn't go on hearing a whisper in their ear, reminding them that whilst their presence had been voluntary, that was the blood stains of innocents upon their hands.
 |
| Conscientious Objectors |
There are no winners in war. There's no glory & no heroes. Only the dead, the broken and infinite sorrow.
Real men stand up for what's right. You have a choice. There is a rich history of conscientious objectors doing precisely that... What's morally right. It's not an easy option. But for a huge amount of people, it's the right one. War doesn't end with victory or upon return. It goes on forever.
Please don't ruin your lives. Don't destroy the lives of others. Don't end the lives of innocent human beings.. hopefully a young person in another part of the world is thinking about this too, right now.
On armistice day, remember...
Our forefathers went to war so that we wouldn't have to. Many lost their lives, so that we wouldn't have to lay beside them in the cold earth. Don't invalidate their sacrifice.
Rise above the shameless criminals who would exploit us, for their own ends. If we do better, others will have the nerve to do better too, for a future.. your future and your children's future, that WILL be better and won't be stained with the blood of innocents; because of the choice you make NOW !
🔗 https://timetchells.com/projects/conscientious-objectors/
🔗https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bringing-home-the-fallen
