Well, I'd like to know what their criteria for a "Hero" is. Is seems like it should just be "Help for Soldiers", of which there are quite a few similar charities around already and isn't as emotive a name...

That and the fact that they seem to have acted as a basing point for various racist twats....

Funny thing is, this lionisation of the forces seems to be a quite recent thing. I remember (distantly) the 40th anniversary of VE Day was covered by breakfast TV in an almost I Love 1945 way, very much "Oh God... what did we look like in those clothes?". It was only more recently, probably starting with 1994's D-Day coverage, that we saw the arrival of the reverential tone now the norm.

Personally, I think it's got a lot to do with the depiction of soldiers in mainstream media. Until the mid-80s (with a few notable exceptions) war movies were by and large knockabout entertainment. OK, some, such as The Dirty Dozen and M.A.S.H. had their own subtexts, but for the most part, a war movie was a men-on-a-mission piece of fluff. Compare that to nowadays, when every war movie is very much A Film With A Message. And not just movies but TV as well - Tumbledown, Civvies, even Soldier Soldier sold this image of soldiers being regular guys thrown into batshit situations, and This Shit They Went Through, You'd Better Appreciate It, Pal.

OK, there's another reason for it. As we all know, Tabloids love to run what might be summed up as "Kids, eh?" stories. Usually the theme being that they are not aware of their being born. So we get endless stories along the lines of "One in 100 kids don't know who Churchill was", focussing on the minority of the representative sample, ignoring the overwhelming majority of kids who do know, and not covering the actual format of the test; all to paint a picture of the youth of today not knowing or caring about - or wilfully pissing on - the key figures of their nation's past.

As an aside, I recall being in a pub in the run-up to Rememberance Sunday a few years ago, when one old duffer started to go round the bar, demanding to know why anyone not wearing a poppy was doing so (I was, so was just interested observer). One chap clamly remarked that he would wear one on the Sunday, but saw no point in proclaiming his sympathies for the sake of public approval. Needless to say, the old pisshead didn't take this too well, and was practically calling the guy a traitor and coward, and guilty of shitting on the Cenotaph, the way he was insulting all the dead etc etc.

You can probably see the payoff coming. The young poppy-less man stood up, flashed his RAF ID card, said that he was a fighter pilot based at RAF Kemble, and walked out.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Eh?
I'm not suggesting that the forces aren't worthy of our support. Just pointing out that they aren't painted saints.

It does seem that being in the soldiery is the only walk of life in which you are automatically a hero simply for just doing the job, as opposed to actually doing something above and beyond the call of duty. A firefighter is regarded as a hero if he walks into a burning building and comes out with a baby he's saved from the inferno, but you don't see the same worshipping of the ground they walk on for all of them as a result as you do with soldiers. I doubt anyone (with the possible exception of Nick Griffin) would deny someone like Johnson Beharry is a hero, for example, but does that mean Private Bloggs from Cheam who hasn't done anything more dangerous than clean the bogs at Aldershot after curry night is one as well? According to the Sun, the tabloids and H4H, yes. According to bluebellnutter, no.

I'd also agree on the second point, although obviously H4H isn't a racist organisation they seem to draw them in like flies round shit. A cursory glance through the various FB groups along the lines of "sOldiers is wunderful if muzzies march in WOOTON BASETT they can f**k off" type groups, many of which cite H4H as their inspiration, would validate the point.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

The whole furore over Wootton Bassett got on my nerves.

The right frequently bemoan this debate-stifling, authoritarian Stalinist regime we have; yet then attacked it for that Choudhary's group being allowed to protest until Alan Johnson caved in and summararily banned it.

And just WHY all the public grief. I'm not saying it's not regrettable that people are being killed, but, ultimately, whether they're doing the 'dirty work' of the government or not, they propably signed up afterthe intervention in the Middle East.

The risks were obvious. Yet they don't join up to serve the country for goodness sake, a lot of the time they're just thugs who are capable of little else than running around killing people. That's why it's silly mourning them as if they're little puppies who have just been run over by a hummer driven by John Prescott.

The whole 'oh he was such a gentle, lovely giant' thing afterwards gets on my nerves too. Or 'he wasn't perfect', i.e. he was bit of an animal who loved picking fights with people in the street cus they insulted his respect innit.

Fucking hate them. Wish we kept them in Afghanistan. Nothing worse than the 'squaddies' (a term I find highly irritating; do we have to have this cheezy barrack room lingo find its way into modern parlance; and why try to humanise the bastards?) going out 'on the town'.

Then there's the ones who have killed and abused civilians. 'Oh they have a hard job; oh all Arabs are dodgy'...

Now steady on, while I agree with your general points the line about humanising the "bastards" is overstepping the mark in my opinion. They are still humans, albeit ones trained to kill others.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Usually, when a politician (such as cameron) starts talking about 'Putting the military front and centre of British life', it's the soldiers who tend to get nervous first of all. A soldier friend of mine (officer in the Rifles) could give you chapter and verse on why, if anyone says "Put them all in the army" or "Get the army to sort it out", such people usually do not realise that putting the military in charge is pretty much always a really bad idea.

There is a reason why the 'rough men' who guard us while we sleep are somewhat removed from ther rest of society. It's the same reason why the sons and daughters of hangmen used to marry eachother.

The purpose of any military man (or woman) is not to look smart for tourists. It is not to dole out bottled water to flood-hit Gloucestershire people or build bridges in Workington. It is not to play football with lovable Iraqi children. It is to do what cannot be done by regular means; and that includes killing in the interests (not defence) of the state.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Glad I'm not the only one that dislikes this worship of the troops.

On BBC's Question Time a few months back, this dumb bitch in the audience said that she was disgusted that the Labour government she disliked was telling the army what to do. She said, "It should be the troops telling the government what to do."

Even William Hague on the panel was surprised by her call for Britain to be run by an unelected military junta.

Had to smile at John Pilger's New Statesman column a month or so back where he described those bestselling Iraq and Afghanistan memoirs written by servicemen as "books written by psychopaths".

There's a difference between disliking the hero-worship, and disliking the troops.

As ever, you've hit the nail on the head. Mention to anyone you don't think X soldier is/was a 'hero' and suddenly you're anti-British because you don't "support our boys in Afghanistan".

I'm sure some soldiers are heroes. Endangering their lives to save kids from certain death, maybe - OK, that's a really cheesy example - could make one a hero. But anyone can do that, and in any case, automatically elevating all soldiers to the position of 'hero' lessens the impact and demeans those soldiers who really DO heroic things.

Since when, on here, has it been suddenly acceptable to judge an entire group of people on the actions of a minority?

I do detect an unpleasant level of bitterness in many of your posts Labourwill, doesn't do your cause any good at all.

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'Because we've reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us'

seconded with gusto

part of the long mail tradition of abusing a term to the point of utter meaninglessness.

(also second mr mordon's point about labourwill, there's a conversation to be had about this, but you're not helping it)

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double blog! what does it mean?

Just to add, I think Malcolm's rather found the precise point here. I can't conscience the overbearing hero-worship of soldiers, but nor am I prepared to simply write them all off as sub-human.

Esqui's got a damn fine point also.

Unusually in a thread about soldiers, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Mordon

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Charming. Do you think all muslims are terrorists, that all black people mug, that students are lazy scrounging bastards? The army has a general cross section of society, from decent people to absolute cunts, and to be honest, I'm not unhinged or someone you would not want to bump into however I spent 6 years in the infantry. The whole hero worship is a bit much, however I believe in the cause of HFH, I have a friend who is now missing an arm who had to rely on them for support because the government that sent him to Iraq washed their hands of him when he was of no use to them.