The silence of the generals

It sometimes seems as if we no longer know how to think about our soldiers, or how to treat them. Last week, three men of the Black Watch fell in battle in Iraq. A sad event certainly, but it was hardly a reason for national mourning. Yet much of the media became hysterical. Some of the men’s relatives, who could hardly be expected to reason clearly in such circumstances, were interviewed as if their grief had turned them into experts on military deployment and the Middle East. At the same time, a brave soldier was being gravely maltreated, and no one seemed to notice.

Last week, Trooper Kevin Williams of the Royal Tank Regiment stood in the dock at the Old Bailey, accused of murder. On 2 August last year, Trooper Williams was helping to man a checkpoint near Basra. It was a dangerous moment. For some days, there had been a number of ‘contacts’, the Army’s euphemism for exchanges of gunfire.