I remember clearing for mines around a young soldier who had just stepped
on an anti-personnel mine. His broken body had been dragged him into the shade
of a tree and the medic was gently tending to his injuries and bandaging him up.
The injured soldier was a good tennis player and he had just lost a leg.
Another sapper, eating some bully beef out of a tin with a stick, ambled
over to his injured friend. In shock and
in pain, the injured man, understandably too scared to look at his injuries
asked the sapper “Is it bad?”
His friend the sapper knelt down next to him and said: “Always
look on the bright side – in future you only need to buy one “takkie” (tennis
shoe)”.
This remark was made without malice or flippantly. It is the way
soldiers talk to cope with the horrors they need to deal with. Living on the
edge gives rise to a dark sense of humour only those who have been there can fully
appreciate and even understand.
It therefore shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to find
some in the media complaining about recent photo of a French soldier wearing a
skeleton mask. Wearing a mask or a scarf to protect one from the dust and
debris is rather normal. The fact that his mask resembles a skull is part of the
dark humour soldiers develop. It keeps them going.
Photo by Issouf Sanogo, AFP
What did they think he was doing in Mali – baking a cake for the
extremists? The next thing they will probably complain about is the
aggressive-looking weapons soldiers carry or that their uniforms frighten the
enemy. Or maybe even that their weapons can actually kill people.
I am sure that if a company of soldiers wearing masks such as
these appeared out of the dust, even the most hardened enemy will be taken
aback and worried that he is being attacked by death itself. Which is exactly
what should happen anyway.
The photo has resulted in a flurry of condemnation. Even a French
military spokesman apologised and stated that the wearing of the mask was
unacceptable and not representative of French military action. A hunt is now on
to identify the soldier in the picture. Why on earth is that?
Similarly, there are those in the British media who are
complaining about Capt Wales (Prince Harry to those who know him better)
commenting on the fact that he had fired his Apache helicopter guns at the
Taliban and had taken some of them “out of the game” – a common term used
instead of “Hell, yes, I blew them to smithereens and there was blood and gore
splattered over the entire area”.
Predictably, his frank comments – which do not in the least appear
to have been boastful - drew a backlash from anti-war activists who, no doubt
when their lives are threatened will call for people such as Capt Wales to save
them and take the threat “out of the game”. Perhaps they will hope that someone
will come along and “whack” or “slot” the threat to keep them safe so that they
can continue to complain.
Even the extremists are complaining – and getting publicity - about
his attitude to killing – something they certainly have no qualms about.
Now what did these good armchair analysts think he was doing in an
Apache helicopter? Was he supposed to merely observe the enemy whilst they were
firing at him or his friends on the ground?
Soldiers need to deal with the stress and fear that accompanies
them every day of their lives when in a combat zone. They cannot grieve for
their friends who have lost life and limb in a firefight – they need to get the
job done as quickly as possible. To do this, they develop their own language to
cope with the horrors they need to deal with, smell and witness. This language is littered with dark humour
outsiders will not understand. To maintain some sanity in an insane world, they
wear strange things, do strange things and say strange things.
However, war is not some game that is played according to
gentlemen’s rules. The aim is to
identify, locate, neutralise, annihilate, disrupt or destroy the enemy or break
his will to such an extent that he no longer has the stomach to fight. If
wearing a mask and using dark humour or saying strange things will speed-up the
process of achieving the aim, then it should be done.
If the media and the politicians don’t like the way in which
soldiers cope with their jobs or if they don’t like their humour or their
sayings, perhaps they should go and do the fighting instead. We can then sit on the
sideline and criticise.
To the soldiers out there, regardless of where you are, do not let
the media and politicians dictate your humour and prevent you from “wearing a
mask”. If that is what you need to do to cope or scare the hell out of the
enemy and destroy him, then do it.
