It Is Wrong To Deify The Armed Forces

It seems to me, in recent years - or at least I've only just begun to notice it - that our boys in Afghanistan and elsewhere have been deified as faultless, self-sacrificing heroes. I feel this is a fallacy. Before I continue I must assert that I do genuinely have great respect for those that choose to put their lives on the line to try and secure the safety of others, and what I am going to write next should not been taken to be dismissal of those who don't make it back to these shores alive. I know people in the army, and I know people who have been affected by the death of friends on duty.

"We believe that anyone who volunteers to serve in time of war, knowing that they may risk all, is a hero. These are ordinary people doing extraordinary things and some of them are living with the consequences of their service for life. We may not be able to prevent our soldiers from being wounded, but together we can help them get better."

Help for Heroes

These sentiments are all in the best possible faith but it is disingenuous to describe Britain as being 'in a time of war'. We are at war, but the war in Afghanistan is not a total war like the World Wars; the safety of Britain isn't under threat. Those guys that fought in WWI and its sequel are heroes because the safety of Britain and her allies were under serious threat. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars of foreign policy, closer to imperialism than defence of the realm. Because of this, a modern-day soldier does not have the same chime of heroism. A role in the army in 2011 is a job in the most mundane sense of the word, rather than a duty or an act of 'volunteer[ing]' that the Help for Heroes blur speaks of. Strictly speaking, if HfH were to help just the volunteers, then it would have a very minor task indeed. The position of army serviceman is a job that may require self-sacrifice, but it is in pursuit of money rather than as the sole defenders of a nation.

This is not an attack on Help for Heroes; those guys that come back from a warzone infirm of mind and/or body do need the extra help, and I've read various articles outlining the poor treatment they received from whichever branch of the Armed Forces they fought under. No, rather this written against the 'hero' assumption, the assumption that putting one's life on the line makes one worthy of the tag of  'hero'. I haven't got the statistics for the British Armed forces, but the American Armed Forces suffers a casualty rate of 27 per 10 000, in comparison with the American logging industry that suffers 11.7 per 10 000. The death rate in the army is just 2.3 times higher than in the lumberjacking business. Does anyone claim lumberjacks to be heroes just because there is worryingly high mortality-rate? No, because chopping down trees is not romanticised in the same way that 'fighting for one's country' is, whatever that means.

Adorning soldiers with the ‘hero’ tag has further implications than just creating a false sense of valour. By creating such a romanticised view of the army, more young men are encouraged to join despite the very real threat of serious bodily harm, or even death. A more realistic outlook needs to be taken. Like the men of the middle ages that journeyed to far-flung climes in search of fabled treasure, our modern day perspective of the army is similarly distorted, if not to the same extent. The horrors that a soldier is likely to experience is overruled by the heroic image that the armed forces still carry.

It’s also interesting that the ‘hero’ tag has survived the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite the various documented abuses carried out by British and American soldiers. None of these seem to dent its image. I think the hero defence wilts when it goes up against hard evidence with the soldiers in question disgraced, but since these abusive acts are far from the norm, the hero tag absolved the army as a whole.