The Young British Soldier

There are many ways to die in Afghanistan.  Road-side bombs, rocket attacks and ambushes are all every-day risks, acknowledged and accepted by everyone in uniform out here.  The spectre of capture is one which even the most battle hardened soldier prefers to ignore.  We may have the most sophisticated weaponry, surveillance and communication equipment available but it is all of little use if we are unlucky enough to fall into enemy hands.   For all our technological advancement the enemy hasn't changed much since we were here last in the 19th century.  When Rudyard Kipling visited the North-West Frontier the bodies of captured British soldiers were routinely subjected to horrifying mutilations by the Afghans.  Back then, soldiers believed it was far better to take your own life than fall victim to the Afghans.  

This week I observed the "Personnel Recovery Operation" for 20 year old Highlander Scott MacLaren of D Company 4 Scots.  What started out as a massive Search and Rescue Mission tragically became a recovery mission. Witnesses have claimed that Highlander MacLarens body was paraded around like a trophy by his Taliban captors and  David Ridley, the Wiltshire and Swindon Coroner, recorded that Highlander McLaren had been ‘assaulted, tortured and ultimately executed’ by insurgents. No one will ever really know why he left the relative safety of his camp and comrades.  In the same way, I know we will never know what actually happened to Highlander MacLaren.  Whatever the truth, I can't help but hope that, if I am ever in the same situation I can follow the advice of Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1895, in a prophetic and apposite poem entitled "The Young British Soldier" - the last verse of which reads:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!