The reasons for joining the armed forces are many and varied. However, I would be willing to bet no-one ever thought to themselves;
I think I'll join the infantry, so i can go and fight a re-run of an 18th century colonial war, against an enemy who has never been defeated on his own turf.
This enemy, in the late 1970's and 1980's, despite hardly any food or supplies, and in spite of air strikes and artillery against his home villages, defeated a significant proportion of the second largest standing army ever to have existed.
The terrain this fixture will take place in is some of the most inhospitable in the world, in places a moonscape that will make most of the technological advances of the last 200 years a costly unreliable irrelevance.
Our logistics will be so poor that my immediate superiors may have to decide if I will be re-supplied with ammunition OR water OR food, today.
If I suffer a serious wound in combat, I would enjoy the irony of being helicoptered out of battle, in mind numbing fear and agony, with little or no pain relief, overflying verdant fields of opium poppies on my way.
Upon my late night concealed return to blighty, I would relish the prospect of spending time on a mixed ward in a civilian hospital, laying for several hours in the shit from my overflowing colostomy bag.
It will be hard to concentrate my thoughts on how far the MRSA infection I have contracted in the hospital will spread, but like the good squaddie I am, I'll do my best.
As was said in my day, with the inflection of irony that only the trained man/woman can truly intone;
"Nothing but the best for our lads".
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