Originally Posted by
Cumbrian Fell
...a number of civilian friends and neighbours, on learning of my impending deployment, quizically stated.."Can they (the 'military') just send you away like that?" Furthermore, knowing that I can be a difficult and argumentative b@stard, several naively questioned "Why don't you say No?"
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...the concept of being ordered to go on operations and complying with a lawful order (without questioning it) has been lost on those who have no contact with the military. The public assume that service personnel have greater freedom of employment and association than we can exercise.
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I won't trivialise the discussion about all the other misapprehensions many civilians have, but suffice to say that unless the public have had direct involvment of the post Cold War military environment, they haven't got a Scooby...
Not entirely surprising but slightly at odds with my experience; when I was in the recruiting world I met a lot of people whose perception of our lifestyle owed more to a 1950s Army image than to reality... "Are you allowed out at weekends?" was a common question, even from people who'd done a reasonable amount of research into joining up.