Well three cheers for the retrospectroscope. We can all look back now and pass judgement on these guys who, as far as they knew back then, were at the start of what might be a long protracted conflict, going off into combat against a potentially very dangerous enemy. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make either………
Whilst you may be appalled by cluster bombs I am appalled by your crass comments on people’s reactions in war, made from your warm fluffy pit somewhere nice and safe, weeks after the event. All the guys showed concern and had obviously thought about the weapons they were asked to deliver. None of them were a’whooping and a’hollering about going off to kill some Eye-Rack-Ees. If you ask me, none of them were particularly thrilled at going into combat over Iraq, maybe having witnessed the outcomes of some of the GR missions during GW1(?) They went off and did the job that was asked of them and did it coolly and professionally. They are clearly all intelligent people well aware of the effects of their actions - and they said as much on camera.
Yes it did seem that one or two of the weapons fell short. What reaction were you expecting? The crew to commit hari-kari on landing or to fall apart in floods of tears in the air? Or perhaps to get on with the job and deal with it later? They spent time orbitting the site to plot the fall of the bombs so that the bomblets could be dealt with later. Now, I'm only a pie-eating truckie but I'm fairly confident that orbitting a site you've just bombed, drawing pictures of it, is possibly a fairly risky procedure, yet the crew did it inspite of that. Did they have to? Er, no, probably not. Were they driven by their concerns about the weapons they had just dropped? Er, yes, probably.
As for the "video game" - you might perceive it as a PS2 game from your chintz sofa at No 42 Railway Cuttings but I’m fairly confident that they had a slightly more sphincter tightening outlook on it.
As for the bravado, what do you expect? They’ve just been into combat, for one of the blokes at least it was the first time! They were probably crapping themselves! I know I would be. If I then came back in one piece I’m hardly then going to make some great speech on the futility of war and of man’s inhumanity to man just to placate the odd bleeding heart back home. Get off your high horse.
Whilst I found the BBC2 documentary fascinating stuff, I and many others are perhaps intelligent enough to understand that a lot of the things said and done in it were said and done by people under extremely trying and stressful conditions (er, war in fact) and that they might not appear terribly PC after the event.
The danger of these “fly on the wall” documentaries is that there are always going to be some who are unable to comprehend that angle.
Your comments do the crews involved a great disservice......
PS. Best comment of the show was from the Sgt armourer tooling up the GR4 with the cluster bombs.
Something along the lines of “Well, Princess Diana didn’t like these things did she? Still, she’s dead now so it doesn’t matter”
PPS. Good use of TLAs and military-doctrine type phrases. Makes you look jolly clever.
