Would you send your child to war if little chance of returning ?
 

This one was put to me by who seen more than his share of conflicts both in Uniform and working Indirectly for Government as he calls it.

Now a sprightly grandfather whose only concern is his grandkids and their attempts to redo his garden on every visit, claims he minds but gives him something to do according to his wife.

Met him down the pub by accident at a lunch time recently and we all walked back to spend an afternoon at his home as know some of of his family.

He asked a simple question
"Would you send your child to war if little chance of returning".

Now he wasn't talking of child soldier he was talking of kids old enough to serve.

He born end of WW2 with father and uncles having served and before that theirs in WW1 with in both wars quite a few never returning.

Must admit in the weeks since I still have not got an honest answer to that question from myself.

If I didn't like the child, yes.

No, I wouldn't send him. But if he himself chose to go I would respect his decision, albeit with a heavy heart.

Govts send young men to War, not families - by utilising conscription. This is why conscription is always a contentious subject.
Volunteers for War are in a different class, but only a few who volunteer for War action, have any understanding of what the action may entail.
Volunteers are often encouraged to go to War by family - and by advertising that plays on loyalty, conscience and duty.
As with all advertising, the advertising for War service always fails to mention the downsides of the product.

Having some firsthand experience with this topic I am drawn to a conversation I had many years ago with an old Army Chum's Son who was a very up and coming young F-15 Pilot who was all fussed he had been stuck in non-combat assignments while his Flight School Mates were out whizzing around piling up the Air Medals and DFC's.

I opined to him that the Retirement Check was exactly the same....Combat Flight Time or none whatsoever.

He politely looked at me with some confusion, not at the financial part, but why I would say such a thing in light of my Resume for the brief time I was in the Army.

Fast forward to a cold dark night over a certain European Country undergoing some Mud Moving by various units of NATO Air Forces....a night when another F-117 and my Mate's Son's aircraft each took SAM hits....and upon regaining control of his damaged aircraft.....Junior in one fell swoop caught up with his Classmates in the Gong thing and as he reported....with absolute clarity understood exactly what I meant years earlier.

Never mind the odds of returning....I am not sure I would be able to send my Son....or worse yet....my Daughter off to War. If I was convinced it was one that had to be fought....perhaps but only with misgivings.

A War of Convenience.....not at all.

It isn't 'your' decision to make, whether or not your son or daughter is sent to a warzone/combat area etc, if they've joined the armed forces it's the government of the day's decision. You may not agree with it but, that's largely irrelevant...

-RP

Rhino

In event of a conflict like suggesting it wouldn't be a volunteer military.

There are a number of chumps in charge in various places around this great world of ours.

I would not send a child of mine anywhere he or she did not wish to go. I would support, either their decision to go to war...or not to go.

Look at the aircraft loss rates in the 50s just in accidents, let alone war - and yet still they came. One of instructors had a photo of his BFT graduation course. He crossed out all those who had died over the years - there were only a handful left.

When you are young you are immortal - and accidents happen to other people who screw up - but not me.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Houseman

IMHO the "grandfather's" question is incorrect in its nature. In current wars (or, better say, military ops) the probability of loss reduced enormously vs. times of WWII.
From "lyrics" to numbers: AFAIK the US lost about 2K servicemembers in Afghanistan in about 15 years. In peaks, the numbers of troops deployed there exceeded 100K and on average was maybe about 50K. Thus, the loss probablity was well below 1%. And even such losses were generally considered as unacceptable and finally troops were withdrawn.
Even for the Soviet army (which is often considered as blood-thursty monsters in the West) the total loss in Afghanistan was about 15K vs 600K+ totally served there including rotation that resulted in withdrawal from there.
Thus, when modern armies are "sent to war", this does not mean "sent to death" and its a matter of the risk one accepts or not. Death toll on the roads in US (and Russia) exceeds 30K per year which some may also find unacceptable but do not escape to leave in a forest cabin.

OP
I wouldn't need to 'send him to war'. He's 25yo and a Royal Marines officer.
Regards
Baco

You take the shilling you take the War

But as much as I hate to say this, this Mil Aviation. Jet Blast seems much more appropriate. Just having a little rant because we have seen some dubious posts lately that are tenuously related to this forum.

And before I get flamed I would add I love Pprune because the posters nearly always post in relevant forums. Lets not turn this into a Reddit scenario.

Re phrase the question as it presupposes that the child is sent to war.

Would you 'send' or encourage your child to join the Armed Forces as they may be sent to war. The addition 'if you knew there was little chance of returning' is sheer sophistry.

In about 56 years of service my sons in law and daughter served 6 OOA deployments. Not a huge amount as compared with the Army. I think my daughter might have been the one nearest incoming.

The British Army of the Rhine calculated that they lost less personnel sending them to Northern Ireland than they would have done if they had stayed in Germany and had got involved in road accidents.

Silly question. You don't 'send' anyone old enough to go, they make their own choices, and try to stop them? No chance.

I joined aged 18 of my own choice.

Please excuse this rather long account of how a young man went to war 75 years ago. It may answer some questions and attract others.

My home turf is "Gaining a R.A.F. Pilot's Brevet in WWII".

The extracts below are from two of my earlier Posts on that (the best of all !) Threads.

............................................................ .....


Let's start at the verynbeginning - a very good place to start!

Then came the War. First was the Phoney War, and we sang "We'll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line (fat chance!). Then came the Blitzkrieg and Dunkirk. The song died on our lips. The long unreal summer of 1940 began with the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard, and ended with the miracle of the Battle of Britain, and Churchill's immortal tribute to the "Few".

For twenty years boys had read W.E. John's "Biggles" books, and dreamed of becoming their hero. These decades were the years of record-breaking long distance flights and five bob (five minute!) "hops" at Air Circuses. Very few had ever flown, and most would never fly in their entire lives (You'll never get ME up in one of those things!).

Just to have a pilot's licence made you a hero in popular esteem (much as are astronauts today). My father often quoted a quip from the first War: "Join the Army and see the World - Join the Air Force and see the Next!". But flying instruction, at £3 an hour (£3 was a good weekly wage for a man) was far out of our reach. Learning to fly had been an impossible dream - until now.

So, with Churchill's words ringing in their ears, just about every red-blooded young man in Britain (and the Empire), with School Certificate and in the age group (17 and a half to 23) flocked to volunteer as RAF aircrew. I was one of them. All wanted to be pilots, of course. There would be many hurdles ahead: it was reckoned that only 2% of all original applicants got to wear the coveted double wing. People were almost down on their knees to get into the RAF, it could afford to be fussy. Most of the rejections were in the first phase.

Just before Christmas 1940, I was called to Padgate (near Manchester) to appear before the Selection Board. They must have been having a lean day, for they accepted me. I scraped through the Medical Board, much to my mother's surprise, for I had a "Weak Chest". This nondescript ailment was then common; the smoke and dust of the cities having packed our lungs with soot. I took the Oath, and enlisted as an Aircraftman, Second Class (AC2 or "erk") - the lowest form of life in the RAF - "u/t" (under training) as a Pilot or Observer (at their option). To seal the bargain, they gave me the "King's Shilling" (a day's pay), (actually it was a "florin" - two bob - inflation had already set in!)
I was in, a full member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.

Get fell in !
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Second thoughts.

Now that the end of my training was in sight, and before I finish with Hawarden, I think it might be useful for me, and hopefully interesting to you, for me to look over the last fifteen months for some loose ends I've left, and for things left unsaid which perhaps ought to have ben said.

To begin wth, why did I volunteer for the RAF in the first place? Patriotism is almost a dirty word today, but that was at the heart of it. Of course we were thrilled to have the chance to learn to fly for free (what youngster, even today, wouldn't be?) But deep down we all knew that this was a job which had to be done, and we young men of our generation, who had the fitness and schooling to do it, must step forward, for there was no one else.

We only had to look around at the devastation of our towns and cities, and the massacre of men, women and children in the Blitz. It was our duty to stop this, and we would be less than men if we didn't do it.

Having said that, I must admit that for me (and, I rather suspect, for many others, another less creditable reason may have played some part. We can all laugh now at Corporal Jones ("they don't like it up 'em!") and at the bloodcurdling yells of bayonet practice on TV. But the real thing isn't funny at all.

Can you really envisage what it takes to thrust six inches of cold steel into another human being's guts, twist it so that it doesn't stick (doing still more damage), pull it out and then do it again and again (against all your civilised instincts?)

I remember a terrible chapter in "All Quiet on the Western Front", where the German narrator, marooned between the lines in a shellhole with a French poilu, with whom he at first becomes friends, is forced by circumstances to disembowel his new "oppo". (Hitler banned the book in Germany as pacifist propaganda). As usual, Kipling has the words for it:

"I do not love my country's foes / Nor call 'em ''eroes - Still , / Where is the sense in 'ating those / 'Oom you are paid to kill?"

There was a way out: accept the risk of death for yourself, but volunteer for a technical arm like the Air Force or the Navy, where you will kill clinically, at a distance, where you won't see " the whites of his eyes". Was this a form of cowardice? Probably. All I know is, I take my hat off to the PBI, who had to do the dirty work.

I would like to hear what my fellow ex-war PPruners have to say about this.

Danny42C.

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Have to say that when, aged 17, I joined the TA, actually going to war wasn't my plan.
Six years later, when I joined the RAF, I understood, rather better, for what I was signing up. I took a chance; they taught me to fly - deal.


Hear, hear!

Fitter, the point I was trying to make above was that a parent may be supportive, encouraging, or discouraging their offspring to enlist. Approach the OP in that light and it makes more sense.

I have a nephew who enlisted in the Army Reserves. His parents disapproved. When he got his papers he refused to go. Had his parents approved then I suspect he may have shown a little more spunk.

I don't think that any of my intake of Squippers thought, in 1986, that we'd actually go to war.
Of course, we'd grown up in the cold war and it was very much the norm.
That one of us would end up being killed in action seemed unthinkable back then.

Would you send your child to war if little chance of returning?




When's the last time this came up: Japan, and the Kamikaze pilots?
A Van has addressed the chances. Pretty good, compared to a few generations ago.