[Closed] Would you go? Would you die for your country?

I would not go to war for my country whatever the scenario it is just a lump of rock that may be right or wrong but it does not deserve my unswaying loyality and blood to protect it - notleast as those who want the power/resources and give the orders are very unlikely to be leading the line or risking their own lives for their cause. pressganging conscription etc
No way WW1 at all yes for WW2 - what was the alternative?
I would fight for what I believed in if their was no alternative for queen and country frankly f@ck em they can fight for that jingoistic nonesense

I would fight for my family and friends.. and my neighbours..and I guess even my countrymen... IF and only if they were faced with imminent mortal danger from an invading horde..

"it is just a lump of rock"

I'm not at all patriotic but that is just incorrect.

Elfinsafety -Member

I'm eternally grateful to, and have enormous respect for, those who had no choice

I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. I tend to have more respect for those who had a choice eg, the German anti-Nazi resistance and Italian partisans.

[b][i]"it's easy to sit behind a keyboard and say 'yeah, I'd go'"[/i][/b]

No, it's easy to figure out that most people are prepared to fight when their country is threaten by a foreign aggressor - history shows this to be true.

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MussEd - Member

I'd like to think I'd have signed up for the International Brigade and gone to Spain in 1936 but no way of knowing...thankfully.

Yeah I've also often thought about that.......it takes a serious amount of guts to volunteer to fight in a war which doesn't directly affect you.

My father did exactly that. As a 19 year old kid/man he left Argentina to volunteer to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. He got there before the International Brigades were even formed ffs. He initially joined the Spanish republican air force (was shot down) and later was transferred to the Garibaldi Brigade after the International Brigades were formed. He saw very heavy fighting (part of the reason South Americans were placed with the Garibaldi Brigade was because the brigade sustained such heavy casualties and they needed the numbers) Towards the very end of the war he received serious shrapnel injuries and was removed from front-line duties. When the General Franco eventually triumphed he escaped over the Pyrenees into France where he was promptly interned in a concentration camp with other former republican soldiers. Luckily he managed to escape with a friend (many former republican soldiers were later handed over to the Nazis who used them as slave labour until they died)

After going through all that shit you might have forgiven him if he had decided to go home and have a quiet life. But he decided that the war in Spain was just a prelude in the [i]big[/i] war against fascism. In 1940 he arrived in Britain to volunteer to fight in the Free French air force. He did so by lying that his parents were French - his grandmother was French and he had been fluent in French since a child. Although he trained as a Lancaster navigator recurring ear problems (altitude related) forced him to take him a desk job. Funnily enough although he was happy to talk freely about his time on the Free French air force he rarely talked about Spain. Spain was a truly nasty war and he only occasionally gave snippets of information about it, such as how it had once taken him all the willpower he could muster not to defecate in his trousers when he was was ordered to advance under very heavy shelling across a river, or the time he refused to go on firing squad detail, "I came to Spain to kill the enemy, not my own side" he apparently told them.

He did eventually return to Argentina, but only for post traumatic stress to eventually catch up with him (not something which he would ever admit to though) he drank far more than was healthy. I can't imagine that I would have had the guts to go through all that myself, but there was nothing particularly special about my father - just a man who had ideals based on the fact that all people are equal. So who knows ?

Quite a difficult question to answer but I would go and fight if the country was faced with an foreign aggressor, as in WW2.
I would not go and fight in WW1, the way the soldiers were treated was absolutely shocking (I would like to see the then establishment investigated for the way they treated our troops in WW1) but as others have said did the average man know what he was heading into?
With the way information is available today I believe it would be much easier for average man to make an assessment of the foreign threat the country faced and base their decision on that information and not what the government was telling them. Hopefully future governments will find it impossible to carry out wars like Iraq and Afghanistan due to the availability of information.

IMO

+1 Piha

al the critical point in the sentence was that the country, however you wish to define it, may be right or wrong. Yes people, traditions etc make it different from other lumps of rock. We have lived here a while we like it it and it has good things here but so does every other lump of rock just different things and different people
Should I die for the BBC, NHS, liberal western rights, capitalism, a rubbish football team, loads of people I dont know who also live here ? constitutional monarchy? A coalition govt I did not vote for? to liberate the Iraqi [s]oil[/s] people?what exactly?
I would fight, if forced , for what I beleive in not what the country stands for these may match or they may not.

Not for my country, but I joined up at 16 into the British Army... Saw a few sights, got a few t-shirts, and went to too many bun fights for friends who where beaten by the clock..

So, yeah, I was willing, but thankfully I didn't have to.

I left after 12 years due to a broken back, otherwise I dare say I'd have a cracking tan about now.

I was in the army between the ages of 16-22, so I'm pretty sure yes.

Elfinsafety
I'm glad I live in a country where I won't have to go to war. And I'm eternally grateful to, and have enormous respect for, [b]those who had no choice[/b], but fought so that I can sit here in the comfort of my home, typing out these thoughts.

What about those who had and have a choice? Those who volunteer so there is no need for conscription. Those who do it so you can maintain that comfort. Do they not deserve respect?

Yes, I would for both but might shoot some commanding officers on the way too for their incompetence.

Junkyard - Member

Should I die for the BBC, NHS, liberal western rights, capitalism, a rubbish football team, loads of people I dont know who also live here ? constitutional monarchy? A coalition govt I did not vote for? to liberate the Iraqi oil people?what exactly?

Junkyard - you appear to be talking about the Leninist principle of [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeatism ]"revolutionary defeatism"[/url] !

Yeah, sure, there's a lot of sense in that. But the defeat of an imperialist power is often a prerequisite for the defeat of your own ruling class. For example, do you think the Bolivan people could even begin to liberate themselves from an oppressive ruling class if troops from the US were landing on their soil ?

I have absolutely no idea. Certainly can't put myself in the shoes of my grandads or great grandad, just no idea of the world they were in. I know they didn't think they had much choice, so probably I'd feel the same.

That said, there's not much call for gimp-legged shortsighted osteoperotic coeliac diabetics on the front line so I think I'd be quite low down the list to be asked.

Well, it's hardly likely to happen now, unless I get asked to join the "Home Guard", but if we were in danger of invasion from some of the dreck of humanity of which we have examples past and present - ie: communists, fascists, nazis, religious maniacs and the like, then I hope I'd be brave enough to kill more than one, to help put us on the winning side.

The desire to live in a meritocratic secular republic, notwithstanding...

[i]I would not go and fight in WW1, the way the soldiers were treated was absolutely shocking[/i]

It's difficult, if not impossible to apply todays concept of personal individuality to the mindset of the early Edwardian people of Britain in the first part of the twentieth century. They were quite simply different people to us, they had a different world view, and a different appreciation of their part in that world, and that applies to all strata of that society.

I would happily defend my country against foreign/political aggression directed against us (be that here or abroad).

i have no idea, and i'm very grateful for my ignorance.

i'm enjoying a very comfortable, uneventful life, i'm very lucky.

i am truly humbled by the actions and sacrifice of others, who ask nothing of me in return.

i'm also a little bit cross with our ruling/political class but then i'm an ignorant idiot, i've never done anything useful or selfless in my life, i've never made a difficult decision. it's easy for me to criticise, maybe i shouldn't.

Yes I would.

Maybe the lazy workshy class the uk seems to breed could be signed up for compulsory service, learn some discipline and values

The principle of conscription might be sound but we don't always want the b*ggers; got enough to deal with at the best of times!

To defend our Great Britain from oppression (foreign or domestic), yes.

you appear to be talking about the Leninist principle of "revolutionary defeatism" !

I'd kill for the right cause, but I don't think I would give my life. Its easier to live with the shame then to live with a fatal wound.

Well, if Junkyard isn't sure about 'revolutionary defeatism', I'd like to think I am.................No, I would not fight for the 'country' because that kind of patriotism means in effect fighting for those in charge to continue crapping on us, and to turn our guns on people like us in other countries. My allies are ordinary folk in other countries, not the bosses in my own. My enemies are those who try to wrap us up in national flags and bullshit ideologies to make us cannon fodder for wars where the bottom line is about which major capitalist power controls the world economy (yes, even in WW2 - British, French and US governments loved fascism in the 30s when they hoped it would wipe out communist and anarchist workers organisations).

So no for both WW1, WW2 and all the Western-sponsored wars and skirmishes that have followed - but yes to internationalism and events like the Spanish Civil War, and yes to liberation struggles across the globe (if they need help from supporters abroad).Am I a pacifist? No, but if I have to take up arms I want to be sure it's for the right reasons. Am I prepared to die? If I have to, but again supporting something I believe in rather than the right for those with money and power to carry on screwing the rest of us. Am I scared of death and a lilly-livered coward? You betcha (I'm even scared of the consequences of writing this and getting hatemail)...........but if you don't stand up for what you believe, then where are you? Now I guess I'll need that bike helmet!

So, you'd be happy to fight fascists who threatened subjugation elsewhere, but not if they threatened to invade and subjugate your own country?

How peculiar.

As Chris Hitchens has said of modern Left politics - "See just how deeply the termites have dug", indeed...

The concept of a Garibaldi brigade intrigued me, (the hobnob brigade rule at work) luckily wikipedia came to the rescue with this faultlessly accurate account -

The Garibaldi biscuit was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general and leader of the fight to unify Italy. During the war they had to use limited rations to prepare food, the result was a simple biscuit. In faraway Tuscany, Giuseppe Garibaldi sat down for afternoon tea only to realise he had sat on an Eccles cake which had been delivered from his good English friend Gordon Bennett, to which he exclaimed the very name: "Gordon Bennett!", coining the phrase 'Gordon Bennett'. As Giuseppe jumped up in shock he looked down to see the part of the Eccles cake which wasn't plastered to his arsecrack, and decided from this moment onwards the squashed Eccles cake would be eaten by millions and would be named... THE GARIBALDI.

I am unsure as to why you think the view above reflects modern left politics what with it being leninist in orgin and being about 100 years old. Ah well served to make your political point I suppose
which hitchens are you quoting btw.
I dont disagree with most of thepost above but nazis clearly needed to be defeated most wars are the struggle for power and wealth fought by the powerless and the poor. They sell them much better these days where they do it for your liberites or to enshrine other people's liberties but only where it suits them and certainly not universally - see our mates in Saudi or the military rulers in ****stan for examples

I notice someone has posted the tag 'White Feathers', no doubt as a sly dig at those who've said that they wouldn't fight.

It's a strange irony, that the accusation of cowardice comes from someone using the anonymity of the tags, rather than presenting their thoughts in the open, in a post....

Unless you have been involved in close combat, you can't know how you will react. I suppose the 'fight or flight' instinct would kick in, and perhaps lead you to actions which otherwise you would be incapable of performing.

I remember playing Call of Duty 2, a few years ago. A game set in WW2, with scenes from the Normandy Landings and other 'theatres' of War. It struck me, as I became absorbed in the game, that the reality of such a situation would surely be unimaginably horrific. To have to take the life of some poor bugger, probably not much unlike yourself, to serve the ends of people far removed from the situation you yourself were in. Real War is never as simple as 'shoot the bad guys'.

Perhaps even more than those who serve, I have immense respect and admiration for people like journalists, who risk their lives and may come under fire from both sides, to bring us images and accounts of the reality of the situation, Medics, aid workers and all other unarmed neutral Humanitarians.

I know I'm not brave enough to do what they do. And they do it completely of their own volition. Now that, in my book, is true bravery, yet it is often the Generals and Admirals who will head the Victory Parades...

I'd prefer not to kill some bloke just like me, who has kids and family, no matter what country he's from or what his leaders are proposing. I'd die for the direct saving of my kids in a hostile situation, but not for anyone else - certainly not for the political concept of 'freedom'. I don't go along with the idea that a life is only valuable based on someone else's perception of the 'values' of the nation state it exists in.

this is such a difficult question, yes, and no, the world has shrunk immensly since the great wars, back then i suppose without hesitation as it was clear as black and white is
Today however with all modern marvels media and such like im not so sure i,d like to know whom is pulling the strngs
Ive never encountered war but have encountered a few people in my life who have, even come accross someone as a youngster who returned from combat and found him on a bed with both wrists slit and me standing in a pool of his blood, he survived, i never knew then what happened (was just to juvenile) but know it must be a terrible thing, i recall that image crystal clear
so the answer to the OP is i dont know and hope to never find out

Not a cat in hell's chance. a) I'm colourblind so useless in a combat situation (yes, I know that's balls but it's the stance of the armed forces so who am I to argue) and b) thankfully I do a job that is vital to the war effort back in Blighty.
I wouldn't hesitate to shoot someone in a homeland invasion situation though.

Yes; But I'd be in intelligence or designing new weapons of mass d...

dekadanse

I think it is fairly clear that WW2 was a war of defence for the UK - even if you don't think defending our parters was the right thing to do I am fairly sure without Britons fighting Germany would have overrun the UK, the usa probably would not have entered the European war and many more would have died.

Lessor of two evils.

I'd say yes, but be in the 98% that would shoot, but not to kill or hit..

iDave - very well put, that sums up how I feel too.

Far too many internet warriors on here.

Isn't it extraordinary that it's almost a hundred years ago that WW1 started, and also that the ordinary man in the street/trench did not have the right to vote back then. In many ways that conflict had more in common with the Napoleonic era than today: It was normal for one of the big European superpowers (France, Prussia or Austria) just to march in to someone elses country, just for the hell of it and the ordinary soldier was just expected to stand still on the battlefield and be shot to pieces. The cowards of that conflict were the respective governments who failed to get together in 1915 to call a halt to the carnage.
Attitudes to war had definately changed by 1939; except for a wee Austian gent with a daft moustache.
I would have fought for my country against Hitler, back then (except I,m half German!).
Can't envisage a modern conflict where I would do simerlarly.

Ive never encountered war but have encountered a few people in my life who have, even come across someone as a youngster who returned from combat and found him on a bed with both wrists slit and me standing in a pool of his blood

If you just look at the Falklands War which, with no disrespect to those who fought and died in it, was far from being the most dirty and horrific war ever fought, the long term consequences are truly staggering.

A "mere" 255 British personnel died in that conflict, but by 2002 an estimated 264 Falklands veterans had committed suicide.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1758301.stm ]Falkland veterans claim suicide toll[/url]

And Argentina is catching up. 649 Argentines died in that conflict, and to date, approximately 500 Argentine veterans have committed suicide - the number continues to increase unabated.

I believe jahwomble on here might have been an eventual victim of a past conflict.

Wars are nasty businesses which don't fit in very comfortably with what is natural human behaviour. Despite what some, including Hollywood, have in the past, been so keen to convince us.

It's just a shame that we still have world leaders such as Bush and Blair who still get euphoric at the thought of going to war. It is no coincident that the most outspoken world leader against rushing to war in Iraq was Jacques Chirac. Because despite being a dodgy crook, Jacques Chirac had experienced the full horrors of war when he served in the Algerian war.

I shall always remember when Jacques Chirac responded to Bush's comment just before the the Iraq war that "the game's over", with "it's not a game and it isn't over". Chirac also asked Blair at a EU summit in Brussels how he could look at his son Leo in the eye if he was the leader responsible for starting a war with Iraq. Chirac failed to understand that callous low-lifes like Bush and Blair don't care about other people's children.

I don't know - I cannot possibly put myself in that situation. When I was young enough to be conscripted, I was totally opposed to war and had the mind of a conscientious objector. Now, I'm older, well, I'm too old.
Wars should be fought like this - and the people should force it!
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headfirst - Member

Far too many internet warriors on here.

I would interested in knowing who you think the "internet warriors" are.

From what I can see, most people appear to be saying that they would prepared to defend their country against a foreign aggressor. That falls very much into line with what is generally the historical reaction in such a situation.

Although many have expressed the opinion that they are not entirely sure how they would react in reality.

Hardly "internet warrior" talk.

I'd be a conscientious objector for sure. I'm not saying I would have had a solution to the problems in 1914 and 1945 but all I know is war is not it.

I think I'd fight in defence of my country, but I'll be buggered if I'm fighting in defence of somebody elses country or on behalf of a bunch of selfserving politicians who see "gains" (whatever they may be) to be had by going to war with somebody else.

Realistically these days, if another world war comes to Britain, we'll be lucky if we have more than a couple of minutes warning before the nukes hit and it'll then be over very, very quickly.

"lest we forget"

Amen to that...

I think I'd fight in defence of my country, but I'll be buggered if I'm fighting in defence of somebody elses country or on behalf of a bunch of selfserving politicians who see "gains" (whatever they may be) to be had by going to war with somebody else.

I share the same sentiment. If it was to defend my country I would like to think I would have the courage to fight. I do however feel sorry for todays armed forces. They are deployed seemingly on the whim of idiot politicians. War should only ever be seen as a last result, otherwise it is just brave young men being sent to die by stupid old men trying to prove some sort of political point.

For the record though I do think our forces are fighting a foe that definitely needs to be tackled in Afghanistan.

Let's not get into all the rights and wrongs of war, eh people?

Not today.

Yep i would, no hesitation. I love this country and proud to be British! And i am sure everybody on here would really if it meant protecting there wives and children!

No. Conscientious objector here as well.
And i have done my time in the forces, fortunately not involved in any conflicts, but i have been armed with live ammunition and really struggled because i wasn't sure if i would have the balls to fire on another human.
War is not the answer.

I think that even though people/soldiers go to war to fight for their country (or any other ideal), they usually end up fighting for each other.

Joined when I was 17 left 5 years later tried to rejoin @ 35 and was told I was to old! thank god.

Bring back NS 😀

Mr Woppit, well I guess I have fought (as in, had street battles with) fascists in this country - seem to have had all too many run-ins with the NF and BNP over the last 30 or so years, and the truth is they're hardly the master race if confronted by a few determined folk. But no, I wouldn't join my 'masters' under the flag of empire to fight whoever they tell me to fight, just because it's in their interests to crank up a cynical anti-fascist stance at certain points in history. Like I said, the British ruling class were quite happy for the Nazis to run amock in the 30s while they did a Nelson.

TJ - looks like we're feted to disagree about most things, even though we are never diametrically opposed. If you really believe that WW2 was 'democracy vs tyranny' pure and simple, then you're not the rapier wit I took you to be. Look beneath the surface, TJ, and read your history books better. And with that I go to bed while I'm still capable of reading the Beano.