What motivated/influenced you to do a job whilst being apathetic to the bigger picture or general, as opposed to specific, purpose of that job? Or would you say the general purpose are ideals like freedom, liberty, etc.
I'd like to say change, it may sound a stupid thing to say, looking at the news you'd guess nothing had changed.
But as a soldier on the ground, returning to these places every other year, i saw change, change for the better.
I think as a soldier the more tours you go on, the better chance you have at seeing and understand the bigger picture, the reasons your there and the impact that you have.
By change i don't mean on a political level etc, even though in both Iraq and Afghan this has happened and i'm glad that it has.
I mean small changes.. small changes that in the grand scheme of things might not seem much to a politician sitting behind his desk, the sort of things that happen so frequently that the news teams never bother to report on, yet they really should, because it's these small changes, that have helped to have the biggest impact, both to the people it directly affects and to a soldiers reasoning of "why the hell am i here"
I'll use an example again if i may,
Iraq -Basra city centre- Op telic
I'll take you back to my first tour of iraq, i was 18, still a kid.
We'd only been out on the ground for a week, i was a rifleman in a section and was told that we'd be going out on patrol in the market area of Basra.
Basra market at the time was a no go area, it's a series of dense alleyways populated by market stales selling anything ranging from prunes to PKMS, apples to AKs. Not only this, the area was full of rape houses, where women and children as young as five would regularly be taken, raped and most of the time killed, the bodies dumped on the side of the alleyway after the people had finished with them, this ranged from ex baath party members that had got away, but still wanted the "Luxuries" that they used to have, or members of the iraq police or insurgents.
This picture is taken at the sort of entrance to the market, it was as far as we'd be allowed to patrol.
I remember going out on patrol to the same area but at night a few weeks after, i was lead scout and we went firm at pretty much the same spot, all i could hear drifting up the the alleyway were the sounds of women screaming, it's something i still have problems with to this day.
A month or two into the tour we were tasked with ops deep into the market, this ranged from Ops on confirmed locations of baath party members, insurgent strongholds and the rape houses.
I saw some horrific things and come face to face with some of the most disgusting humans on this planet, my blood boils just thinking about it.
We did almost 200 Operations in and around the market and a lot of hearts and minds work with the locals, the result? was this
this picture was taken at the end of the tour, i'm standing in the center of the market place, we've just had a lovely cuppa tea in the building next to me with a local who i became friends with during the tour, further down, we'd be greeted with prunes....LOTS of prunes by a group of women selling clothes, i ate so many i felt sick
Later in the tour we'd sort out a football game between the children and owners of some of the stales and us... we lost, miserably, but it was a great laugh.
Just before the tour ended we'd do one last patrol through the market place, again at night.
This time there were no screams.
It's this sort of change that i loved making on any tour, it made the lives of the locals much easier, it help us win the hearts and minds of the people, and it gave me a reason and excuse as to why i was going out there.
Again i'm sorry it's hard to follow, this is the first time i've really spoken about experiences in any sort of depth from my army life and it's very difficult for me to separate the good from the bad in my head.
Cheers
David
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