Young men sign up to fight: that’s the heroic point

MY FELLOW Mail columnist Boris Johnson, while offering his brawn in the service of the new ‘ citizen army’ proposed last week by the outgoing British Army chief, General Sir Patrick Sanders, gave reasons why ‘we are somehow failing to entice young men and women to join the ranks’.

He suggested that this was ‘partly because of a misunderstanding of the risks.

‘Parents see graphic social media images of what happens in war, and panic at the idea that this might happen to their kids. They steer them away from the armed services on the grounds — still statistically unlikely — that they will get hurt.’

By way of demonstrating how unlikely this was, he also observed: ‘I am proud that during my tenure as PM there was not a single member of the UK armed forces who lost his or her life on active service.’

In fact, only three British soldiers have been killed while on military operations since 2014 — an extraordinary thing historically. During my lifetime of 67 years, there had previously been only one year without loss (1968).

This is for a simple reason: since 2014, when we withdrew our combat troops from Afghanistan, the British Army has not been involved in any fighting at all.

But, far from encouraging young men to sign up, this makes them much less inclined to do so.

And it should be obvious why. The biggest attraction — the chance of taking part in battle — has been removed. The possibility that you may lose your life in combat is the

point of the heroic challenge, not a disincentive.

Two of my nephews served in Afghanistan; I have spoken to them and their colleagues.

One of those ex-officers told me: ‘The year I applied, we lost more than 100 men in active combat. In the same year, there were over 5,000 applicants to Sandhurst, of whom 300 were accepted.

‘By 2016, after we’d ceased combat operations, Sandhurst struggled to fill 200 places.’

Or as one Afghan veteran told Sebastian Junger (a journalist who had been embedded with the military during that campaign): ‘Combat is such an adrenaline rush. People back home think we drink because of the bad stuff — but that’s not true. We drink because we miss the good stuff.’