Human cost of combat

SIR – Armchair warriors often deplore attempts to depict our soldiers as anything other than unemotional killing machines (Comment, January 13). In fact, service personnel are intelligent human beings who, on occasion, are called upon to do some very unpleasant things.

They do so with supreme professionalism, but to imagine that there is no emotional impact is naive. In the First World War the emotional impact of sustained horror was seen as cowardice, and many very brave individuals were maligned.

Maybe the current recruitment campaigns have erred on the soft side, but anyone called upon to do what our service personnel do should know that there is support for those living with the after-effects. This comes nowhere near to denigrating the Army motto “Be the Best”.

Lt-col Charles Holden (retd) Micheldever, Hampshire