Hounding old soldiers feeds Northern Ireland’s cycle of recrimination

SIR – Thousands of people in Ireland live with a sense of justice unserved, but have accepted this for the greater good. Yes, the peace process has allowed terrorists to walk free, but it has also brought an end to the killing – hundreds more people are alive today, and thousands more are not grieving because of the double sacrifice that the relatives of the victims have made in losing loved ones yet bravely agreeing to end the cycle of recrimination.

Hounding ex-servicemen over Ireland plays to a very narrow gallery and undermines the ethos and larger sense of duty which brought them to risk their lives in the service of their nation in the first place.

Many, if not all of those who may have done wrong, found themselves in an extraordinary situation into which they had been sent by politicians and ultimately the nation itself. Men who volunteered to defend hearth and home from the Cold War threat could not have known that it would be like this.

How many of us can imagine walking in conspicuous uniform down the street of a town which looks like the one in which we grew up, which speaks the language we speak, which wears the fashions we wear, and yet fear that at every corner a bomb or sniper might snuff out our life, or suspect that every housewife we pass and who looks just like our mum may be feeding our movements to the man behind the trigger?

Much the same is true of Iraq and Afghanistan, where our soldiers thought they were being sent to do good for a grateful people and instead found uncertainty, fear, maiming and risk of death – and then persecution back home.

By our skewed modern standards thousands of criminals will be lying in Flanders Fields, too. How should we remember them in two weeks? Dig the corpses up and try them? Or accept that it is done, and let the scars heal?

To allow servicemen to bear the whole burden of responsibility after the awful events of war, while lawyers grow fat and politicians – including former terrorists – enjoy comfortable careers and retirement, is wrong. Victor Launert

Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

SIR – Despite the Northern Ireland Assembly being defunct for almost two years, the republican paramilitaries have not resumed their campaign of violence.

We should be thankful for this, but ask: why would an IRA splinter group restart the conflict because border checks were put in place to monitor EU technical standards and prevent the smuggling of consumer goods?

Why would Irishmen risk their lives and liberty for this, but not for the devolved assembly?

In my view the “backstop” is a cynical ploy to keep the United Kingdom in the EU customs union and single market indefinitely, thus preventing this country from becoming more competitive. This must not happen. Donald Fleming

Glasgow