Abandoned Army

SIR – I read with dismay that the Government is going to exclude alleged misconduct by members of the Army in Northern Ireland from future legislation protecting former Service personnel.

Although no government will admit it, the Northern Ireland situation was as much a war as that in Iraq or Afghanistan. Indeed, more than 1,000 Service personnel were killed in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1999.

I served in Belfast from 1972 to early 1974, as an acting sergeant in the RAMC, at the height of the conflict. I witnessed brave deeds and also saw the effects of guerrilla warfare on both the civilian and military communities.

The mistake of our current Defence Secretary, her predecessors and many MPS (including John Mercer) is to think that Northern Ireland was not a warlike situation, as it is part of the United Kingdom – and we don’t have wars in the United Kingdom, do we? Yet a soldier killed by a bullet was as much dead on the streets of west Belfast in 1972 as a dead soldier in the terrain of Afghanistan.

Any case brought by the Crown against former soldiers for alleged historic offences in Northern Ireland leads to only one winner: the lawyers. The final result may be an acquittal due to a lack of evidence.

The losers will be the charged former soldiers, who, now well into old age, may suffer from the delay that this absurd decision will have on their lives. These soldiers served their Queen and country.

I still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from events I saw in the early 1970s. Unlike those who served in more recent conflicts I have had very little help from the Government, and this is true of all my comrades from Northern Ireland. Dr John Black

Bristol