Could you be a soldier?
AT THE entrance to the first display at the brilliantly transformed and newly reopened £23million National Army Museum, you are invited to make a judgment: “Could I be a soldier?” My answer would always have been no. I don’t think that I was ever fit enough, brave enough or maybe even man enough.
And yet if I were just a few years older, I would have done national service and maybe have fought in Korea. (There were 100,000 British troops there.)
Were I my father’s age, I would have been in the Second World War. Today the Army numbers only 100,000 in all and it’s shrinking. Most people in the UK have never seen a soldier. In my generation, as children we collected lead soldiers and staged mock battles. Today’s kids play on-screen war games blasting remote enemies with the touch of a button – virtual reality – as do some of today’s military.
But you only have to enter the first (Soldier) section of the museum to get a sense of what it is to be the real thing: on the ground; in extreme heat; in extreme cold; in extreme battle; what they wear; the amount of kit they must carry; what they endure; what they eat.
You can listen to many spoken accounts of how they feel about being a soldier. There are recordings of men talking about relying on each other in circumstances of peril and celebrating the comradeship that brings, perhaps impossible to find anywhere else in life.
There is also the voice of a soldier still traumatised by serving in Ulster: “Anyone with an Irish accent couldn’t talk to me – red alert.”
You can learn a lot about modern soldiering and history. My goodness, some of the old uniforms on display are beautiful – and not just the high-ups. I particularly fancied the wonderful drummer’s mitre cap from 1850 and then I remembered that unless my film-going has misled me, these drummers were the cannon fodder of all cannon fodder, often marching into battle at the front with only their drums for protection.
THE National Army Museum is not a new institution. Its founding father was Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, who came up with the phrase and strategy of “winning hearts and minds” as the way to bring around the local population during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s.
Founded in 1960 in temporary quarters, then in its own building opened in 1971 by Her Majesty the Queen, the museum was a fusty place. You had to be an enthusiast to enjoy it. This new version, also opened by the Queen a fortnight ago, is the opposite of fusty. It is light, airy and beautiful. Will it win hearts and minds?
It is certainly an absorbing experience and an entertaining one and as interactive as all modern museums should be. You can assemble a rifle – even I could eventually; shoot from a tank; dress up as a guardsman with busby (as long as you’re little); crawl under an armoured car (as long as you’re limber); and endure a marching drill where you stand in front of a screen, do your best to follow orders and are screamed at and abused by a filmic regimental sergeant-major. (Actually I don’t know if it’s a regimental sergeant-major but that’s what they legendarily are.)
And there’s an Action Zone, which attacks the senses for several minutes with the noise and mayhem of battle.
A large gallery is devoted to paintings of battle, infantry and cavalry charges and carnage, the work of war artists and soldier-painters – some hugely panoramic – and a vast model of the field of battle at Waterloo with an electronic account ROYAL: As worn by Princess Elizabeth in the WRAC and a Scottish poppy, right of how it was fought and won. As you might expect the array of paintings reveals the attitudes of the times, celebrating Victorian British power achieved by gun and bayonet, glorifying v i c t o r y, but others depict injury and sacrifice. For me the most affecting is the slowmotion film shot in 2011 by official war artist Mark Neville from a British armoured Husky as it travels along the road through a market in Helmand province, Afghanistan, showing the bleakness of the people’s circumstances and their general indifference to the military presence which is a fact of life. Nothing happens but it is strangely powerful.
But hearts and minds? Every now and again the exhibition’s visitors have the opportunity to press a button asking whether we should have a proper army or a small force just to secure our safety or no army at all. Through the centuries our Army has performed in causes we feel proud of and others many now apologise for – the balance of pride and shame shifts over time. We do not question the rightness of defeating Hitler but how many other military campaigns have that moral clarity?
In thinking about the First World War, we separate the sacrifice of millions of men from the horrifying strategy of the generals – lions led by donkeys.
There have been many times in our imperial history when cruelty seems to have been the order of the day. In Iraq and Afghanistan we may question the judgment and ethics of our politicians but generally our soldiers have our admiration, strange though it is to support the doer but not the deed. We respect their courage and mourn their sacrifice when they are killed or injured in our name although we don’t truly know if it was worth it.
IT IS nearly 1,000 years since Britain experienced military invasion but our imperial history and active military role in the world has meant that the Army has an important place in our culture. Until not too long ago the history taught in schools revolved around centuries of warfare. Now the Army is at the periphery of our vision, its role in keeping us safe from attack feels less important than the security services and police.
The Society section of the museum’s exhibition is rich in posters, pictures, newspaper front pages, advertisements and fashion items that owe everything to Army uniform as well as army uniforms that actually were fashion. As you emerge from the Soldier section, knowing a bit more than you did, you are asked again: “Could you be a soldier?” No, definitely not. But I wish – back in the day – I’d had a fabulous gold-braided hussar’s jacket like Jimi Hendrix.
The National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HT; telephone: 020 7730 0717. Admission is free