Tim Collins: I have no regrets about my Gulf War speech
[Colonel Tim Collins commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment in Iraq, 2003.]
I recall the first day of the second Gulf War clearly. It was the day I made a speech that quickly became very famous, and which has now been criticised by a former soldier as having left my men "fearful of the dangers that faced them". The Americans had attacked Iraq with, once again, no warning to us, their British allies. It was just like the last time: the first Gulf War, when the first we in the SAS knew of the beginning of the air war was when we saw it on CNN. This time, in March 2003, soldiers came running to my tent in our desert camp in Kuwait, where I was wading through paperwork. I was led to a tent where an oversized TV was screening the attacks on Baghdad. I was aware that they were watching me closely. I had been there - to war in Iraq, that is - almost exactly 12 years before.
And the emotions of the soldiers, I detected, were the same as the last time: levity, excitement, trepidation, downright fear. My first priority was to discover what was going on and then to make sure those I was responsible for - the men of 1 Royal Irish - were where they needed to be, with the gear they needed and knew what they had to do. The last point was the key bit. For the raison d'être of this war was at best vague.
You see, I remembered at that instant the faces of the men, close friends such as Legs Lane, Bob Consiglio and Shuggy Denbury, who had been casualties of the last war; men who, as the poem says, shall never grow old as we that are left grow old. Each recollection brought with it a vignette. "Legs" (a nickname he had earned in the Falklands) cradling my baby son one evening at my house in Hereford; Bob agreeing to run in the inter-squadron cross country despite a heavy cold; Shuggy and I comparing whose trousers were baggiest as we tried on new gear in the Middle East. It is strange that my brain seems to compartmentalise the dead to theatres of operations; those lost in Ireland appear when I think of that conflict, the dead of the Balkans seem only to haunt their own part of my memory.
Now my mind turned to those whom we would lose now. Bitter experience told me it would not be the idiots. It was always, in my experience, the better guys, the dearest and the best, covering for somebody else's mistakes. I glanced around the men. Winners or losers? Fated to live or to die? How would their dice fall? As I turned to leave the tent I caught my own reflection in a tea urn. How would my own dice roll?
It was over the next hour or so that I must have subconsciously composed my speech. I never wrote it down and I certainly wasn't memorising it from a script written by another hand, as some later claimed. I guess it was the things that I had encountered that inspired lines of my talk. The bravado and fierce oaths of those who were in reality terrified - in my experience, the most likely to shoot when there was no need - led to: "It is a big step to take another human's life. It is not to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you that they live with the mark of Cain upon them." The dismissive glee of some racist whom I overheard declaring that he couldn't wait to get among the backward Iraqis must have inspired this: "Iraq is steeped in history; it is the site of the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there." A senior officer, who had never before been to war and declared it would be just like a big live firing exercise, may have sparked: "It remains my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive. But there may be those of us who will not see the end of this campaign."
My words certainly flew in the face of British Army tradition. But then we in the Royal Irish are hardly the average British troops. Ireland has never had conscription; when we were machine-gunned in our hundreds as we struggled ashore at Gallipoli or poured from gliders on D-Day or fought the Chinese with our fists and boots at Imjin River in Korea, we didn't have to be there. Speaking so plainly to soldiers is frowned on by the British, as I was to find out.
Five years later, I look back. Am I bothered by the criticism of recent days? I think the gratitude of the families of the men I brought home - for I brought them all home - massively outweighs any doubt. Did I frighten the men? I suspect I did frighten those who, until that point, had no idea of what was about to happen...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
I recall the first day of the second Gulf War clearly. It was the day I made a speech that quickly became very famous, and which has now been criticised by a former soldier as having left my men "fearful of the dangers that faced them". The Americans had attacked Iraq with, once again, no warning to us, their British allies. It was just like the last time: the first Gulf War, when the first we in the SAS knew of the beginning of the air war was when we saw it on CNN. This time, in March 2003, soldiers came running to my tent in our desert camp in Kuwait, where I was wading through paperwork. I was led to a tent where an oversized TV was screening the attacks on Baghdad. I was aware that they were watching me closely. I had been there - to war in Iraq, that is - almost exactly 12 years before.
And the emotions of the soldiers, I detected, were the same as the last time: levity, excitement, trepidation, downright fear. My first priority was to discover what was going on and then to make sure those I was responsible for - the men of 1 Royal Irish - were where they needed to be, with the gear they needed and knew what they had to do. The last point was the key bit. For the raison d'être of this war was at best vague.
You see, I remembered at that instant the faces of the men, close friends such as Legs Lane, Bob Consiglio and Shuggy Denbury, who had been casualties of the last war; men who, as the poem says, shall never grow old as we that are left grow old. Each recollection brought with it a vignette. "Legs" (a nickname he had earned in the Falklands) cradling my baby son one evening at my house in Hereford; Bob agreeing to run in the inter-squadron cross country despite a heavy cold; Shuggy and I comparing whose trousers were baggiest as we tried on new gear in the Middle East. It is strange that my brain seems to compartmentalise the dead to theatres of operations; those lost in Ireland appear when I think of that conflict, the dead of the Balkans seem only to haunt their own part of my memory.
Now my mind turned to those whom we would lose now. Bitter experience told me it would not be the idiots. It was always, in my experience, the better guys, the dearest and the best, covering for somebody else's mistakes. I glanced around the men. Winners or losers? Fated to live or to die? How would their dice fall? As I turned to leave the tent I caught my own reflection in a tea urn. How would my own dice roll?
It was over the next hour or so that I must have subconsciously composed my speech. I never wrote it down and I certainly wasn't memorising it from a script written by another hand, as some later claimed. I guess it was the things that I had encountered that inspired lines of my talk. The bravado and fierce oaths of those who were in reality terrified - in my experience, the most likely to shoot when there was no need - led to: "It is a big step to take another human's life. It is not to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you that they live with the mark of Cain upon them." The dismissive glee of some racist whom I overheard declaring that he couldn't wait to get among the backward Iraqis must have inspired this: "Iraq is steeped in history; it is the site of the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there." A senior officer, who had never before been to war and declared it would be just like a big live firing exercise, may have sparked: "It remains my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive. But there may be those of us who will not see the end of this campaign."
My words certainly flew in the face of British Army tradition. But then we in the Royal Irish are hardly the average British troops. Ireland has never had conscription; when we were machine-gunned in our hundreds as we struggled ashore at Gallipoli or poured from gliders on D-Day or fought the Chinese with our fists and boots at Imjin River in Korea, we didn't have to be there. Speaking so plainly to soldiers is frowned on by the British, as I was to find out.
Five years later, I look back. Am I bothered by the criticism of recent days? I think the gratitude of the families of the men I brought home - for I brought them all home - massively outweighs any doubt. Did I frighten the men? I suspect I did frighten those who, until that point, had no idea of what was about to happen...