by Ivor Hughes

It was nearly 50 years ago and, for most of the working class youth, military conscription was the norm in the United Kingdom. The brown envelope arrives with its free post officious stamp: OHMS. Meaning, On Her Majesties Service.

So off I went to be a soldier of the British Queen, and this in the dying days of British Empire. We rarely questioned, no room for questions in a young head with his balls between his ears, in the place where his brains ought to be. We were promised adventure and foreign travel, endless beaches of white sand and ivory skinned maidens with sloe eyes by a palm fringed shore. Ah, those posters on the dreary Victorian barracks room walls. Nothing more than lying propaganda, but I fell for it and enlisted for 9 years.

You may consider me naïve, but as a son of working class under privilege--narrow choices and exploitation--I know that I was not alone in wanting to escape the grey factory walls and the time clock bell. So I donned the Khaki and picked up the gun and blindfolded myself with the Union Jack and drank deeply of the Hemlock cup of "patriotism," and shipped out to serve my country and my Queen.

The first active service posting was in Northern Ireland, that festering cancerous ulcer of bigotry and discontent on the British Parliamentary rump. So I played the patriot game with the lives and dreams of Ulster under privilege. The bloody red hand of Ulster nailed on a cross held high in the name of patriotism, religion and empire. And all the time the desk top soldiers, politicians and the religious bigots decided who shall live and who shall die to fulfill the bankers economic agenda.

I was in South Yemen--Aden was the name--with the military camp nestled against the oil refinery. I participated as honour guard and firing party in that universal drill of sacrifice and the lowering of yet another comrade down. Unless your daddy was rich, it was always that corner of a foreign field for the common soldier, the broken hearts anointed with a chalice of light crude and a breast decorated like a prize Christmas turkey with a piece of ribbon. With previous experience, I was a natural for the sergeants detail to fire the three gun volley over yet another grave. I had three military funerals to my tally.

It matters not to me which flag a man does serve, he is my comrade in arms. For only he will understand first the horror and then the armor of numbness overlaid with indifference, whilst sooner or later, the nightmares that start to ooze through the cracks, a grim reminder of the psychological damage. Yet when I pulled the trigger it all seemed so remote. Oh, it's a rotten road; there is no honour to be found along there--no matter how much they dress it up with fine words, pomp and pageant.

And all the time like an old cracked gramophone record, the British music hall refrain,

"It's the rich wot gets the pleasure, an it's the poor that get the blame. It's the same the whole world over. Ainnnt that a bloody shame!."

From New Zealand, I view "Bankers Historical Imperial Killing Fields": Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan. So I see nothing has changed. The banners are still flying and the music is either ‘Taps' or the ‘Last Post,' the screaming and the dying, the shock and awe, rivers of blood, and mountains of misery. Be sure the propaganda from the Imperial Bankers has Stalin rolling in his grave, maggoty green with envy, at the sugar coated iron fist clamped around the brain.

My contract with the Queen said nothing about the tin cup and the medal ribbons and prosthetic limbs and glass eyes and shrivel burnt faces that were to be found sprawled around the streets of British cities. Where was this land fit for heroes? No honorable nation would treat its warriors like that--far better had they died. There is no honour there; only poverty, scorn and degradation. So answer me, preacher man! Where is the Lord in that?

Tell me, Mr. Politician! Whose wallet is that? Tell me, General 4 star! How can you deliver peace wrapped around the bullet of a gun? Tell me, Mr. Banker! How much more interest do we pay? The scourge of usury lies on heavy on my back. You are bastards, everyone of you! You took my love of country and used it to clean your bathroom seat!

The old soldier peering outward from the ramparts of New Zealand can see the organ grinder and his monkey cranking out the same old tune, the Ferris wheel and the bunting, the popcorn, hot dogs and candy floss. Roll up! Roll up! .. 3 shots a shilling. Nothing has changed, we have learnt nothing!

It becomes even more difficult for the warrior of today. For in that already toxic brew of illegal weaponry they find the pharmaceutical/chemical junta with dripping needles and lethal pills. Fit young men and women used as guinea pigs in unlicensed "clinical trials." Let us not forget the cancer future for those who have been contaminated with the depleted uranium weaponry used in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. I wonder: is that factored into the contract nowadays?

Comrades in arms everywhere, I salute you! For tomorrow we die, indentured gladiators in the circus laid out on a foreign field. Hail Caesar!

Penning commentary from "Down Under," NAV contributor Ivor Hughes resides in New Zealand and is the webmaster for HerbDataNZ.com

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