大象传媒

This is one of the stories collected on the 25th October 2003 at the CSV's Make a Difference Day held at 大象传媒 Manchester. The story was typed and entered on to the site by a CSV volunteer with kind permission.

Alan鈥檚 Story.

My training was done in the Home Guard. I can remember being trained by a real hardened soldier. We were stood in a trench one time and this sergeant told us to pull out our grenade pins and hold onto the lever, we were going to throw them out. With this we all pulled the pins from our grenades ready to throw. He then told us to put our pins back in. We stood and looked at each other, then on the floor. On of the main things to remember is to hold onto the pin of a grenade just in case! We would have got out of that trench pretty quickly I can tell you if anyone had let go of their lever! I think it taught everyone a lesson pretty quickly.
There was a lot of 1st World War equipment knocking about, it was still usable but killing took a little longer with it but we just had to struggle by with it.

It鈥檚 very hard to get anybody to admit that they have killed, but you had to out of necessity. One of the problems is that the people who have done it have to try to dismiss it from their mind. It鈥檚 so horrible to have to kill somebody, but often it鈥檚 in self defence it鈥檚 one on one. Nobody likes to admit when they come home that they have been I that position, it鈥檚 unpalatable to say the least.

I always remember a friend of mine who was in the SAS, commando unit, said that the first time he stuck a bayonet on somebody he looked into his eyes and he knew he had to get him, it was either kill or be killed. It鈥檚 sad, it must live with you. The first time I stuck a bayonet into a sack it made me sick, thinking I may have to do it for real at some time, but that鈥檚 war isn鈥檛 it? The boys in Iraq don鈥檛 have to do that do they? They are remote. You see when you have done it with a bayonet you have to go and look what you have done, that鈥檚 the dirty bit of the war. You see it on the television, you hear rat tat a tat and someone falls dead, you don鈥檛 know if they have a family children or whatever, that鈥檚 the sad dirty bit of the war. It is always difficult to say if it can be justified, society has changed but the first and second world wars were very much like that.

Today the discipline of killing is very complex, it鈥檚 diabolical, it鈥檚 annihilation really if you think about it! If you think about the weapons in the 1st and 2nd World War compared to the modern weapons it鈥檚 horrific. It鈥檚 just a shame that all this marvellous technology that we have is devoted to killing, you find that lots of technology that is being developed is a product of weapons technology. I can鈥檛 understand where they find all these millions from.

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