GasGas:
Well, no one signs up in the hope that they will end up like that…but my mate in the RAF tells me that before a trainee pilot is even allowed near a plane, they have to pass through the survival, evade, and capture training. In other words, you know what you are signing up for. A WW2 Spitfire ace wrote his autobiography…Brain Kingcombe. It was called “A Willingness to Die” which was one of the essential qualities required of a fighter pilot.
In modern war, those behind the front line are in some cases even more at risk than those in the front line.
There was a series on TV a few years back about the history of the defence of these islands…from Roman times up to the end of the 20th century. It ended with the presenter parking up in a disused V-bomber shelter, and making the point that in the age of the ICBM there was no such thing as a frontline as a physical or geographic thing, and the idea that you could hide civilians out of harm’s way no longer applied.
And this is even more true in our current age of asymmetric conflict…our current enemy would regard a concert hall filled with little girls as being a better target than an army base. One ‘innocent’ western death is worth more than the deaths of 10 western soldiers in their eyes, because it has greater ‘shock’ value.
My only question over the use of women in combat is one of selection, training and effectiveness. And that goes beyond the armed forces to the police and fire services. I remember when Tazers came in…they were supposed to be deployed only by specially trained officers when life was under threat as a last resort alternative to a gun. Then they were given out willy-nilly because women PCs were struggling to subdue male offenders.
Result: you get a woman PC in Avon constabulary tazering an old chap in the face because he wouldn’t answer her rude and aggressive questions. At no time had he attempted to strike her, he was not ‘resisting arrest’ because he wasn’t under arrest, and he had committed no offence at all because he was under no obligation to speak to her. I doubt if a male PC would have done what she did.
There was a male firefighter at Grenfell who elected not to go back in because his co-worker was just back from maternity leave and the chances of them both getting out again were not that good. In both those cases, I would say that gender was an issue that hampered effectiveness in both cases.
To be fair there’s a big difference between the scenarios of the BoB Fighter Pilot,v the reluctant conscript housewife torn away from her home husband and children and family and then having to face front line war service.Which make no mistake is the real agenda behind all this feminist stupidity.
As for the fire fighting example how could anyone justify a woman,let alone a mother,running into a burning building and possibly dying in the process maybe with the exception of rescuing her own children.As I said only the devil himself would countenance such an idea.
As for the total war scenario yes agreed there is arguably point where we decide as a nation to end it all and all go out together being a better option than surrender to a merciless enemy.But in most cases that’s rightly all about a deterrent to war on all sides in the knowledge of the results of that choice.As opposed to the glossy recruitment videos which are there to appeal to the worst type of naivety among a strange minority of women with a career soldier mindset and possibly to hide a more sinister hidden agenda,of subjecting the female population,to the same conscription regime as the male one,in the event of a major conventional war breaking out.Which will inevitably be the case first anyway regardless such as in the case of the NATO v Russia etc scenario in which it going nuclear will just be the logical escalation.The current environment of sabre rattling against Russia and recruitment policies based on the weird appeal of war service to some women,making all that more likely not less and the horrific implications for those women who rightly don’t want to get involved in front line war service along the old established moral lines.
As for the ‘willingness to die’ example,I’d guess from my father seeming to have been somewhat traumatised for life by what he saw and dealt with in the recovery of the aftermath of such encounters,I’d say that was a more apt description of Allied tank crews in the typical German opposition type confrontation scenario for example than the Spitfire v 109 type one.I’d guess the thought of those casualties being women could have quite possibly destroyed morale among many of our forces in such pivotal theatres as Normandy to Germany,North Africa and Italy in that regard.
