Compensation Payments To Soldiers...........

C

Colin Phillips

At the Start
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,268
Location
Talbot Green
Three soldiers are to receive large compensation payments for trauma received when on duty in Northern Ireland.

Am I missing something here?

Surely when you join up as a regular soldier you are doing so in the knowledge that you are likely to serve in areas where there is a likliehood of you shooting at and possibly killing people and being shot at and possibly being killed by others. What you might call an occupational hazard.

I am afraid I have no sympathy for soldiers or policemen who make compensation claims for something that could easily be forseen as happening in a job that they happily signed up to do.

Colin
 
Sorry Colin I think you might have misunderstood the judgment. I understood that the compensation was awarded for negligent failure to refer them for treatment for post traumatic stress disorder . I can't see any objection to that.Their lives are ruined.
 
This is what used to be referred to, especially after the First World War, as 'shell-shock', I believe. The First World War soldiers who went barmy as a result of far too little sleep, far too many shells bursting around them all day and all night, and the sight of far too many good mates blown to bloody bits in front of them, ended their days shaking with fear and hiding under their beds in asylums.

It seems to have taken the military two of the most appalling conflicts and many minor, but brutal, ones to accept that it's not all gung-ho and fraffly jolly accounts of derring-do in the orficers' mess afterwards, don't y'know. Not everyone knows how their psyche will cope with the constant pumping of adrenaline in situations where everyone is a potential sniper, and every building a potential booby trap. Too bad this shit still happens, too bad that humans are so savage, greedy, power-mad, territorial, and beastly to one another. If we weren't so wretched, these and other poor men (and probably women) wouldn't be sitting at home staring into some past vista of horror they can't get out of their wrecked heads.
 
Back
Top