by Catherine Lear

Created on: April 11, 2011   Last Updated: April 15, 2012

A soldiers duty is to his country, and that duty is to defend the homeland from invasion or to go and fight wherever your country sends you. Soldering is one of the oldest professions in the world. Today the principle of warfare is still the same as it was thousands of years ago.

The way we give battle has changed, like everything else that evolves soldiering becomes more refined, what never changes though is that principle that says you go where you are ordered to go and to wage warfare where your country sees fit to wage it.

In any military force no matter where it is in the world there will be discipline, discipline is the mainstay of any military force; it is one of the finest things that any military force can have, without it, a military force is nothing but a rabble.

Once you let, soldiers dictate their terms of service you begin on that long slippery road of self-destruction, because in all battles that have to be fought, all soldiers are afraid of what is to come but they overcome that fear because they know that it is their duty to wage that battle. They might disagree with what their country is doing, or what war is being waged, but they do what is expected of them.

I remember my father going off to the Falklands in 1982, just at the time he was a few short months from retiring from the British Army. However, they sent him and he was one of the first soldiers to covertly land and guide in the bombers that bombed the airstrip at Port Stanley a very dangerous job as the British Fleet was still a week away from reaching the Falklands. He and nine comrades spent just over two weeks dodging and ambushing Argentine patrols that were sent out to kill them before linking up with the British Task force.

I tell you all this for one reason only, and that is to show you how easy it would have been for him to go to his commanding officer and tell him that he disagreed with what was happening on those Islands and for him to be left at home to work out his final few months without any risk to himself and show how easy it would be for all soldiers to find an excuse not to go to war. And be assured that just because your country has opted to give a choice to its armed forces soldiers as to if they don't want to go to fight in certain conflicts, no such option exists to other forces throughout the world, and that above anything else puts you and your country at risk from such forces

In life, you have options that you can take, if you do not want to go to war, then you do not join any military force. However once you do join, then without any questions being asked by yourself, you go where you are told to go. To opt out of any conflict that dwells too much on your conscience is the first step in a downward spiral.  

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