Recently I met an intelligent young 19 year old and asked him what he planned to do with his life. He said he wanted to join the British Army. His name was Chris. This surprised me, as he was keen on wildlife. He said he wished to protect his homeland, more specifically Somerset where he, and several generations of his family had been born.

This intrigued me. The last time a foreign army successfully landed in England was in 1688 when William of Orange, or specifically the King of the Netherlands, landed in Devon. His progress in England went almost completely unopposed, only small uprisings occurred in Scotland and Ireland. I wondered, as the Dutch force moved East through Somerset, would Chris have taken up arms and fought to the death?

In the late 16th Century England and Scotland were in the final throws of a state of war which had lasted two centuries. Yet in March 1603 James VI of Scotland rode into England and was crowned King of England. Would brave Chris rush north and assassinate the small Scottish contingent as it meandered south? Would Chris have risked life and limb in the final border skirmishes for the English against the Scots, so soon to be brothers in arms?

Which side would he fight on in the Bishop’s Wars in 1639 in Scotland? Would he fight that at all, as Somerset was not threatened and, while Scotland and England had a joint king and a shared foreign policy, they were two separate nations? Would he wait until 1706 when Great Britain was formed before he would be willing to shed his own blood in the highlands?

There were 8 French plans to invade Britain between 1708 and 1805, and perhaps he would have thrown himself into the Navy and drowned with pride in one of the bureaucratic and chaotic sea manoeuvres of that period. Would he have volunteered to go and fight the rebellious colonists in the Americas and felt he was doing his duty as he torched churches in Virginia?

Since 1900, of the last 35 conflicts in which the British Army has been involved, none involved fighting an invading force. Hitler had a vague back up plan, Operation Sea Lion, but never began any preparations for it. The Battle of Britain involved 3% of all German aircraft in World War II and was a skirmish in which the British lost 1240 planes and the Germans 2160. To put this in perspective, the Germans lost 53,000 aircraft over the Eastern Front in the ’42 and ’43 campaigns.

35 conflicts are too many to put before the young man for analysis, but they can loosely be placed in categories.

The first, and largest grouping is suppressing independence movements, specifically in China (1900-1901), Nigeria (1901-1902), South Africa (1900-1902), Pakistan (1917), Palestine (1945-1948), Malaysia (1948-1960), Kenya (1952-1960), Cyprus (1955-1959), Brunei (1962-1966), Indonesia (1962-1966), Oman (1962-1975), Yemen (1968-1998).

Nearly every British soldier did a stint in Ireland, whether it was in the Irish War of Independence which lead to the creation of the Irish Republic, or the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the years after. Which of these campaigns would Chris cherry pick for offering his courage and possibly his life?

The British involvement in World War I with 6 million conscripted and 700,000 dead remains an anachronism. None of the key issues of the war; France’s gripe with Germany over Alsace; German hunger for France’s North African colonies; Austro-Hungarian and Russian concerns over Serbia and the rest of the Balkans; none of these had anything more than a distance correlation to Great Britain. The terms of her Treaty with France which indicated she must come to her aid, was the sole obligation. With 2 million tons of navy hardware, more than the rest of the world combined, we could have harassed Germany from the sea with an embargo, to keep up our end of the bargain. Instead we destroyed  the British economy and murdered a generation in the trenches. The French invaded German speaking Alsace in 1681, and the German’s regained it in 1870. The French were keen to regain it even though only 11% of the population spoke French. Would Chris have gone to die in the trenches to ensure France regained this territory? Or perhaps he would die rather than see the brutally repressed French colonies of Morocco and Algiers pass into German hands?

Invasions of Afghanistan, and the Suez Canal. Take your pick which to sign up for, they were both pretty shameful.

In 1795 Prussia and Russia simultaneously invaded Poland and partitioned the country. What did Great Britain do? They signed the Treaty of St Petersburg, forming an alliance with Germany and Russia. In 1939 Germany and Russia again invaded Poland and partitioned the country. This time Britain declared war on Germany. How does a young soldier interpret these shifts in position, as he takes a bullet in the neck in Normandy? What does his wife think when, having gone to war over the invasion of independent Poland, Britain then agrees, at the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, that Russia will absorb the whole of Poland? Can his descendants sleep easier at night?

Is the young British warrior even aware that 100,000 British military units fought in the Korean War, with 1000 dead? Is he aware that approximately 1.6 million North Korean civilians were burned to death in the firebombing of cities by the Allied alliance. The US command sought permission from Congress to use nuclear warheads on cities in the North and were, thankfully denied. How would any of this fit with defending Somerset?

Is he aware that 26,000 British personnel were in support roles and air assaults during the Vietnam War when the British had indicated specifically they would not participate in this war. Most forces were surreptitiously relocated from Brunei and Malaysia. Would he have refused to go, saying it was against the British Government’s policy?

The Falklands, an island 12,200 km from Great Britain and 430 km from Argentina, whose 1800 inhabitants the British decided to defend, after decades of negotiations for its peaceful transition to Argentinean rule ended in stalemate? US$600,000 was spent per inhabitant in retaking the islands. In 1982 there were 200,000 Brits living in Andalucía, Spain. In several towns such as Fuengirola, the British population outnumbered the local Spaniards. Should our Somerset warrior go and defend their right to independence from Spain? In a census in 2012 only 31% of Falkland inhabitants associated themselves with Britain. 900 people died in the Falklands war, 1 for every 2 inhabitants.

How about the invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction, or the invasion of Afghanistan for hiding Bin Laden when he was in Pakistan? Were there any weapons threatening Somerset hidden in the sands of Iraq? Did Bin Laden have any future terrorist plans for that nation? Are these issues relevant to Somerset’s future or worthy of giving one’s life?

Above I have listed thirty four. That leaves just one other conflict in the last century. The UN intervention in Yugoslavia. While certainly not a success. Perhaps some lives were saved, some atrocities averted, some moral high ground maintained.

It seems to me that young people offer their life to an institution without even one hour researching that institutions record. Chris was a grade A student heading to a top-tier University, keen to present himself as cannon fodder for a range of bizarre and destructive offensives overseas operations on the basis of a vaguely delineated personal defensive urge. As he spoke of Somerset his back stiffened and his eyes took on a steely resolve which I recognised from so many war and cowboy movies. It is these theatrical myths that drive his decision, not a brief exploration of history.