April 09, 2007
Pathetic
The more the faint-hearted fifteen talk, the worse their conduct, their unbelievable lack of military grit and courage, becomes apparent.
Check out this excerpt from an interview with one of the sailors, talking about his scarf-wearing female shipmate.
"The guards got really aggressive whenever they heard us communicating. Topsy really put her neck on the line to make sure I was holding up."
That was the last time Arthur saw Faye for six days as they were both put in solitary.
[S]peaking of the moment they were reunited, he told how he wept and begged the 26-year-old for a hug. Arthur said: "I missed Topsy most of all. I really love her, as a mum and a big sister. Not seeing her and not knowing if she was safe was one of the hardest parts of the whole thing.
"Then on the sixth day, when I was just about giving up hope, I was pulled from my bed in the early hours of the morning.
"They led me down a corridor and into a room, where I saw Topsy in a corner.
"I can't describe how that felt...just every emotion rolled into one. I ran up to her, threw my arms round her and cried like a baby.
"When I'd calmed down, she asked, 'Do you need another hug, a mother hug?' and I said, 'damn right'.
"Topsy said she'd always be there for me, to protect me and look after me.
"We asked to be put together in a cell, but the guards wouldn't have it. She had to stay on her own with a female minder." Arthur, of Plymouth, told how the group were given a stark choice - seven years in jail or seven days' captivity if they co-operated with Iran.
He said: "All I wanted was to get back to my family but I didn't want to let the side down by agreeing with the Iranians.
"I talked it through with Topsy and she wanted to get back to her husband Adam and daughter Molly. As the only woman, she'd been treated very badly and feared for her life as much as the rest of us. The thought of seeing her family again kept her going.
"And being with her gave me the boost that I needed." Arthur told of the moment he and his comrades were paraded on TV and forced to confess they had strayed into Iranian waters.
He said: "A guard was saying, 'smile, smile, smile for camera'. We felt it would help if we obliged."
Six days. Six whole days.
It's no wonder these hardy military professionals broke, having undergone such an interminable ordeal.
It's almost as awe-inspiring as the more than six years Adm. James Stockdale spent in captivity, enduring torture at the hands of his captors, as well as self-inflicted wounds intended to make him unusable for enemy propaganda films.
Six years, six days; whatever. Who are we to judge?
Brit columnist Toby Harden is less than impressed by his fellow Brits' behaviour, the complete absence of military discipline and structure, even now that they're back home.
I've re-watched the return press conference (in which Carman, Air, Massey, Batchelor, Tindell and Sperry spoke). Note how Air and Carman refer to LS Turney as "Faye" (Carman: "Faye is a young mother and a wife"; Air: "Being in an Islamic country, Faye was subjected to different rules than we were.")
To me, that betrays a lot. Officers should refer to sailors by their rank and surname. To do otherwise is an insult to their professional status. But then look at the MoD website in which Air and Carman are listed as "Chris" and "Felix" - this slack ethos comes from the top.
Any sense of a command structure appears to have broken down. Carman stated: "We all at one time or another made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information."
He also said that the choice they were given was "if we admitted that we had strayed we would be back on a plane to the U.K. pretty soon; if we didn't, we faced up to seven years in prison". It seems clear what most chose.
In her depressing paid interview with "The Sun" today, the effing, fag-smoking (well, she is a matelot) and deeply unimpressive LS Turney states: "If I did it [confessed] , I feared everyone in Britain would hate me. But I knew it was my one chance of fulfilling a promise to Molly [her daughter] that I'd be home for her birthday on May 8th." Oh, so that's OK then.
And that's really the core problem, isn't it? It's no longer about service to country, keeping faith with your comrades in arms; courage, bravery and honor are wonderful traits, but they don't mean anything when it means breaking a promise to a little girl.
Awwwwwwwww.
The last word should go to John Derbyshire, who is in high dudgeon over the pusillanimous performance by his former countrymen.
I am at the point with this business about the British hostages where I really can't trust myself to post any more, I'm so mad. I think [Toby Harnden] is too kind to the enlisted men. They are saps and worms, insults to the Queen's uniform.
One thing the whole business has revealed to me is how it is possible to hate your own country, a thing I never understood before. Not that I hate my country—which is, as of five years this coming April 19th, the blessed U.S. of A. I maintain strong sentimental ties to England, though, and I've been burning with anger and shame at the dishonor these giggling buffoons have brought to their country, the country of my ancestors (all English, for as far back as I know), the country I was raised in. Yes, there have been moments when I've hated England.
I've told this story before, so I hope I'll be forgiven for telling it again. My Mum, Esther Alice Knowles (1912-98), eleventh child of a pick'n'shovel coal miner, in one of the last conversations I had with her, said: "I know I'm dying, but I don't mind. At least I knew England when she was England."
I discounted that at the time. Old people always grumble about the state of the world. Now I understand it, though. I even feel a bit the same way myself. I caught the tail-end of that old England—that bumptious, arrogant, self-confident old England, the England of complicated games, snobbery, irony, repression, and stoicism, the England of suet puddings, drafty houses, coal smoke and bad teeth, the England of throat-catching poetry and gardens and tweeds, the England that civilized the whole world and gave an example of adult behavior—the English Gentleman—that was admired from Peking (I can testify) to Peru.
It's all gone now, "dead as mutton," as English people used to say. Now there is nothing there but a flock of whimpering Eloi, giggling over their gadgets, whining for their handouts, crying for their Mummies, playing at soldiering for reasons they can no longer understand, from lingering habit. Lower the corpse down slowly, shovel in the earth. England is dead.
It's just as well Winnie's gone; seeing England like this would kill him.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 9, 2007 09:37 PM
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