Wounded Iraq veterans driven out of public pool when told they might scare children
Soldiers who suffered appalling injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan were verbally abused as they swam in a public swimming pool.
During a weekly rehabilitation class at a council leisure centre, 15 servicemen – including several who have lost limbs or suffered severe burns – were heckled and jeered by members of the public.
One woman was so incensed that the troops were using the pool at Leatherhead Leisure Centre in Surrey that she told them they did not deserve to be there.
The entire story here:
As sad as this is, I would guess that it happens all too frequently. Perhaps the children should forgo swimming until the soldiers have had time to swim. The woman mentioned, should be sent to Iraq, to do kitchen duty for a few months until she learns where her rights to be an idiot come from.
This happened over a month ago. Apparently the soldiers have one lane garunteed and two if the pool isn’t busy. The woman was upset because the pool manager gave the soldiers a second lane and this woman (no excuse for what she said or how she reacted) felt it was unfair.
Well guys i have to say this is a common tupical behaviour of same ex-soldiers who served in conflicts. Unfortinatelly in Russia i personally saw like the veterans of Chehcen war behavee disgusting in a public, even the were insulting the girls, being the drunk.
We have the special Day of Desantnik VDV ( Airborn veterans Day) - 2 august.
So every 2 august the former airborners meet in the centres of cities - they speaks , geting fun and drink.
Than they sometimes “continie the celebration” in the neares markets where they are crushing and porgoming the sellers from Caucaus.
Usially this is unblood and relatively safe fro the people.Milicia keep away from the Airbornes ( coz the fear:)) except may be the most drunk one.
Last year in Voronez city market the Airborners have made a lot of fun :)- when they several times turned-over the Lada with 4 caucausas sellers inside , than put it to the wheels again and go on further to continie the party:)
Man i can’t believe this happens:( . You know what this things reminds me ?
Ghetto . Is this what going to happen ? Can’t they understand that those men risk their lives for their country or save their brothers in arms ?
Well maybe you are right . In this countries there are big education problems . But with the diktators who are in charge in this countries the education development is very difficult
Yeah, and? Compared to a lot of the stuff that’s been happening recently (the 36 Grays Lane planning fiasco or the case of Tul Bahadur Pun VC) this is a relatively benign case that was settled pretty rapidly.
Seriously, if you want to understand the place of soldiers in the UK just go and read Kipling. Not just Tommy, although that’s among his better work, but the whole lot. As true today as when he wrote it - the last time the UK was involved in Afghanistan.
What Kipling missed, in today’s era where what we regard as normal social services was absent, is the wartime bullshit about rewarding Tommy with a land fit for heroes, which invariably disappears about five minutes after the surrender document is signed. On both sides. In all nations.
WTF is that about? If the Islamic visitors and staff live in the UK, they can put up with the military uniforms of the poor bastards who are defending the liberties they have to visit people in hospitals, and hopsitals a bloody sight better than you’ll find for the ordinary person in much of the Islamic world. And if the Muslims don’t like it, they can fuck off back to the Islamic world and see how they go getting treatment in some shithole hospital in remote Sudan, if they can find a hospital at all. Or a doctor who hasn’t been killed in some tribal massacre.
I assume this is more about the same swimming pool problem, and something else to put it in perspective.
Parry was disturbed to find that, despite the importance of swimming in building body strength without putting stress on injured limbs, Headley Court had no swimming pool. A pool was recognised by the government as a “need” but not an “urgent need”.
With British troops engaged on two fronts, at high cost to the defence budget, the pool was never likely to make it to the top of the priority list, despite the growing number of injured soldiers being sent home from the two wars.
Instead troops were – and still are – being bussed to nearby Leatherhead where they have to share the pool with members of the public, to the dismay of both sides.
Boys who had been blown up or shot had to reveal their stumps and scars in front of gaping onlookers. As recently as 10 days ago there was an altercation when two women told the troops they should get out of the water as they were “scaring the children”.
“It’s happened so many times that that one didn’t even get reported up the chain,” says Francie grimly.
Neighbours have also objected to accommodation being built for soldiers’ families at Headley Court, she adds: “If I got their names and addresses I’d have them all tried for treason. These soldiers are prepared to do something none of us is prepared to do. And we owe them, big time.
“I’m not suggesting it should be different, it’s not a question of whether they should be going to war or not. The fact is that they are prepared to go and serve wherever they are told – they don’t get a choice – and they are giving an awful lot.
“When they come back hurt and damaged, the least we can do is everything we can to help them. They’re trained to have pride, to be dignified, never to complain, so it takes us civilians to do that on their behalf.”
Francie’s sense of the acute importance of supporting men who come back from war is informed by the experience of her own family. Her father Major Robert Cain was one of five men to win the VC at Arnhem in Holland in September 1944.
It was part of Market Garden, one of the largest airborne operations of the war. Some 10,600 troops went in; fewer than 2,500 came out. Major Cain was the only VC who lived to tell the tale.
The plan was to drop airborne forces at strategic bridges in occupied Holland so that land troops could drive through from Belgium into Germany. The last bridge, at Arnhem, proved – as Hollywood later had it – a bridge too far.
Francie’s father and his colleagues flew in by glider under heavy fire. Several gliders crash-landed or collided.
Some pilots were crushed when the vehicles or heavy machinery the gliders were carrying smashed into the cockpits.
Cain got to within 2,000 yards of the Arnhem bridge to face a German counterattack. Some 300 of the 400 men he was commanding were killed. He was then ordered to hold nearby high ground where 40 more of his men were killed in 90 minutes. In the siege that followed in Oosterbeek, where the allies had gathered, he was badly wounded and temporarily blinded when a PIAT antitank shell blew up in his face. Yet he carried on fighting. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/sunday_times_appeal/article2982756.ece
As I recall, badly injured Falklands veterans were excluded from the parades and were hidden behind screens at memorial church services to celebrate the victory immediately after it happened.
This sort of thing returns me to the subject of moralizing. Some people have no sense of morality beyond the ‘Self’. I like to compare moral issues with monetary issues, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.
It’s refreshing to see that the members ofthis site concur on this issue.
I wonder also what sort of messege that sends to the children they claim were frightened? I mean, You should not teach your children that anyone who looks different or is disfigured is some sort of monster and should be tossed out of public places… the whole veteran issue aside. And with the veteran issue, we wonder where these children with not fucking respect keep coming from… parental examples like this woman.
I suppose this is one of those stories that brings to light an underlying fact. It has been the case for years that the UK military is pretty much disliked outside of wars and conflicts [and those arent supposed to last more than a few weeks].
The reduction of our military and the withdrawal of it from the public eye means that not many paople in the UK have any contact with a military person anymore and have no understanding of the conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq. They probably think we just walk about shooting babies.
I was very late for a flight coming back from the Gulf last year and had to wait until I got to Heathrow before I changed out of my uniform. I watched our kit when my mate went to get changed and was surprised that all the people sitting near us quickly moved away from me and some of the looks I had should really have been reserved for Paedophilles and Murderers.
This was quite an eye opener for me. Funny though, a few years back I stood in during the Firemans strike and the public brought us in food and stuff.
Maybe its all about perception? Doesnt condone the act though and I would add that the guys would have definately paid for the Pool time, either themselves or more likely Headley Court will pay the Pool a monthly fee and will probably be charging more than the lady had to pay.
The position here has changed dramatically in 30 to 40 years.
When I was occasionally in uniform during the Vietnam war I copped a bit of shit, as did many others to the point that the Army dropped wearing uniforms in public except for ceremonial occasions. (When there were lots of diggers so the heroic anti-war, peace-loving civvies couldn’t do a 5 to 1 like happened to me one night. Then again, my perceived attackers might have just been responding inappropriately to me telling them to get fucked and to my other carefully considered and equally concise peaceful and conciliatory comments in a similar vein attempting to open up a rational conversation after they started up the baby killer bullshit).
Nowadays, despite the best efforts of the well intentioned but distressingly uninformed beard and sandal clowns (naturally I’m referring to the radical lesbian teachers for peace here, who belted the shit out of male teachers arguing for a different view) running an educational system that in its worst moments in the 1980’s produced text books on the Vietnam war referring to our soldiers as ‘harm workers’, just about everybody here, and especially the young people, seem to be able to distinguish between our soldiers as baby killing bastards and just pawns of the government.
We seem to have got to the point that even most people who disagree with our involvement in various conflicts, almost exclusively Iraq, no longer blame and punish the soldiers but respect them for what they do. Pretty much like the diggers are as much victims of the government as the rest of us in being committed to stupid conflicts.
The organisation which employs me used to be based in Leatherhead (and I along with it) and, indeed, many of my colleagues reside in Leatherhead. The local paper was full of this story as it happened, and the local people were just as outraged as you or I.
When we speak of truth and perception, though this article reports the truth, is it true to say that this ‘lady’s’ attitude is representative of the public at large? I think not - here we have perception!
Firefly, I don’t comprehend your treatment at the airport - could it be that you’re not particularly handsome? Your Avatars always frighten me!
I recall a great quote by fellow Scotsman Sean Connery (while playing a US Army Lt. Colonel) in “The Presidio”: Something to the affect that, “We’re (the military) like the embarrassing guard dogs the owners want to keep out of sight when the guests are over. But when they need us, they love us…”
. You know what this things reminds me ?
