I would not blame any serving soldier, wherever he happens to be deployed, if he were to put in his papers right at this minute because it is blatantly obvious that the country he serves is prepared to turn its back on him.
Most of the provo members who committed acts of atrocity against civilian women and and children in the UK and Ireland have long been released or had their sentences overturned. A great many of them have never even been pursued for various cowardly reasons of political expediency.
Three weeks after Bloody Sunday, the IRA detonated a car bomb outside the Parachute Regiment’s officers’ mess at Aldershot Barracks. Among those killed were a Roman Catholic priest, a gardener and five civlian women who worked in the catering department. There has never been an inquiry into their deaths and presumably never will be.
Northern Ireland was the worst possible kind of posting. Not only were our soldiers risking the bullets and home made bombs of the IRA, but they got spat on and stoned by children who were actively encouraged by the provos who were always hiding amongst the civilian population on the streets. Weapons would often be concealed by members of the public either before a shooting incident or in the immediate aftermath. So it is perhaps understandable that incidents occurred such as the one in Londonderry on Sunday January 30, 1972.
In fact it is well known that Martin McGuinness himself was present amongst the demonstrators on Bloody Sunday and he was seen waving an automatic weapon. How much trouble and how many lives might have been saved had one of the Paras put a bullet in him on that day can only be speculated upon.
Members of the armed forces have never received any thanks or recognition for their services in Northern Ireland. No campaign medals were awarded as it was never classified as a war although the 53 Paras who were killed by the IRA over there are just as dead as if it had been.
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