Glorious war
Sir: I wonder whether the 200 or so medals awarded to participants in the Gulf cam- paign represent an attempt to justify our involvement or whether they are a simple glorification of war itself.
The Gulf war was little more than a skirmish, lasting about six weeks as com- pared with about six years for the second world war. So proportionately the second world war should have yielded hundreds of medals to desert rats who accepted the surrender of Italians, and 50 foreign knighthoods for a start.
And since the Gulf war was largely an artillery action, it's a bit difficult to see how many individual acts of gallantry could have occurred. I've no doubt that, as in any war, there were noble men and frightened men and brave men — and women — but not in this case on the scale that these Naafi-wagon medals imply.
Maurice Bale
18 Raleigh Road, Coventry
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