Soldiers view on the Covenant

We would love to lay claim to the following but alas a greater wordsmith than we published it but I believe it is possibly the best thing about ex Service personnel I have ever read. Please feel free to share it if you want too.

I am a Soldier. If I am lucky I will die young and unmarried. If I am really lucky, I will die quickly. If I am married, with young children, I will die in the full knowledge that The Forces Covenant is not worth the paper it is written on, and that my children will rely on charity and a widows pension, which will be enough to exclude my family from any further benefits of the welfare state, without being enough to live on, or replace the life time of earnings which might have been mine. They might well grow to hate my memory, because of what my failure has done to them.
During my service I will be subject to a constant barrage of hate. Some of this will come from the enemies I face on behalf of my nation. It will come in the form of weapons ranging from gunshots, knives, petrol bombs, blast bombs, conventional weapons and unconventional, improvised devices. This I can accept; it is what I have trained to do and it goes with the job and if I do my job properly, that hatred is short lived and the perpetrators will not bother me again. The other hate is what hurts. It comes from my own people, those I am sworn to protect; it never ends, and it is corrosive of my ideals and my will. The hate of the press will scream forth the rights of my enemies and the wrongness of my actions, the hate of the liberal who fights the clean fight of law, and literature, both strengthen our enemy with the blinkered but paramount view, of the academic, who has not lived…..or seen death. This is the hate that sends me to fight a common enemy with first one hand tied behind my back, and then both, which in its ignorant self-righteousness would rather see me dead, than our enemy harmed. Then there is the neglect. The old, worn out unsuitable equipment, which extracts it’s toll from my body, but worse, much worse, the legal system which sends me to war without fair, equitable laws, which protect me as much as my enemies. This too takes its toll in lives, when you hesitate to make a decision which could land you in jail for years, and disgrace for life. Mind you, if I go to jail for murder, my family will get more benefits than a dead Soldiers family. This is the hate that could exultantly assist in hauling I and my peers in to court so that our actions forty years ago can be judged on the basis of hindsight and changed laws now, while the government joins in condemning us.
If I Live through my service, I will retire with a body that is worn out and will probably cease to function before I am 60, that is if I am not scarred either physically or mentally (or both) by my service. This is an improvement. In the 1970s, the average age of those career servicemen who “ceased to draw their pension” was 57 years. When I retire from the forces, I will gradually lose touch with the only friends I have known during my adult life, lose my home, my way of life, and, oh yes, my income. Instead, I will be forced out of my career, and compelled to compete in the marketplace with people who do not have one tenth of my leadership or management ability, and none of my discipline or loyalty. They will be employed because it is considered that, as a former SNCO, I will shout and scream and upset people. Little thought is given to the leadership and management that I have displayed for many years without shouting, and the fact that men will not put their life on the line for another who cannot lead and inspire them in the most extreme of circumstances.
If I cannot gain a job, I will be excluded from benefits by my non-contributory forces pension, which is not enough to pay rent on a home. I receive this from the day I leave the forces, until the day I die, but have never been told that when the Armed Forces Pay Review Body calculate my pay each year, they then deduct a minimum of 11% to compensate for my pension. The rules for my pension are set, by civil servants, in line with the civil service regulations, which reflect that a civil servant can serve for forty years. I can only serve for 22, therefore I miss out on at least 7 times the percentage of pay that a civil servant does, and receive half the pension benefits he receives. If like a naïve idiot, I apply for benefits, I will be told by a woman whose first language is not English, that I was a fool for wearing uniform all those years, and that I am not entitled. When I apply for housing, I will be refused an application form. When I get one and fill it in, they will refuse to accept it but will at the same time conduct a press campaign stating that Brits get first call on their housing stock; when eventually a different council accepts it, I will be refused access to the housing list on the basis that I do not have sufficient ties to the community. If they finally put my name on the housing list, I will be constantly left at the bottom because “You are the lowest priority”.
It is highly likely that at some time during these years of struggle after my retirement from the forces, I will get divorced and suffer from depression. If I am unsuccessful in killing myself, or lack the courage to try, there is a very strong chance that I will die on the streets, of hypothermia and malnutrition.
I was a Soldier, and most of this has happened to me. Cameron, I hate the country that you and your public schoolboys are making on the back of the security I provided whilst preaching the myth of the Forces Covenant.

Blair took us to Wars behind Lies.  The present Government maintains a tenuous grasp on reality based on those very same Lies.  There is an industry getting rich and purchasing all sorts of wonderful toys, such as personal helicoptors, all based on the Lie of the Covenant with the People.  

People don't give a damn about the brave and intelligent British youth otherwise they would never have left the Forces in Afghanistan to support more Lies and obtain more casualties on more myths and yet more lies.  The only ones who are deserving of support are those least likely to get it.

Bless you all, wherever you are Serving.