Since 1990 1,800 soldiers – more than two a week – in or around military bases in Britain have died of ‘non-natural’ causes. It is true that over 170 First Gulf War veterans have committed suicide – five times as many as were killed in combat – but the majority of the deaths involve teenage recruits, serving in rear echelon units.
There are harrowing allegations of murder, rape, racism and torture inflicted upon youngsters, not by an enemy force, but by their own non-commissioned officer (NCO) instructors.
Thirteen soldiers are alleged to have killed themselves at Catterick, Yorkshire, since 1996. Lance Corporal Derek McGregor, it is said, killed himself in 2002. He had been beaten senseless by military police just prior to his death and the post mortem revealed black eyes, cuts to his stomach and bruising to his legs and scrotum.
The most horrifying allegations come from the Royal Logistic Corp training depot at Deepcut in Surrey. To date there are at least 173 accusations of serious misconduct – including eight allegations of rape, including gang rape, and 61 of other assaults.
Some incidents mirror the sexual humiliation of Iraqi POWs by Coalition troops: recruits, male and female, forced to stand at attention stripped naked, in the middle of the night, whilst darts were thrown at them; a female soldier urinated on; another forced to strip naked and run around the parade square. A female soldier who reported gang-rape was threatened by regimental police until she withdrew the charge.
June 1995: Private Sean Benton, whilst on guard duty, was found with five gunshot wounds to his chest, fired from his own 5.56mm SA80 assault rifle. Ballistic experts report that only one round was fired from close range, yet the army insist it was suicide. The army laundered his shirt before forensic police could examine it.
November 1995: Private Cheryl James, 17, whilst on guard, was found with a gunshot wound to her head. The army says it was suicide. They ‘lost’ the bullet before it could be examined. Witnesses claim Private James was being forced to have a sexual relationship with an NCO.
September 2001: Private Geoff Gray, 18, whilst on guard, was found with two gunshot wounds to his head – yet five bullets were missing from his SA80 magazine. Ballistic experts report it is impossible to shoot yourself twice in the head with a SA80, yet the army claims it was suicide and has ‘lost’ the records of the issuing of weapons the night he was killed.
March 2002: Private James Collinson, 17, whilst on guard, was shot upwards through the chin. The army says he killed himself. The army cleaned his SA80 before it could be checked for fingerprints.
The families of the dead soldiers are campaigning for a public inquiry which is being resisted by the government.
As Leon Trotsky, who founded the Soviet Red Army, observed, ‘an army is always a copy of the society it serves – with this difference, that it gives social relations a concentrated character, carrying both their positive and negative features to an extreme.’
Therefore, if a society is racist, its army will be extremely racist. The same with class privilege, sexism, homophobia, brutality and all the rest of the muck and filth of capitalist society.
Thomas Atkins
FRFI 183 February / March 2005
