Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, Into the valley of Deaf rode the ten thousand . . .
The issue of the 10,000 soldiers valorously charging through the courts, lawyers to left of them, lawyers to right of them - Theirs not to make or do, Theirs not to reason through, Theirs but to do and sue - has angered a great many of you. The people almost intoxicated with rage are serving soldiers who could sue on grounds identical to those on which so many of our gallant lads feel able to dip into the national kitty, but are not choosing to do so, either because their hearing is perfect and they doubt whether the hearing of their colleagues is quite as bad as they're making out, or because they are soldiers.
That means they signed up to hear gunfire. They expected it. I daresay some of them even wanted it, both in training and in action. It went with the job; to sue for something to which you freely and voluntarily submitted yourself seems bizarre and contemptible to these men.
Bombardment of lawsuits
We can, of course, only imagine the feelings of serving officers who now hear - for they can - that gentlemen who once taught them all they know, and who are on pensions which often exceed the incomes of entire families in this State are suing the providers of those pensions.
One hopes that Saddam Hussein doesn't so far forget himself as to invade us. All we can do to hope his (elite) Republican Guard is hit by return fire of a bombardment of lawsuits alleging that the noise of the Iraqi gunfire has damaged our brave defenders' ears.
He won't like that a bit. He can take the Americans, he can put up with the Tomahawks cruising down Baghdad main street, taking the second left, climbing up a flight of stairs, entering the fourth door on the right, passing the first three desks and blowing up the fourth. He scoffs at the B 52s and breaks his leg laughing at the SAS patrols scurrying through the night. But one thing he will never be able to defeat are the lines of gallant Irish soldiery ambushing his armoured columns as they rush towards the strategic coalfields of Longford, and laying the columns waste with a bombardment of writs, litigation, law-suits, and doctors' reports, aided by commando units drawn from volunteers at the Irish Bar. Gad sir, makes you proud.
What I had not realised when I wrote about this last week was that the majority of these soldiers looking for money are still serving soldiers. Despite their hearing loss, many of the successful litigants continue as members of the Army. Drilling with flags?
So how does the sergeant major conduct drill? With flags? Is there reveille any more, or does the bugler use sign language to wake people up? And how does a lieutenant tell his sergeant that a patrol of Iraqis has just entered the slit trench and is slaughtering its defenders with grenades, their shrieks echoing across several counties? Does he write it down on little blackboards with which soldiers are now issued for communicating to one another?
Look, I know you haven't heard what's been going on 20 yards away - take that idiot grin off your face - but they've just fired ten 105s into our position, followed by enfilade of MG fire, and now there are Iraqis in the trench, oops, they've just bumped off the colonel, and damn and blast it, there goes the commandant, and heavens above, can you blinking well believe it, four captains have just copped it in that bayonet charge and 20 other ranks too. Dear me, it's turning into a funny old day. Look, take a section and advance from their rear under covering fire from a GMP and. . . BOOM.
Are we so weak-willed as to permit such men - who are apparently suffering from such crippling hearing loss that we have to compensate them with hundreds of millions of pounds - to remain as guardians of the Republic? Should they not be ushered off to retirement, and we can replace them with soldiers who can hear, real soldiers who think that in the military lexicon "w" stands for weapon and "s" stands for shoot, and not, as so many soldiers today apparently think, for whinge and sue?
A reader from Fairview reports that his father served in the Royal Field Artillery in the Great War. He would have been exposed to far vaster amounts of shell-fire than the gallant Ten Thousand - Forward the Deaf Brigade, Where is your hearing aid? - yet until his death, aged 65, in 1959 - from the effects of gas poisoning 40 years after it had been inflicted - he had perfectly intact hearing.
And of course, that reminded me that of all that the Irish veterans of the Great War I have spoken to - brave soldiers like Terence Poulter, Dublin Fusiliers, and Walter Joyce and Jack Moyney VC, both Irish Guards, and Claude Chevasse, Royal Field Artillery, and many others - none seemed to be suffering from hearing loss. They had experienced shell-fire a thousand times greater than that which has apparently disabled an entire later - and one might add, if one were cruel, lesser - generation of Irish soldiery. Yet none of them suffered hearing loss which merited this gallant foray into the courts by soldiers whose lustful viewing of loot has properly earned them the title of Ogle na hEireann.
Compensation in advance
One Army officer told me recently that 70 per cent of all recruits had hearing deficiencies of the kind which now serve as the basis for lawsuits. Would it not make sense for them to sue the Army before they enlist? Then the Army - you, me, that is - would compensate them in advance. It would simplify matters enormously, and would release the hundreds of civil servants, lawyers and soldiers from the processing of the claims currently rolling in.
On the other hand, we could disband the Army altogether. On second thoughts we couldn't. They wouldn't hear the order: Dismiss.