Abstract
The day after the Prince Harry scandal broke was just another Monday morning at the Phase 2 training centre. It was less than six months since some of my earlier acquaintances from basic training had left their homes in Fiji or the Caribbean and they had still not joined their regimental unit, but the Royal Artillery training establishment in Salisbury Plain was a step nearer to regular army life than the regime at Pirbright had been. Tracking them down had not been easy and finding a time to talk was even harder. The course was modular which meant that everyone had different timetables and in addition the syllabus was constantly being adapted to prepare soldiers for Afghanistan.
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Notes
By 2009, simulators and replica operations rooms had been installed at the giant Sennelager Training Centre in Germany ready for pre-deployment exercises that would involve driving virtual vehicles and commanding computer-generated ground patrols. Commenting on the state of the art facility which utilised X-box technology, the officer in charge, Major Edward Whishaw of the Corps of Royal Engineers, said, “It’s a modern gaming environment that, hopefully, a young 18- or 19-year-old soldier will appreciate; replicating theatre with a carbon copy of reality”’. Defence News, ‘Gaming technology helping UK forces prepare for Afghanistan’, Ministry of Defence, 4 July 2011. See also Chris Cole, Mary Dobbing and Amy Hailwood, Convenient Killing: Armed Drones and the ‘Playstation’ Mentality, Oxford: The Fellowship of Reconciliation, September 2010. http://goo.gl/A09Pr (accessed 24 October 2011).
Stephen Bates and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Video nasty: Prince Harry faces racism inquiry over footage of “Paki” remark’, The Guardian, Monday 12 January, 2009. http://goo.gl/Wppfw (accessed 27 February 2011).
Matthew Taylor and Audrey Gillan, ‘Racist slur or army Banter? What the soldiers say’, Guardian, 13 January 2009. http://goo.gl/aF1gP (accessed 12 March 2011).
Donna Winslow, ‘Military organization and culture’, in Giuseppe Caforio, ed. Social Sciences and the Military: An interdisciplinary overview, London: Routledge, 2007, p. 84.
John Hockey, Squaddies: Portrait of a subculture, Exeter: University of Exeter press, 1986.
Michael Savage, ‘More than 17,000 episodes of troops going AWOL since 2003’, Independent, Sunday, 20 February 2010. http://goo.gl/g0H8g (accessed 27 April 2011).
Michael Bartlet, ‘Britain’s child soldiers’, Guardian, 11 March 2011. http://goo.gl/hsL3g (accessed 10 October 2011).
Staff writers, ‘Quakers and Unitarians call for a change to the Armed Forces Bill’, Ekklesia, 16 April 2011. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14581 (accessed 21 April 2011).
Nick Britten, ‘Racially abused soldier awarded £22,000 compensation by MoD’, Telegraph, 9 January 2010. http://goo.gl/CYRE6 (accessed 20 June 2011). See also ‘Racially abused Army chef awarded £22,000 by tribunal’, Personnel Today, 11 January 2010. http://goo.gl/GnVPb (accessed 10 October 2011).
Jason Burke, ‘Bullied Army recruits are being forced to desert’, Observer, Sunday 4 June 2000. http://goo.gl/vUmX7 (accessed 10 February 2011).
Sean Rayment, ‘Hero lawyer sues Army over sex discrimination’, Telegraph, 31 May 2008. http://goo.gl/Plqy9 (accessed 21 November 2011).
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© 2012 Vron Ware
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Ware, V. (2012). Crossing the Line. In: Military Migrants. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137010032_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137010032_6
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