Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"

I'd say -- "I used to know his father well;

Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."

And when the war is done and youth stone dead

I'd toddle safely home and die -- in bed.



Siegfried Sassoon

Hearing Habib Hussein et al described as 'foot soldiers' Granny keeps remembering this poem. Now she knows that the majors described above don't physically fit the picture of the fanatics who travel across Europe or the Middle East to teach their poor brain-washed foot soldiers how to set up their own - and others' - deaths. Most likely they are not so puffy and scarlet. But she feels that their role is much the same. When are they going to seek martyrdom? - their 52 virgins? Are they not that keen to embrace them, perhaps? Or are they nobly foregoing them in order to further the will of Allah by setting up the murder of more innocents, their own young men not least?

Just wondering. That's all.