Those who gave their lives....

Left behind, their radio and lad rover stolen, a team of six Royal Military Policemen perished....



Sgt Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41:

'Sgt Tim's last words to Mr Baiphy have a vivid ring of desperation. "He asked me for a radio to talk to his superiors," Mr Baiphy said. "He said: 'Our radio has been burned in the Land Rover.'

Corporal Simon Miller, 21:

'Outnumbered by perhaps 1,000 to one, they mounted a desperate last stand in the baking heat. Shattered windows, rooms pockmarked with bullet holes and the pulverised brickwork of the wall surrounding the police station show how fiercely they fought.'

Corporal Russell Aston, 30:

'According to several Iraqi accounts, two of the Britons took cover behind sandbags on the roof of the building. Others manned firing positions in the front rooms.'

Corporal Paul Graham Long, 24:

'Bloodstains on the floor show that one soldier was killed or wounded in the corridor then dragged 10 yards towards the entrance of the building. Every fragment of glass has been blown out of the barred window of one front room.'

Lance-Corporal Benjamin John McGowan Hyde, 23:

'Ten heavy calibre bullet holes scar the wall, perhaps showing where another military policeman died.'

Lance-Corporal Thomas Richard Keys, 20:

'On the other side of a small courtyard, two small rooms have been gutted. More than 24 hours after the fire started, blasts of heat were still overpowering and acrid smoke curled from the doorway to the rooms.'

You know, deep down that you would have run, as fast as you could, away from the gunfire, and you wouldn't have looked back.

You cannot imagine, no, you do not want to imagine what these six brave men were thinking the moment they were taking up their positions, making their rifles ready to fire, you do not want to think about the moment it dawned on them that they were going to die, that they realised that they would have to fight until they could not fight any longer.

You do not want to imagine, because you are not strong enough, not brave enough and not courageous enough, these six men, boldly, intrepidly, stood their ground, held their position, performed their duty and for that we must remember them.

'In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.'

Jose Narosky

Soldiers are not heroes.....

You do not like Facebook, you are not an active member, and you refuse to be so. Recently, while using a relative's Facebook account you stumbled across something, and if you had any feelings at all (which you don't), you would have been angry when you saw it.

The Facebook group called 'Soldiers are not heroes' include this in their 'mantra':

'Putting on a soldiers uniform does not make you a hero. Supporters of the group generally agree that the wars that our armed forces are participating in at the present time and in recent years are unnecessary and unjust. Therefore we don't feel that we should be pressured into offering "support" to people fighting and killing innocent people for causes that we don't believe in.'



You have a response and it comes in the form of a quote:

'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protestor to burn the flag.'

- Father Dennis Edward O'Brian, USMC

Carnage.....

You have been Policing since you were eighteen years of age, and in those years you have come across a few interesting situations, and you can safely say that in most of these situations alcohol has been a contributing factor.



If she fronted a new perfume, it certainly wouldn't be called 'Dignity'.



It's all fun and games, until someone is raped.



Will he be in a cell an hour later, or an ambulance?

Binge drinking can cause the following:

Brain damage
Alcoholic Poisoning
Hypothermia
Hypoglycaemia
Haemorrhage
Pancreatitis

High Blood pressure
Strokes
Breast cancer
Skeletal Muscle Damage

In emergency rooms, self-reported alcohol consumption within six hours of admission is higher for injured than uninjured attendees. 20-40% of emergency admissions are intoxicated; the night-time rate is higher at 80%.

It was your first Saturday night on duty in a very long time, it was no longer the summer holidays, so you didn't have much time to put the hours in during the week, your girlfriend was working, and your mates were going out and getting pissed, so when you realised you had nothing else to do, you decided to go in and do a few hours.

It was about 2300 hrs, you were sat in the town centre in a police car watching all the people walk by, looking down your rather large nose at them, wondering what possessed them to come out on such a cold night, wearing next to nothing. Your brain working, the cogs turning, you started to think of the reasons, but you didn't get very far down the list, because the airwave radio perked up.

You weren't the first car to arrive at the club, so when you arrived the crowds had already gathered, the screams, the shouting, the laughing, the mixed emotions, the paramedics, the police officers, the door staff, the mother, the daughter, the son, the father, the girlfriend, the brother, and the blood.

It was all fun and games, until someone was 'GLASSED'.

For the price of two.......

Your mum had ironed your shirt, polished your boots, and made you a packed lunch.

Two hours later, you finally realised it wasn’t about playing the hero, you looked at her, she was crying, you’d never seen anyone cry so much, but you knew it wasn’t out of pain, but despair. Yes, she was clearly in pain, the blood running from her mouth, nose and head told you that much, you knew she was crying because she was on the edge, she had nothing left to hang onto. You heard the sirens of the ambulance in the distance, you knew the paramedics had most likely seen this kind of thing before, but you were only eighteen years old, you had only ever seen this much blood on television.

If you had any feelings you would have been stood there, righteously angry, cursing to yourself. You knew you could do nothing, nothing you did would make any difference, it wouldn’t do any good, Jonathon had made the arrest, a girl was in the back seat of the patrol car, handcuffed. The other two girls, who were involved, looked harmless, you looked at them and made a judgement, you looked down on them, they were the lowest of the low, your naïve mind was working overtime.

Three witness statements and an interview later, you knew the story, you knew what had happened. A young, innocent girl with learning difficulties, desperate for a friend, had been lured to a location, and had been ambushed. One of the girls jumped on her, attacked her, whilst the other two filmed the attack, on their mobile phones.

All the girls were under the age of fourteen.

‘Join the Special Constabulary, learn to become cynical, jaded, apathetic, unsympathetic and unemotional, lose your soul and live ten years, for the price of two.’

You wonder how many people would join the Special Constabulary, if those words were at the forefront of the recruitment campaign.

Surplus to requirements...

It was a warm, sunny day, and you were rolling around the floor in front of a betting shop. A stop and account had gone awfully wrong, and a male was in the process of being arrested for breach of bail. As you placed your knee in the centre of his back, a woman with a nose ring, and an ample midriff, shouted at you to stop hurting him, to stop being brutal.

About three weeks later, you attended a suspected assault, the same woman was now playing the role of injured party, and now wanted your help. She didn't remember you, but you remembered her.

People need the Police - They like the Police.

People don't need the Police - They hate the Police.

You would like to think that this kind of mentality, this kind of opinion only belongs in the lower areas of society, but it doesn't. It seems to be present amongst the educated, the 'examples'.

On Panorama last night, Hannah McClure said this:

'The first thing I remember seeing is, a man in full riot gear, pointing a Tazer gun, well it felt like it was at me.'

It was a planned arrest, of suspects wanted for serious offences of violent disorder, what did she expect? A Police Officer to arrive and offer them tea and cakes, whilst perhaps dressed in shorts and an anorak?

What people don't seem to understand is that the Police have a job to do, if searches are not carried out, if intelligence is not gathered, if strict rules are not enforced, if a line is not drawn, innocent people can get killed, this can happen:



'Our failures are known, our successes are not.'

Walter Burke, The Recruit.

The return of the horse and carriage.....

You love to drive your car, it’s a brilliant car, it does 0-60mph in 7.5 seconds and it hits a documented top speed of around 150mph, you will state here that you have a clean driving licence and have never had a road traffic collision in the time you have been driving, over three years. You have also attended fatal RTCs, and visited the victims of these collisions in hospital.

You were watching a program earlier on ITV1 about whether or not the limit should be lowered on rural roads to 50mph, in a blanket fashion. A road that you know of quite well is the A617 from Newark to Mansfield, you don’t drive on this road a lot, but you know it has recently also been reduced from 60mph to 50mph. Recently you were driving along that road, travelling at around 50mph and a woman in a Vauxhall Corsa VXR overtook you, you thought she must have been doing around 70mph maybe more, in order to overtake you, she contravened solid white lines and just missed oncoming traffic by a matter of centimetres.

Obviously the local council had taken the advice of the extremely beautiful, but perhaps naïve Miss Katie Shephard, and reduced the speed limit. But had that had any effect on this driver? No. She broke the speed limit, contravened solid white lines and almost caused a head on collision.

Lowering speed limits will have absolutely no effect on drivers who are willing to drive over the speed limit. If a person is willing to drive at 100mph on a 60mph limited road, then will lowering it to 50mph make them slow down? No, of course it won’t, it will just make those drivers who want to drive at 60mph (lawfully), slow down, and make their journey more mundane and less of an experience.

Last but not least, one thing you can’t stand is drivers who toddle through a NSL road at 45mph and then continue through 30mph limits at that speed, be damned the children who get in their way. Will the proposals that Miss Shephard supports stop these drivers from killing children? No, of course they won’t, it's obvious.

Next thing, people will be crowing like cockerels, you can hear them now:

‘Lower the speed limit to 10mph on all roads, let’s reduce traffic collisions, let’s save lives.’

You can't understand their naivety, it is quite disturbing.

When the curtain falls......

You get up, rub your eyes, look over at the other half of the bed, she's still fast asleep, of course she is it's half past five in the morning. It's pitch dark outside, only the street lights are providing illumination in the gloom of a foggy morning. You have a quick shower, a shave, get changed into your uniform, go over your boots with a brush polish, kiss her good bye (she's awake by now, not through choice) and head off to work. It's a quick drive in, especially at that time in a morning, no one is around, except for the milkman.

You arrive in work and the first thing Alan asks you is: 'Late night was it?' He jabs you in the ribs gently, and then produces a wide grin, expecting some sort of retort, one that you usually give, you are happy to provide one: 'Yes, your sister can really party when she gets going.' he laughs, hits you again, he gets your sense of humor, not that many people do. About an hour later you're watching a re run of Jeremy Kyle, while doing paperwork, sorting out a case file for Criminal Damage, it's not that interesting, but they damaged some expensive equipment, they need to be arrested and processed, shouldn't be a problem for you.

Before you can even start the process however, a call comes in, incident in progress. The caller states that a vehicle has just turned over on its side in the middle of the road, someone is crawling out of the window. You put your baton and cuffs on, grab your high vis jacket and a set of vehicle keys, and then Alan, and make your way there. The scene is not what you expect, a small car is parked on the grass verge, a woman is sat on a bench at the side of the road, crying loudly, her husband is leaning against a near by wall, he isn't saying a word. You talk to the woman who made the call, she tells you that she saw the vehicle swerve in the middle of the road, tyre squealing, then it landed on the grass verge, the woman got out, and was followed by the man, an argument ensued and she started crying. So no 180 degree flip? Thought not.

You talk to the woman, she cries a lot, takes hold of your hand, she doesn't want to tell you what happened, how it happened, why it happened, who did what to whom, all she wants is her husband out of the way for the night. You talk with Alan, he tells you exactly the same story, but from the husband, it seems you've hit a wall of silence. Alan is a good lad, harmless and lets his heart rule his head, so you both decide what to do, and four hours later, it's all rapped up, ready for the shift to end.

You are just about to go home, when your Boss beckons you:

'McClaine, have you got anything planned for tomorrow night?'
'Yes, I have actually, I'm taking her to the theatre, should be a good night.'
'I was hoping you would say no, I need you on nights tommorow.'
'I've got plans.'
'I'm not asking though, just being polite about it, as we all know you like.'
'Well I need you to order me.'
'Then consider it an order.'
'No worries boss, shouldn't be a problem then, i'll be in at 8.'
'Thanks Joe.'

You arrive home, open the door, she's watching TV, it appears that some one just fell into a lake, she finds in funny, you love it when she laughs, her smile is beautiful. You know that in a few minutes, that smile won't be there anymore, you decide to tell her later, let her smile for a little longer.......

'You know, sometimes, it just gets really hard to smile through it when they ask you to bend down and grab your ankles. You know?'

Fox Mulder, The X Files.