There have been calls for a now deceased soldier of the British Army's Parachute Regiment( known as the "Paras" to friend and foe alike) to be posthumously awarded the UK's highest award for courage in the face of the enemy for his his conduct during the 1982 Falklands War( against Argentinian forces or the "Argies" as the pop press calls them- it has the same semantic overtones as "gooks" "Krauts" or "Japs")- the only problem is that Corporal "Scouser" McLaughlin engaged in mutilation and collection of Argentinian war dead's body parts- arguably a war crime.

Some may argue that in the horrors of combat soldiers are entitled to their little pleasures, but to my mind NOTHING can justify such base behaviour.(remember the outcry that followed reports of US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents?)

This practise seems to be almost as old as warfare. American soldiers engaged in it during the Pacific War against Japanese troops- FDR was reportedly offered a thigh bone made into a letter opener of a dead "Jap" by a GI but had the good manners to decline the offer and similar practices were reportedly engaged in during the Vietnam War by American "grunts").

I have noticed a certain tendency on the part of some British military commentators and commanders to adopt a sniffily self- righteous attitude towards other armies misbehaviour( pace Antony Beevor and his accounts of the widespread looting and raping carried out by Red Army troops when they entered first Poland and then Germany itself)- "Her Majesty's Forces would NEVER engage in such conduct" well , to honour even posthumously a soldier who engaged in such practises simply debases the respect that the VC should be held in not just by the Armed Forces of the Crown but the public at large.

As for the argument that "soldiers will be soldiers", it is worth noting that when Stalin was informed of the looting and raping carried out by his nation's troops in the closing stages of WWII, he simply laughed and said "We lecture our soldiers too much-let them use their imagination!"

Anybody think as I do?

Terry