REGARDING Amy Smith's letter (Friday June 2). May I, as an ex-serviceman of some experience, put another point of view based on my years of life in the Army?

During this time I served with the Wilts and Gloster's RASC in London Division, did motor cycle despatch riding, drove officers training for D-Day, drove Intelligence Corps officers who were interrogating German prisoners in Kempton Park race course which was a PoW camp in the wartime.

I then did an amphibious course in North Wales and I worked with the Pioneer Corps, The Corps of Military Police and the Royal Engineers in north Africa, in Egypt armoured transport and finally drove a field ambulance in Palestine.

I was out in the Atlantic while there were still U-boats about.

Amy, as I see it, isn't concerned about those killed in action, wounded and disabled.

They are put in that position by a gang of politicians who are only concerned with their own lives, wages and expenses and pensions.

Our Forces are supposed to be for the defence of the realm, not to go out abroad on illegal, unwinnable wars. I should have thought Vietnam would have taught the USA that.

Of course, it's one thing if you are not involved in the bloodshed yourself or do as as Tony Blair does and spends four hours in Baghdad. It's another thing to spend hours, days, months, years wondering if every day is going to be your last.

Is somebody lining you up in his/her sights? Is that rusty tin beside the road a bomb?

I don't blame any service people for going AWOL. I would have done the same in 1946 if I could have got back from Palestine.

If the lot of us had done the same it wouldn't have caused the anarchy that Amy Smith fears will happen and I know of cases where members of my unit refused orders too.

A THIPTHORPE.

Swindon