For bravery, King and country...

There are more young men in my life than usual and i have got to thinking about them, because they are so very different from me.

My two most recent influences on this are the book War by Sebastian Junger and the movie Warhorse, which i saw twice and the last time i didn't cry at all.

It is often commented on that young men thrive best when they are part of something bigger than themselves. The rugby team, the street gang, the political movement. An Iranian man remembers his youth in a Pakistani refugee camp. For the first time, in the absence of elders, his main links were with his peers. They played cricket and formed committees and he shows me photos of young men laughing and collapsing on each other and wrestling. They were his formative years, his friendship years, and he learned what sort of man he would be. On a far sadder note, a boy from a 'good' school plans to hang himself wearing his school uniform. When i ask about this he weeps and says, without a trace of irony, that he loves his school - even through his desperate sadness he feels part of something more than himself.

When young men join the armed forces they seem to feel very intensely that they are part of that something bigger, but it is not bravery, King and country, or the clash of civilisations. That's just the crap the rich chaps on horses say as they run you into battle. It's more immediately the lives of your friends that count. You shoot because the other guys are shooting at you and your friends. Your group is everything. If it fails you die.

There is also a state of care-lessness at the height of the adrenaline spike. At any moment in the street race your car could crash. At any moment you could be shot/knifed/whacked. At any moment you could get caught. At any moment you could fall off the mountain. All bets are off. Morality and convention and all your mother taught you is as nought.For now, just now, there are no consequences. At such moments there is a feeling of such freedom and purity that karma stands still.

The movie Warhorse features all that we know about the appalling waste that was World War One in Europe. The destruction of the countryside and the harrowing deaths of many thousands of horses. And the men, who died for their friends and for that fabulous young men's moment when you and your mates go over the top and karma stands still.

Traditonally, Junger says, young men get to do what old men no longer can. They carry loads, they run, they hunt, they swim, and they fight. Now we can see our young men as precious. As a society we must be very careful what we ask our young men to do for us.

Because they will do it.