VETERANS LAUNCH COUNTER RECRUITMENT WEBSITE

‘Don’t Join the Army’ is a project of Veterans For Peace UK. It is a response to the Army’s consistently misleading and exploitative recruitment campaigns aimed at young people.

Based on the experiences of hundreds of veterans, Don’t Join the Army provides young people with information about military service often missing from the official recruitment material.

Ben Griffin, served with the SAS in Iraq and is the coordinator of Veterans For Peace UK. He said “The army is engaged in a long term campaign to recruit our children and also to capture the imagination of those who will never join. The army is nothing like the recruitment adverts, our new website reveals the reality of army life and the possible negative consequences of army service.”

Rachel Thompson, served in the British Army and witnessed severe sexual harassment. She said “At 17, I was one of the eldest girls in my basic training intake at the Army Apprentice College. I saw grown men who were married with children, engaged in sexual relationships with impressionable, young girls who had just swapped their school uniform for an army uniform. The bullying of both males and females was shocking.”

Kieran Devlin, served in the Gulf War and Northern Ireland. He said “I joined the army at the age of 15 although didn’t begin training until the age of 16. I wasn’t old enough to be legally entrusted with a credit card yet they made me sign an oath of allegiance to the Queen and who ever should succeed her. So what will the army teach your children when the join up? They will teach them to obey, they will teach them to hate, they will teach them to kill other human beings without question and they will teach them to believe they are superior to all others. The army do not uninstall this programming from your children when they leave, so don’t expect to welcome rational, civilised human beings back from army service.”

Veterans For Peace UK is a voluntary ex-services organisation of men and women, who collectively have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2. We say ‘War is not the solution to the problems we face in the 21st century’.