Every Soldier Named

On Monday the 8th of November, 2004, Pte Pita Tukatukawaqa died when a roadside bomb hit his vehicle, travelling outside Camp Dogwood, south-west of Baghdad. His death brought the total number of fatalities among UK service personnel in Iraq to 74.

Pte Pita Tukatukawaqa died aged 27. He was married and from Fiji, and joined the Black Watch in March 2001. He was a “trained sniper and an outstanding sportsman” who had served in Kosovo and Iraq. On the previous Thursday, three soldiers with the Black Watch were killed by a suicide bomber — these soldiers were Sgt Stuart Grey, Pte Paul Lowe and Pte Scott McArdle. Thanks to constant internet access and round-the-clock reporting from the scene, I can find out all of this information without even leaving my bedroom. I can do it without even getting out of bed.

We no longer have to even rely on newspapers to get our information. The BBC have made a webpage that lists the names of all 74 service personnel, and the circumstances of their deaths. I can google for any of these names and find out who these people were — Lance Corporal Paul Thomas, killed in action in Basrah on the 17th of August, was aged 29 and single. He came from Welshpool, was a keen rugby supporter and a proud Welshman. Sapper Luke Allsopp, who died after being reported missing on March 23rd, was aged 33, came from North London, and had a girlfriend called Katy.

Corporal Marc Taylor was 27, from Ellesmere Port, and leaves behind a wife and daughter. Fusilier Gordon Campbell Gentle, was aged 19 and single. Major James Stenner was aged 30, married, and at the time of his death, his wife was 5 months pregnant.

I wonder how this wealth of information will affect the way our politicians go to war. For more or less the first time, people here are not just reading reports of the war in the papers, days, sometimes weeks after the fact. As cities are levelled, we sit in our homes and watch it as it happens. As a single soldier dies, we are informed almost as soon as the families. Our politicians apologise and issue statements expressing their ‘deep regret’ for every soldier that falls. And who can forget the George W. Bush montage?

I wonder if this constant barrage of obituarial information will affect the way the general public supports a war. It’s easier to approve of troops being sent to fight when you don’t know them, but surely, when faced with the smiling faces of the dead from every news bulletin, that has to have an effect? I’d like to think that it would, but time will tell.

Finally, I wonder what the effect would be if all of the 100,000 Iraqis who have died so far were to be so publically named here in the same way.

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