Supporting our troops

There's a campaign in the UK to support the two RAF Regiment personnel who had their photos taken, thumbs up over a Taliban insurgent.
Not in good taste, probably a stupid thing to do but even more stupid was posting it on a public social media site.
However, when you know the background to the battle this was obviously euphoria at finding themselves alive after a 5 hour firefight with Taliban, dressed in US military, who had cut through the fence at Camp Bastion.
The campaign is on Facebook and asks for people to post a 'Thumbs Up' picture/photo.
This one is mine.

Battle Story that was in 'The Telegraph' UK newspaper.

Few people would argue that the photograph of a British soldier doing the thumbs-up sign next to the corpse of a Taliban fighter is an edifying sight. For civilians in particular the image offers an uncomfortable juxtaposition of death and glee. It also falls short of the respect demanded in the Geneva Conventions for the bodies of enemy combatants.

But now consider the events on the evening of September 14 2012 in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. At 10pm, 15 Taliban fighters dressed in US Army uniforms cut through the perimeter wire of the base and opened fire with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. There was a firefight within the camp that lasted for several hours. By the end of it six Harrier jets were burnt out, two Marines were dead, and a dozen more American and British soldiers were injured. All but one of the Taliban fighters were dead. It was one of the most shocking incidents of the war, revealing culpable security lapses in the running of the camp, and the RAF servicemen suddenly caught up in it must have been at first terrified and then exhilarated to be alive. Several members of the RAF, indeed, were subsequently decorated for their courage.

Two of them did something in bad taste, by posing for a trophy photograph next to an enemy corpse, a folly compounded by posting the picture online. The extension of the “selfie” culture into the battlefield is to be heavily discouraged, and the RAF will rightly leave the servicemen concerned in no doubt of that. But let us retain a sense of proportion, and of compassion, for young men who find themselves in such extreme and dangerous circumstances at the behest of our government.

This is not Abu Ghraib, in which US guards pictured themselves degrading Iraqi prisoners. Nor is it akin to the incident in which US marines took photographs of themselves urinating on enemy corpses. As Col Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2006, reminded us, the RAF men clearly felt “elation” that they had survived the attack. The reality of war, including the rogue emotions that accompany killing and survival, does not always chime with civilian sensitivities. Those at home who are eager harshly to condemn these servicemen for poor judgment, in circumstances where such men have themselves faced the possibility of death, might first want to contemplate walking through a Taliban firefight in their boots.