UK Leading Sailor Faye Turney has admited that she and her boarding team were “apparently” across the line, and in Iranian waters. Despite the evidence – evidence she probably couldn’t know about – that they actually weren’t.
WEARING a black headscarf, her voice trembled as she spoke to her unseen interviewer.
Leading Seaman Faye Turney appeared on Iranian television in civilian dress to tell the world she and her colleagues had “trespassed” into Iranian waters.
Her eyes downcast and forehead furrowed, in a monotone voice the mother said she had been treated well and that her captors were “nice people”.
You can’t ascribe a single person’s weakness to the entire force – people react to stress differently, some of them do things they later regret. Some people will let you down, and we don’t all end up being the people we hope we’d be.
Still, it’s sad.
Here’s what gets drilled into us, each of us, has been since just after the Korean War, when some among us acted imperfectly:
Article I: I am an American, fighting in the armed forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
Article II: I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.
Article III: If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
Article IV: If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.
Article V: When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
Article VI: I will never forget that I am an American, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.
I know: It lacks a certain sense of irony, doesn’t it? You’ve got to forgive us, we’re military. We don’t do irony very well.
As for Leading Sailor Turney, I try not to judge. I’ve never been there, under the gun, in captivity, not for real. The things that I feared and faced were mostly swiftly up and swiftly past. There are advantages to flying fighters, so long as you keep them in the air. If I was down on the turf with the bad guys?
I know how I’ve been trained, but I don’t know for a certain fact how I would have responded.
Better though, I hope. I would like to think that I’d have done better.
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Jim C,
Back to something i was touching on as well, they really don’t care what they are doing. They are giving the west the collective finger of the whole Middle East, and probably gaining possible ‘extremist’ support in doing so by showing the rest of the area that you can poke the beast in the eye, that there is still resistance, that there is hope that the way of life they lead will triumph over the intrusion of the Empire.
I feel sorry for this seaman but having been out of the U.S. Navy for about a year now, we had the code of conduct drilled into our head. Boot Camp, A School, and Overseas Anti-Terrorism training. I never got into the situation she is in but I’m sure there would have been some guns going off if I or my shipmates were in that situation.
As an Airborne Combat Engineer (Sapper)and Desert Storm Veteran, I find the actions of the British seamen, while repugnant to me, to be right in line with modern British philosophy. The British soldiers that I met while on combined training excercises in Germany and whom I met in Iraq were of the old school caliber. NONE of us would ever think of acting like that. I would rather die than come home in dishonor like that. The Army has many mottos and such like Duty, Honor, Country…..Never leave a man behind….Death before dishonor and many more. Before deploying for Southwest Asia we were given a refresher course on what our duty was in the event of our capture. It did NOT include admiting guilt, aiding the enemy, shaking the little raghead’s hand and acting like we just finished a family reunion. I would have tried to break his little neck given the chance to be that close to him. Of course I would never have been taken alive to start with. That’s a perspective from an old soldier with a nephew serving in the Marine Corp and a son who has talked about enlisting in the Navy. The articles listed as the Code of Conduct are not just suggestions they are in fact military law and a U.S. soldier would be court marshalled for acting like those British sailors did. As far as I’m concerned it is simple cowardice in response to a clear act of war.
There is no excuse for the way some of the hostages behaved, no matter what the British code of conduct is or what threats they were under. Some of them acted like tourists who were relieved that their lost luggage had been found, so they could leave the country. The real life experience of US POWs shows that even though a prisoner can be forced to read something, they can always find ways to show resistance if they want. Like the the POWs who read the words awkwardly and said them the wrong way, while at the same time blinking out morse code messages.
I don’t need to have been a POW in order to know the proper way to behave. Like everyone else I know the difference between right and wrong. I can’t know I would be strong enough to do the right thing because I haven’t been there, but I still know what that right thing is.
[...] have been reading the continuing comments in the Code of Conduct thread at Lex’s with a lot of interest. When I read today’s paper, my eyes kept coming [...]
My future wife went through SERE at the Air Force Academy in the late 80′s when they still had the resistance (pow camp) portion of the training. She believes that this female could not have had any training of this nature. But it is hard to judge without knowing what she is really going through.