A play about Iraq introduces a shocked LA audience to British squaddies, says robert fox |
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The impact of a Scottish play, Black Watch, performed here in Los Angeles at the weekend,
should give anyone now in charge of British policy on Iraq - Gordon Brown included - serious pause for thought.
The hit of last year's Edinburgh Festival, the Scottish National Theatre production is based on
interviews with six members of the Black Watch traumatised by quick
succession tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
The language is raw and the
staging rough, but the ground truth of the piece is devastating. It
revolves around the fact that the regiment was axed after 280 years
just when it was involved in one of its trickiest operations, the deployment to Babila to
back-stop the second American attack on Fallujah in late 2004.
The Jocks of the Black Watch had to enjoy days of mortaring in a
position given the
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The language is raw and the staging rough, but the ground truth of the piece is devastating
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doom-laden name of Camp Dogwood. On one of the
patrols to find the attackers, a sergeant, two soldiers and a
translator were killed by a suicide bomb
driven up to a road block; eight more of the platoon were injured.
What shocked the LA audience, judging by a discussion forum, was the difference in
language and thought between British soldiers and American troops.
"The British soldiers in the play, and in my experience in Iraq and
Afghanistan," said Jason Berg, a former US Marine officer, "don't talk
about patriotism, loyalty, or things like democracy and liberty." The
soldiers declare in the play they might fight for the regiment, or the
platoon, or just their mates.
On the other hand, the Scottish soldiers showed they had sympathy,
pity even, for the Iraqis. "We've spoiled their country," one character says in Black Watch. Says Berg: "The US Marines in particular never thought that way. Senior officers told me always that the Iraqis should
be grateful; we'd liberated them, and brought them democracy.
Commanders couldn't understand why the 
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