Friendly Fire

When he was twenty-five, David Bradley saw four of his colleagues killed by an American aircraft. It was all in the cause of freedom, of course, and not being a paedophile, a drug addict, an asylum seeker or a single mother he should have been able to put it all behind him. Unfortunately, six years later he was still having "nightmares, cold sweats and other problems", according to the chairman of the Gulf Veterans Association in Newcastle upon Tyne, who was in touch with Bradley between 1997 and 1999. Apparently Bradley felt "as if he had been used and abused by the armed services and then just dumped", a rather odd way to feel considering the praise which is lavished almost daily on our brave servicepersons by the Prime Minister and other brave souls in the Government and even in the Daily Mail. Bradley, according to the Guardian "is believed to have served with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which suffered the worst casualties in the Gulf war of 1991"; it seems that Iraqi casualties were even less worth counting in 1991 than they are now.

So, it seems, Bradley shot dead four relatives, two of them in their seventies, who apparently raised him as one of the family and with whom he had lived. Then he walked into a police station. One hopes the Daily Mail, which seems to have leeched onto the story, will be more restrained than usual in its inevitable calls for Bradley to be locked up, strung up, deported, castrated, slapped on the wrist or whatever extra-legal measures they see as correct in this case. Since Bradley is not a paedophile, a drug addict, an asylum seeker or a single mother, what he did was obviously a cry for help.