Opinion

To the sound of drums and the rhythm of tarari

photo_camera Atalayar_Rey Felipe VI España Militares Afganistán Base Torrejón Madrid

This phrase heads the first paragraph of a well-known pasodoble with a military theme and used to liven up parades, marches and passacaglias entitled "Soldadito español" (Little Spanish Soldier). Its author, the composer of zarzuelas, musical revues and sainetes, Jacinto Guerrero, composed it for the musical revue "La orgía dorada", which premiered in 1928.

Its simple and catchy lyrics, which have been carried over to the present day, were intended as a simple and at the same time sincere homage to the much-maligned Spanish Army, to its soldiers and to all that the march and incorporation into distant wars implies and surrounds for those affected and their families.

It was born out of a need to alleviate the serious effects produced by the bloody and disastrous vicissitudes of war that had occurred in the immediately preceding decades: the wars of independence in Cuba and the Philippines and the campaigns in Morocco.

I am reminded of this because I still remember clearly the morning of 11 September 2001 when, stunned by the collapse of the Twin Towers, I was in the office of the General in charge of the Plans Division at NATO Headquarters in Naples (AFSOUTH), then my boss, bidding farewell to the end of the cycle after three years of hard work trying to bring some order and harmony to the then Serbian province of Kosovo, which is now an independent country; Today it is an independent country, recognised by many other countries and which, as luck would have it, our football team has had to play against it, despite the fact that Spain, for obvious reasons, has not recognised it as a sovereign and independent country.

On that morning, full of attacks everywhere, world peace was suddenly broken and the balance of power was turned upside down; the Americans, seeing themselves threatened on their own territory - for the second time in their history - forced President Bush to declare the so-called "war on terror" and, incidentally, to invoke article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO, so that we and our soldiers appeared in Afghanistan as part of a broad international coalition.

Our capabilities for projecting, feeding and sustaining distant operations had to be multiplied by several hundred since, with this intervention, despite the American umbrella, the distances and means to be transferred not only increased but also became even more sophisticated with air assets and complex surveillance and security systems and adequate health systems to participate in a real war.

We soon realised that we not only had to fight terrorism, but that our mission was even greater and more honourable; to save an entire people and especially their women and children from the clutches of heartless people who treated them worse than cattle and continually disregarded their human rights. Our international cooperation leapt into action with efficiency and nonchalance, and we saw that we were welcomed by the allied countries and that the Aborigines were clearly grateful for our presence and our efforts.

But, despite all this, we realised that this was not a simple peace operation, much less more humanitarian than anything else; the ricochets of bullets, the shrapnel of mines against cars, the explosions as our convoys passed and the shooting down of helicopters were not long in coming.

The enemy was well-equipped with weapons of all kinds, whose origins, although apparently not very clear, we all knew that they came from previous American support for their then friends and now enemies and warlords and for certain obscure interests of countries that are always looking for ways and means to act against the West, the US, NATO and other allies by dealing in arms and explosives.

The mission was dragging on, the positive results were slow in coming, the attacks and real combats were multiplying, the contingents were getting larger and the cost in lives, the blood spilled and the huge and expensive material wasted in those inhospitable and harsh lands were beginning to take their toll on Spain. All of this was reminiscent of the times in the past when the song of the little Spanish soldier that gives the title to this humble work and homage was born.

Pasodoble that, without being aware of its meaning and origin, I have hummed and heard it played several times, as it was used in the barracks and air bases at the time of farewells and the formation of ad hoc groups or battalions that were framed to participate in this mission; a mission that, by all accounts, was never going to end positively or with results that would justify so much human and economic effort and too many sleepless nights so far away from the homeland.

As Colonel Commander of the 29th Airborne Regiment, Isabel La Católica, I had to train and instruct several contingents to go on this mission. How much I would have liked to leave with them, but the contingents formed by my men and women soldiers during my two years in office were not large enough for their Colonel to leave in command of them - at that time we were also participating at the same time in the mission in Iraq from which Zapatero removed us in such a dishonourable and unprofessional manner - so I sent them off like a father who sees them leave, wrapped in anxiety and hidden tears, his children off on an uncertain adventure and I hurried to be the first to be there to pick them up on their return, tired and changed in body and soul. 

After completing my two years of command, I said goodbye to the Regiment without having lost a single one of the almost eight hundred troops that had been handed over to me two years earlier; I had fulfilled my wish and dream, to keep them all together; alive and healthy and I emphasised this in my farewell speech in front of all of them in formation the day before handing over the Command and the Flag to my successor. 

But the ineffable passing of life, bad luck or both at the same time dragged me to the fact that in a short period of time, I had to go to Getafe to receive many, too many coffins of helicopter comrades -units in which I also spent many years of my life- and of NCOs and troops of my beloved Regiment; I remembered the latter both by their faces and by many of their names, smiles and gestures as I said goodbye with a certain joy and nostalgia on my last day in Pontevedra, when they were already finalising their preparations for their next imminent rotation in Afghanistan.

Later, I mourned them silently one by one in their improvised mortuary chapels, as I visited some of the wounded in the Gómez Ulla hospital while they still had the stupor on their faces and in their gazes. I embraced their Captain in the base area as he descended from the plane, a young, enterprising and very enthusiastic man, who was always setting an example and suffering the efforts and risks with his soldiers and who, for his luck or misfortune, was travelling in the helicopter least affected in that attack or incident; a case and fact that was never really cleared up and was soon covered up under the command of Minister Bono.

As is well known, sorrows never come alone, so the trickle of deaths in the same and successive rotations soon led me to remember and even mourn them all as their names were added to the long list of those who had fallen in the war.

Like many Spaniards, I was convinced that such a great effort was worthwhile; our forces were fulfilling a sublime mission and were much loved by those who received their help directly or indirectly; but the euphoria or simplicity that I achieved from my point of view made me forget that envy, resentment and betrayal are an inherent part of human thought and perhaps even more exacerbated in the minds of the people of those lands.

People who are suspicious of everything and everyone because they have been hardened under the oppressive boot, drug dealing, revenge and the Law of Talion; where women and children -especially girls- are the object of jokes, abuse, contempt, cange and corruption and that those approaches and certain degrees of friendship become for many of them very dangerous things or friendships, which, when they can and have the opportunity, must be corrected as brutally as possible so that they serve as an example and do not return to those who, because they are foreigners, are enemies of them and their religion by mere definition.

People who are suspicious of everything and everyone because they have been hardened under the oppressive boot, drug dealing, revenge and the Law of Talion; where women and children - especially girls - are the object of jokes, abuse, contempt, cange and corruption and where those approaches and certain degrees of friendship become for many of them very dangerous things or friendships, which, when they can and have the opportunity, should be corrected as brutally as possible so that they serve as an example and do not return to those who, being foreigners, are enemies of them and of their religion by mere definition.

Two days ago we saw HM the King go to receive the few dozen of the last Spanish soldiers returning, when someone above us, there in the White House, has decided that after twenty years of fierce and unequal fighting on such hostile terrain, the mission in Afghanistan has ended without any further explanation and once again, we have been quick to pack up in a hurry, leave what is not necessary and head for home. The scene reminded me of the return of the last ones from the Philippines; those soldiers who fought bravely for hundreds of days far from Spain without knowing that our government had decided to end the conflict and hand over that colony, but who, by continuing to comply with their orders, maintained a weak position, dying one by one, except for a few, from the onslaught of the enemy, misery and infection.

Today I read a short article by a good friend speaking on the subject, in which he wondered what we had spent twenty years in that area and mission for, and I join in his question and, as I have already mentioned, add my great concern for those aborigines who grew up and worked in some way alongside us, making our lives more bearable, and are now left alone without our protection, at the mercy of reprisal and oppression.

This little work serves as a remembrance and homage from an old Colonel, and I hope he is not the only one, to all those men and women who gave their lives or shed their blood in those lands and places, fulfilling the mission entrusted to them, although after twenty years we are still wondering what good all that effort and even the gift of their own lives so generously given, like those of the little Spanish soldiers in that simple and catchy song that began with the sound of the drums and the beat of the tarari....