What to do with a young boy who wants to drive a tank

“Pashto? You want to learn Pashto?” I looked at my 11-year-old son in astonishment. He has just sat his 11-plus exam but even if he gets in to the local selective day school, Pashto is not on the curriculum. Pashto is the senior of the two state languages of Afghanistan, article 20 of whose constitution states that the Afghan National Anthem “shall be in Pashto”. So why does Cost Centre #3 suddenly want to learn a language that he has never heard spoken before? Because he believes that Britain will still be sending troops to Afghanistan by the time he is old enough to serve his country – and he wants to be ready.

The school CC#3 hopes to attend may not teach Pashto, but it does run a combined cadet force that he could join in the year he turns 14. Maybe that experience will be enough to dissuade him from his plans to serve. If he goes to university and joins the army as an officer, he will not be eligible for deployment until 2020. Of course, he could well have changed his mind by then anyway. But he has been focused on an army career for at least two years and far be it from me to influence his decision.

Meanwhile, what to do with a young boy who is keen to drive a tank when he grows up? For a start, I have taken him to the Household Cavalry Museum, on London’s Whitehall, so that he can learn about the two regiments that make up the Household Cavalry, the Life Guards and the Blues & Royals. The Household Cavalry is divided into two units; one is the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, which performs mounted ceremonial duties, such as escorting the Queen’s birthday parade. The other, the Household Cavalry Regiment, serves in armoured fighting vehicles, and is currently in Afghanistan. Those of you who have seen the men in their impeccable uniforms, mounted on their equally impeccable horses, forming The Queen’s Life Guard in Whitehall, might reflect that those same men are probably only recently returned from the theatre of war.

There are other places you can learn about the role of the cavalry in the British Army, including the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (a firm favourite with CC#3, not least because his mother can fly him there). But, unlike the Household Cavalry Museum, it does not offer the chance to walk through a working military stable, a full-length glass wall separating the punter from the professional. And what I like most of all is that its profits go to support soldiers of the Household Cavalry who have been injured in service.

There, of course, lies the real reason a mother’s heart sinks when her 11-year-old says that he wants to learn Pashto. As of the 1st of February, 253 British forces personnel and MoD civilians have died while serving in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001. Many more have been wounded. I probably shouldn’t worry; after all, CC#3 may be thwarted in his ambition by sheer competition for places. In 1990, the UK’s armed forces mustered some 306,000 personnel; last year the tally was 188,000. Only this month we have learnt that defence funding is to be even more restricted.

The Chilcot inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war has provoked much comment in the British media, and innumerable pundits have had their say about whether we should have got involved. As the mother of a child determined to serve Queen and country, how do I feel when I hear yet another person, often someone who has never been near Afghanistan, opining on the subject? To quote Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

CC#3, I hope that you do get to drive your tank one day. Although I do hope that, by then, it won’t be necessary to learn Pashto.

mrsmoneypenny@ft.com

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that 1,253 British forces had died in Afghanistan. The correct number is 253, as of February 1 2010