So the Royal Navy has parachuted a soldier onto a remote island to deliver Hantavirus aid. One man, a chute, and a box of medical supplies against the wilderness. How terribly Captain Cook. How terribly Somerset Maugham. How terribly, deliciously quaint.
Let us not mince words: this is the sort of spectacle that makes a man reach for his gin and tonic and mutter something about the White Man’s Burden. We live in an age of drone strikes and algorithmic warfare, and yet here we are, deploying a lone paratrooper like a character from a Boy’s Own adventure. The Ministry of Defence, with a straight face, calls it a demonstration of global reach. I call it a beautifully absurd piece of historical cosplay.
But do not mistake my sarcasm for contempt. I find the whole thing oddly moving. In a world where our political leaders cannot agree on the colour of a postage stamp, here is a British soldier falling from the sky to save lives. It is the kind of gesture that Kipling would have written a jingoistic poem about, complete with references to the angel of the Lord and the thin red line. The modern equivalent is a Twitter thread from the Armed Forces account, accompanied by a grainy GoPro video. Still, the spirit is the same.
Consider the logistics. Hantavirus is not a polite illness. It kills with a haemorrhagic efficiency that would make a Jacobean tragedian blush. The island, if we are to believe the reports, is accessible only by sea or air, and the weather is thick with the kind of mist that makes pilots think of poetry and their mothers. So they send one man, because that is what you do when you are a nation that once ruled a quarter of the globe and now rules a few rocks in the Atlantic. You do not send a fleet. You send a symbol.
And what a symbol it is. The parachutist, strapped with a spray can of death and a satellite phone, represents the last gasp of a martial tradition that stretches back to Agincourt. He is the direct descendant of the man who stood on the deck of the Victory and the man who charged up San Juan Hill. He is the ghost of Empire, and he is still on the payroll.
Of course, the modern mind recoils at such language. We are supposed to speak of humanitarian intervention and specialist capabilities. We are not supposed to mention the British Empire, or the sheer theatricality of dropping a soldier from a C-130 onto a wind-whipped rock. But theatre is what we do. It has always been what we do. The British are a nation of showmen, and our military is the greatest show on earth. This operation is not just aid; it is a performance. It tells the world that we still have the nerve, the training, and the sheer bloody-mindedness to do things that other nations would outsource to a robot.
And let us be honest: the robot would be more efficient. A drone could drop the supplies without risking a life. A naval vessel could sail in with a helicopter. But efficiency is not the point. The point is the parachute. The point is the man. The point is the image of a lonely figure descending through the clouds to save a handful of people from a rodent-borne plague. It is a picture that will be printed in newspapers and shared on social media, a picture that will say, as clearly as any Churchillian speech, 'Britain is still here.'
So raise a glass to the paratrooper. He is a relic, a throwback, a piece of living history. But he is also a reminder that some things never change. The empire is gone. The Union Jack has been folded up and put in a drawer. But the spirit that sent men to the ends of the earth with nothing but a rifle and a sense of duty is still there, waiting for the next call. This time the enemy is a virus. Next time it might be something else. But the response will be the same: a jump into the dark, a hope for the best, and a quiet defiance that is unmistakably, stubbornly British.
