This whole event has tarnished the reputation of an excellent squad, a good friend, and called into question the veracity of reports made by 71Sqn's leadership.
There was no verbal "attack". There was good-natured, over the top barroom banter of the kind everyone has indulged in at some point. The OP is a lovely person and I have flown with her and had the privilege of aerial support whilst tanking and kidding around trying to get altitude records in jets. She is not the sort of person to whom barroom banter is second nature, and those of us who are of a mind to moderate our behaviour when necessary, did so around Esme.
The other person involved is also a good friend and now ex-squaddie is more than reliable in a fight and never afraid to to have some fun. The ex-squaddie did not set out to offend anyone, he was verbally jousting in the way that some of us in 71Sqn do from time to time, kidding around about gender, nationality, sheep fetishes, and relative IQs/online noodle size. Sometimes we offend each other, usually the offended party goes off-piste and gets their head together before returning. It's like a big, brawling family, and only two mistakes were made:
1. Not recognising that someone had been "properly" hurt.
2. Being a bit too drunk to have any recognisable impulse control.
This was compounded by the offended party making it a public issue instead of dealing with it within the squad.
I'm not happy with the tone that this thread has taken, and I'm not sure that the thread really even needed to be started, but that's not anyone's decision except Esme's, who I will repeat, was lovely to fly with. But to tar the whole squad with the same brush (a temporarily and infrequently drunken brush) is, at best, unfair. RTHolmes has agonised over how to respond to an incident he wasn't privy to and was expected to make judgment calls based on second hand information. He's done that, and that has to be respected.
I was there. I tried to manage the situation. I failed. I may have even added to hurt or indignation felt by either party. I don't know, but I logged when I couldn't raise Esme via PM and things started getting a bit heated, as I knew things had gone too far and there was nothing to be saved from the situation. Plus I was angry and sad and slightly drunk myself.
My initial response to this incident was to hang up the joystick. But on reflection I can see how the rowdy alpha male would eventually upset the shy and retiring sister. We, as a squad simply need to take better care in selecting squaddies. No one person in this whole saga is a bad person, but I don't think either side has covered themselves with glory, post-unfortunate event. I'm also not going to quit AH over this, as that would simply be the act of a drama-queen and there aren't enough of us old-school queens left (calling Lew, come in, your time is up).
Be kind to each other, but also have some empathy for those who make mistakes.
