HOW amazed I am at the response to a harmless image of a smiling soldier in the pages of the Evening News.

Terry James's letter (You Say, Thursday, May 20) makes several assumptions that I feel it is essential to answer.

First, it is basically instinctual to smile at a camera. Suggesting the grin is at the thought of firing the gun off and killing and possibly being killed is an insult.

They are smiling because they are having a photo taken. The presence of the gun is because they are a soldier and they have the right to be proud of bearing arms for their country.

There is a long tradition of honour and courage in our armed forces and no one pretends that war is fun.

However, our armed forces have made real achievements throughout our history and will continue to do so.

Soldiers are pleased to be able to put their training into action, to prove themselves under fire. They are after all, trained to kill, but the aim of any good soldier is to win the battle not glory in killing.

They are being sent to Iraq to act as target practice for terrorist attacks... and yet they will smile, when most of us would go and hide.

As for Tony Blair being messianic? He's annoying, wrong-headed and on the way out, but the war our forces fought alongside the Americans was right, even though the real reasons given were utter nonsense.

It was right to help those Iraqis that we failed after the first Gulf War. It was right to stop Saddam's regime of torture and terror.

As reasons for a war go then this was for the right reasons - even if the threat of chemical weapons was Blairite hearsay and the Americans had ulterior motives for oil.

In the end, a people will be free to govern themselves and posterity will, I hope, judge more kindly than some who are so free to criticise in a democratic country.

RICHARD LAWRENCE,

St John's, Worcester.