I have just seen pictures of British soldiers apparently trying to create firebreaks amid the ongoing wildfires using hand shears, and there is something about the image that sums up a very British approach to national resilience.

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Something terrible happens, the civilian system starts running out of capacity, somebody says “call the Army”, and a few hours later a collection of squaddies who thought they were going home for the weekend are standing in a field being asked to solve a problem they were never supposed to solve, sometimes with kit that looks like it has been found at the back of somebody’s garden shed.

This isn't a criticism of the soldiers. Quite the opposite. One of the great strengths of the British military is that if you give troops a ridiculous task, in awful conditions, with insufficient equipment and very little notice, they will generally find a way of getting it done.

That ability to improvise is precisely why politicians and civilian authorities keep reaching for them. Flooding? Call the Army. Strikes? Call the Army. Pandemic? Call the Army. Fire? Call the Army. Need drivers, planners, logistics, bodies, communications, engineers or just a large number of reasonably fit people who will turn up when ordered and do what they are told? The answer increasingly seems to be the same.

But being able to use the military as the nation's emergency Swiss Army knife does not mean we should.

Imagine being the squaddie involved. You have spent the week doing your actual job, perhaps training for the increasingly serious possibility that Britain might one day require its Armed Forces to fight a peer adversary.

You've got your weekend planned. Maybe you're........

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