THE Ministry of Defence is preparing for battle. Hostilities will begin on February 4, and they are expected to last between five and six months. The battleground will be the High Court and the enemy - 350 strong at the moment - are former soldiers who are suing the ministry for failing to prepare them for the horrors of war. Casualties are likely to be very heavy indeed.

I am not thinking only of the financial implications of the case, although these are enormous. In 1994, a former Scots Guardsman who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving in the Falklands received £100,000 in an out-of-court settlement. If the court finds against the ministry next year, and damages are awarded on that sort of scale, the Government will have to pay out many tens of millions of pounds.

The floodgates will be opened for claims from every member of the Armed Forces who has seen active service, and suffered the trauma that soldiering so often involves. There can hardly be a single battle veteran alive who has not suffered at least the occasional nightmare. Is every one of them to have compensation - even though they must all have had at least a rough idea of what they were letting themselves in for at the time when they joined up?

The confrontation between the veterans and the ministry is damaging for another reason, too: it gives the impression that the nation simply abandons those who have suffered in its service when it has no further use for them, leaving them no other recourse than to the courts if they wish to be treated decently.

That is very far from the truth. The Armed Forces have always looked after their own, through the regimental system, the Royal British Legion and the various benevolent funds dedicated to the welfare of veterans.

This is a system that fosters the esprit de corps that is essential to the morale, and therefore the effectiveness, of any fighting force. The spectacle of 350 or more soldiers suing the bureaucrats of the MoD for compensation, like factory hands claiming for unfair dismissal, can only undermine morale among those still under arms.

But the most dangerous aspect of this case is its possible effect on soldiers' conduct in the field. The effectiveness of the Armed Forces depends, above all, on a Serviceman's readiness to obey orders without question - some of which, inevitably, will expose him to great risk. If, by obeying an order, a soldier becomes eligible in law for damages, then why should he feel legally bound to obey it?

"Lieutenant, take your platoon and storm that machine-gun nest."

"No, sir. We might get hurt."

"That's an order, lieutenant."

"We'll see about that in court."

I am not the only one who foresees trouble if members of the Armed Forces are given the same rights to compensation from their employers as accountants or dustmen. General Sir Charles Guthrie, the former Chief of Defence Staff, has warned that a "culture of compensation" could paralyse the Services.

The Army's official guide, Soldiering - the Military Covenant, begins by asserting: "All British soldiers share the legal right and duty to fight and if necessary, kill, according to their orders, and an unlimited liability to give their lives in doing so." But even this stirring document goes on to hint that these rights and duties may not be so straightforward.

"By placing more emphasis on individual rights than on collective responsibility," it says, "much domestic and European legislation may impact adversely on the operational effectiveness of the Army . . . The application of any legislation to the Armed Forces must be assessed in terms of its impact on the Moral Component of Fighting Power, so that appropriate exemptions can be sought where necessary." We will see next year, when the court reaches its judgment, whether or not the forces are exempt from legal liability for PTSD.

It was Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government that opened the way for the 350 former soldiers to seek damages from the MoD. That was when it removed crown immunity from such claims in 1987, giving no apparent thought to the consequences. But the present Labour Government greatly strengthened the litigants' hands last year, when it incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. The 350 will be relying partly on the Human Rights Act when they put their case to the court.

Tony Blair often gives the impression of being determined to undermine the morale of the Army and the authority of its senior officers. He did so in 1999, when he ignored the advice of the generals and lifted the ban on the Services' recruiting self-declared homosexuals, saying that he was responding to a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.

He is giving the same impression now, when his ministers press the case for putting women into the front line of the infantry and armoured regiments - again against the generals' advice.

The very way in which he uses the Armed Forces to police his "ethical foreign policy" must also undermine morale. He is constantly asking them to risk their lives for causes that few people understand, and fewer hold dear, in parts of the world where Britain has no obvious national interest at stake.

It will be yet another heavy blow to the Army's morale if the plaintiffs succeed next year. All that can be hoped is that the court will display a little common sense, and accept it as part of a soldier's lot to risk death or injury, trauma and stress, in the way that it is a dustman's lot to empty the bins.

There is a heavy responsibility on all of us to look after those who have suffered for our country. But this should not be a matter for the courts.