Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

In Memoriam: Killed in Action in Southern Afghanistan

My post just over a year ago on the British servicemen killed in action in southern Afghanistan has long since slipped out of sight on this blog. At the time I put it up, when 14 servicemen were killed in the explosion of Nimrod XV230, their deaths had brought the numbers killed in action in southern Afghanistan in six months to 28. Since I put it up, a further 57 have died in action. The old post, with its comments and tributes, will remain in the archive. But it is time to put up a new post that will remind us all how many have died in our name.

The Appalling Way In Which We Treat Our Forces, and Their Families

One of the first jobs as a defence correspondent concerned a new book on the use of British and Australian troops to test the effects of the Pacific atomic bomb tests, which had provoked outrage in Australia. The foreign desk asked me to get the MoD response to the claims – true of course, and in fact long known and accepted – that these soldiers were being used as guinea pigs to test the atomic bomb. Whenever a negative story about the MoD appears in the media – so pretty much on a daily basis – the MoD works out so-called “lines for use” in response to press inquiries about the story. The MoD “line for use” in response to the claims was to denounce any suggestion that they had used the soldiers as guinea pigs outrageous. “We weren’t testing the effects of the explosion on the soldiers themselves," the press officer told me. “We were testing its effects on their clothing.” I really havent made this up. It is exactly what the rather embarassed press officer was forced to say!

The Dangers of Working with Delta

When the SAS go into battle in Iraq, they tread very carefully, merging into the background in battered locally purchased cars and wearing clothes bought from Baghdad’s markets. They know that at any point they might be attacked by insurgents, or as happened on one occasion by the Iraqi police, apparently a mistake. They also know that – like any British soldier - if they open fire and kill someone without due cause, they will be investigated and in all probability court-martialled. All well and good you say. That’s how British troops should operate, according to international law, the Blair government after all signed up to the International Criminal Court. If we don’t keep our troops in line, then the court could step in and put them on trial.

Nimrod XV230 - Our Tightwad Attitude is Killing Our Troops

The long record of cost-cutting on the Nimrod spy plane and the way in which it led to the deaths of 14 British servicemen when their aircraft exploded over Afghanistan a year ago today is as disturbing in its own way as any story I have worked on. Amid the repeated MoD insistence that nothing is wrong, one has to constantly remind oneself that 14 people died here. Both the MoD and the RAF claim that the aircraft is safe. Large numbers of crew have resigned, including the all-important training pilots, while others cling to a belief repeated like a mantra by the RAF that it would not have allowed the aircraft to fly if it were not safe.