Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

It Wasn't Like That in My Day! Is It Time For The Land Rover to Go?

With attention focussed on the use of Snatch Land Rovers in Afghanistan, and with one eye on Friday’s Veterans’ Day celebrations, our resident vet Chuck Unsworth looks back at the vehicle that was the mainstay of the army during the Cold War.

For many years and in quite a few countries, both during and after my military service, I’ve travelled about in Land Rovers of various configurations.  They’re very unsophisticated, generally reliable and, whilst not soldier-proof, they are hardy beasts of burden.  They have been modified and maltreated in myriad ways.  Some of these modifications were successful, some not so.  I always preferred the long wheelbase – the 110 – to the slightly more agile 90.  These nomenclatures represent the length of the wheelbase in inches, of course, and rightly so, given its British origins.  Doubtless this anomaly is currently being examined by some committee or other in Brussels, determined to ensure ‘harmonisation’ on the way to a European Defence Force.

It Wasn't Like That in My Day! National Service Meant Everyone Had the Same Education!

Chuck Unsworth, our resident veteran, has a look at one of the aspects of service life that those who have never served rarely understand 

It occurred to me the other day, reading how Des Browne, our defence secretary, apparently believes that most soldiers aren’t well enough educated to get any other job, that the education given by anyone who does join the forces is second to none. No wonder our troops don’t think that the rest of us value them sufficiently. Frantic Friday night commuters hurrying west out of London to their various homes, weekend cottages, and country seats are usually too busy trying to preserve life and limb on the motorways to pay much attention to the passing terrain.  But the Thames Valley and the areas surrounding the M3, M4 and M40 are full of military and naval establishments, some large and some miniscule, where the forces are given a far better grounding in life than many civilians. It isn’t just about learning how to kill, even when it seems to be just that.

Another Senior Officer Quits the Army Amid Anger Over Cuts

The resignation of one of the army’s most experienced and decorated special forces officers follows his outspoken criticism of the government for failing to provide enough troops and equipment is a bitter blow. Brig Ed Butler, a former commander of 22 SAS, is the most senior of three key commanders to have resigned in the past year amid widespread anger over lack of funding and his resignation came in the same week that Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, called for better treatment for the forces and more money to be spent on defence.

It Wasn't Like That in My Day! An Army Marches on its Stomach

Another note on how life seemed so much better back then for our forces from resident forces veteran Chuck Unsworth

From Hospital Hill in Aden, South Yemen, the view across the surrounding rocky escarpments at sunset is breathtaking.  The natural dusty burgundy of the hills and the crimson flare of the sun suffuse everything with an almost tangible rich red glow. 

The Marines, who arrived there in 1967 for the final stages of the British Withdrawal, would lounge around the makeshift open-air Galley which overlooked this stunning panorama. 

Meanwhile the cooks did their best with the ‘Compo’ (officially, ‘Composite’) Rations to produce an edible evening meal.  Occasionally the chefs proved successful, and we would dine al fresco in pleasing surroundings. From what one hears, our boys in Afghanistan are not quite so lucky!

It Wasn't Like That in My Day! The Days When We Had Kit That Would Last!

Now more reminiscences from former soldier Chuck Unsworth

Recent comment by Coroners has highlighted the failure of supply of soldiers’ personal protection items.  That failure has lead to avoidable deaths and injuries both in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This is appalling but, to any soldier, unsurprising.  Historically our armed forces have had to fight three foes – the Queen’s Enemies, the Politicians and the Ministry of Defence.  It’s difficult to assess which is the most formidable, but MoD is certainly a constant threat, whereas the others may come and go.  I’ll probably address these serious matters in a later post, but today I wanted to discuss Personal Kit.  This is not battlefield equipment, it’s the things like the basic issue of clothing or uniform, and boots and so on.  As an aside, it is utterly scandalous that even now, our people fighting in both actions have found it necessary to purchase their own boots rather than wear the inferior issued items.

It Wasn't Like That In My Day! Accommodation Fit For Rats

For former soldiers like myself, the current conditions faced by our troops are incomprehensible. At a time when living standards in this country were very much lower there was never any suggestion that we should live in the kind of squalor apparently common for today's forces. Here is an old friend of mine Chuck Unsworth with a new column looking at different aspects of service life from the view of a veteran:

A few days ago I drove down the old A3 from London to Portsmouth.  From Guildford to Pompey the whole area is littered with the remains of military or naval establishments, some still in use.  On a whim I made a slight detour to take a look at the former Longmoor Camp where I had been stationed before being posted to Singapore – a very long time ago.  Some of the original barrack blocks and other accommodation still stand and are in use.  These buildings are at least seventy years old. The subject is much in the news of course, after pictures emerged of mouldy barrack blocks with sewage pouring out onto the road.

Remembering Those Who Died to Make the Lives of Others Better

Finally, there has been an acceptance from the MoD that the more than 15,500 members of the armed forces killed since the second world war should be commemorated. We have all recognised the fact that British troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is really not understood that there has been just one year since the Second World War – 1968 – when British troops were not fighting and dying for their country.

Head of British Army Calls for More Infantry

The head of the army has called for “several thousand” more frontline soldiers to “round out” the British Army’s capabilities, reversing cuts to infantry levels made by his predecessor. Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of General Staff, fears the army risks being degraded by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to a level at which it is no longer able to operate properly. He called for the extra troops in an impromptu address at the end of a Whitehall conference on the future of land warfare earlier this month. It begs questions as to why his predecessor Gen Sir Mike Jackson ever thought it was sensible to cut infantry levels at a time when the army is more hard pressed than it has been since the Korean War.

Harry's Idea of Lying Low

You have to feel sorry for the head of the army Gen Sir Richard Dannatt. Prince Harry is in the Blues and Royals, one of the top cavalry regiments in the British Army. The prince, third in line to the throne, is determined to be a soldier and “do his job”. But Iraq is just too dangerous for him. His departure is flagged up by the Defence Secretary in the House of Commons and duly reported with gusto by the UK media. So the insurgents know he is coming and get ready to bomb his vehicle and kidnap him. Eventually, Dannatt accepts that with the media on Harry’s tail night and day, it is impossible to slip him into Iraq quietly. The prince, anxious for a bit of derring-do, is “extremely disappointed” and threatens to leave the army. So Dannatt hatches a cunning plan to keep him in.

Tony Blair's Paper Army

An army document leaked to the Sunday Times shows the dramatic and thus far unreported extent of equipment shortages across the army. The dearth of everything from tanks to radio sets is caused by lack of funding for spares and replacements for kit destroyed on operations or too broken to repair. “This is Tony Blair’s paper army,” one senior officer said. “We just don’t have the equipment to train our men. It is all down to the ghastly Gordon Brown. We’re absolutely dreading him taking over as prime minister.”

No area of army equipment is unaffected by the shortages. There is so little kit for training that it is now merely an aspiration to provide troops preparing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan with a third of the equipment they need to train properly. But even this “will take time to be fully in place”, the document says. The author of the document, Brigadier Simon Levey, who is in charge of equipment at the Army’s Headquarters Land at Wilton in Wiltshire, points out the potential problems this could cause, not just in the way it prevents soldiers training properly for operations, but in terms of morale.

The Great Man Speaks

General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the army, the soldier’s general, has lashed out at the government for asking too much of his men and at the MoD for not caring enough about them. The great man's presentation of the BBC's annual Richard Dimbleby lecture was a bravura performance. On the difficult problem of Iraq which is exercising so many great minds this week, he has thought long and hard, he says. Some of course – he won’t mention the name of his successor General Sir Richard Dannatt - have called for a swift withdrawal. But the great man has decided that it would be immoral simply to cut and run. Who could disagree with him? Put him on a pedestal, give him a seat in the House of Lords and let’s all stand back and admire the sheer personal courage of a thoroughly decent man who throughout his time in charge of the army tried his level best to hold back the ever increasing demands imposed on his men by the government and the evil monster that is the MoD.

(Rapturous applause)

At Last a Commander Deserving of Command

It was absolutely brilliant to hear that the Chief of General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt has stood up for his men and made it clear to Tony Blair that British troops should not be in Iraq. For several months, the British military in Basra have candidly admitted that the Iraqi police and the army have been running operations on the ground, even in Basra. As I pointed out six weeks ago, British troops have only stayed around because leaving now would cause George Bush’s Republican Party problems ahead of next month’s mid-term elections.

Is the War on Terror Bound to See Our Troops Breaking the Law?

British troops shot dead a leading al-Qaeda terrorist in Basra this week. Omar al Faruq, who was implicated in the Bali bombings and was said to have been sent to Basra to urge attacks on the British was hunted down in a carefully planned operation. Two companies of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment were ordered to take Faruq alive but he resisted and was shot dead in an exchange of fire. No doubt Faruq could have produced some intelligence on the planned operations of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which would be why British military commanders wanted him alive. But I do wonder what the British planned to do with him once he had been interrogated. Who would they have handed him over to, the Iraqis or the Americans? Wouldn't that have been just as illegal under international law as deliberately killing him?

Macho Jacko - Has he lived up to his image?

Gen Sir Mike Jackson is about to retire as Chief of the General Staff, the head of the British army, which seems a good moment to assess the state of the army after just over three years on the watch of the man who was seen as the soldiers’ soldier, the great hope for the future of the army. He has overseen a controversial restructuring of the army, the participation of British troops in an even more controversial war in Iraq, and as head of the army must have ultimate responsible for the latest controversy, the disgraceful lack of resources available to our troops in Afghanistan. So how many marks out of ten does Jacko get?

Getting it Right for Once

The decision to send more armoured vehicles out to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our troops from the highly effective roadside bombs that have killed 18 British soldiers traveling in the Snatch Land Rover is a victory for the parents of the dead soldiers who campaigned to try to stop other people’s children dying in similar circumstances.

Spinning the Infantry - A Culture of Deceit

The astonishing way in which the MoD attempted to mislead Parliament by claiming that the infantry was 100 per cent manned is typical of the spin it deploys routinely to hide problems. The same addiction to spin led Des Browne, Defence Secretary, to claim last week that he was sending 900 troops to reinforce the British garrison in Helmand, when in fact he was sending only 200 infantry now - with engineers to build up the British bases, and medics to treat the inevitable casualties, not following them until the autumn. The government and the MoD are so steeped in this culture of deceit that they don’t even seem to realise that they are doing anything wrong.

Too Big for Basra

A total of 18 British soldiers have died as a result of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) laid by Iraqi insurgents to bomb so-called “Snatch” Land Rovers in southern Iraq. No-one should suggest or suspect that either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown wants British soldiers to die needlessly. The senior British Army officers who are trying desperately to find a solution to the problem certainly do not want soldiers to die needlessly. So why three years after the problems with IEDs first surfaced in Iraq are our troops still dying?

Would BAFF Work? Biddiss: A Case Study

Given some of the comments on this blog with regard to the formation of a British Armed Forces Federation I have again agreed to give space to a guest blogger Dave Howels, who worked as a legal assistant to Tom Reah, the solicitor in the Biddiss case which has been mentioned on this blog several times before. So over to Dave Howels

I thought about not posting on this blog as it was getting heated, however there are some here who appear to believe from reading the press or this blog that the Biddiss case is all cut and dried and that he won and that everything is now ok. My involvement in this case was in helping Tom Reah, Cpl Biddiss’s solicitor, to collect information on this and other cases in which Tom was involved. I am also involved with helping Mrs Debbie Biddiss compile her book on the case, (working title - A Father’s Love), so for this reason I will not go into detail or name officers involved, I will leave that for the book. What I would like to do here is first point out some facts and then demonstrate where a third party "sticking their nose in" as one soldier put it, could have helped from the very start. At each stage I will first present the problem and then the possible solution.

Will a British Armed Forces Federation Work?

So a group of disaffected members of the armed services have set up a forces federation. It is hardly surprising that they should do this, given some of the issues that have affected the forces and the way in which senior officers have dealt with them. It is difficult to know whether those in charge have simply lost touch with those below them or just decided to go along with anything the politicians or civil servants decided on. But the use of manning control to get soldiers to switch from contracts that guaranteed them a pension at 22 years; the debacle in Iraq; the failure to provide decent equipment; and the refusal to accept equipment failures - as in the fiasco of the SA80 rifle – have taken their toll on the patience of the ordinary members of all three services.

Let's Hope Harry Does It Better

This blog has asked a lot of questions about the sort of officers the army produces recently, so as another lot came off the production line this week it was interesting to see the near universal applause. The British Army has produced some outstanding officers over the years and you don’t have to go back to Slim, as one of my correspondents did, to see them, but while I am sure there were a number of outstanding prospects at this week’s Sovereign’s Parade, and that young Cornet Wales was among them, it would not be a bad thing for them to log on to the Army Rumour Service web forum ARRSE and note the anger over the way that some soldiers have been treated by their officers in recent years. Anyone questioning the existence of such treatment need look no further than some of my previous posts, particularly It's Time to Get it Sorted and It Should Never Have Come To This.

Should The Armed Forces Have a Union?

I have been keeping my head down for a few days, taking a bit of time to answer a question put to me by one soldier following my recent blogs on the Deepcut and Biddiss situations. Fooboy asked me in response to my blog entitled “It should never have come to this” whether it would have been any different if there had been a British Armed Forces Federation and whether I thought that such an organisation should exist. Good question and one that as I say has caused me to pause for thought. I am not one of those who think it is a good idea for an army to have a union. In the heat of battle, orders need to be given and reacted to in an instant. There is no time to sit around and argue the toss. No time for a federation rep to come in and say well I’m sorry we don’t think it should be done that way. “Orders is orders,” they say, and for good reason. But there has been such a palpable failure of leadership within the army that – with a number of key riders - I have reluctantly changed my mind.

It Should Never Have Come To This

The inquest into the deaths of six Royal Military Policemen at Majar al-Kabir in June 2003 has failed to satisfy the families - just as the latest Deepcut Inquiry also failed to bring closure to the bereaved parents. It has been another sad day for the army with yet more evidence that the management of troops and operations fell significantly below the expected standards. Yet again the families are spitting blood at the way in which their children were treated, in this case demanding that the police investigate officers for alleged manslaughter. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of that case, most sensible people would agree that – as with Deepcut - it should never have come to this.

It's Time to Get it Sorted

Four years ago, almost to the day, I spoke to the grieving father of a dead soldier. Geoff Gray's son, also called Geoff, had died from bullet wounds while on patrol at the Deepcut training camp in Surrey six months earlier. Now another young soldier, Pte James Collinson, had died in similar circumstances and there were all sorts of reasons to suspect something more than simple suicide.

One Piece of Good News Amongst the Bad

Newspapers are often criticised for not carrying much in the way of good news. So just for a change here is a bit of better news about one of the worst stories I have ever had to write. In a previous post, I mentioned the awful plight of Chandler Biddis who was left severely handicapped. It happened as a result of attempts by officers to bully a member of the Parachute Regiment into signing away his contractual rights in a process known as manning control. Chandler, who is six years old, suffered from meningitis and septicemia as a baby and is now suffering from cerebral palsy, cannot walk, is partially blind, and cannot talk properly. Read his mum Debbie describing here how the whole sorry mess came about.

Good Military Order and Discipline?

I have decided to hand this post over to a soldier who wrote to me following my previous post, and last week's Sunday Times article, raising questions over the role of officers in some of cases of alleged wrongdoing in Iraq. This soldier wants to highlight the way in which good servicemen and women with excellent confidential reports can find their lives and careers destroyed when someone above them takes against them - and the victims can themselves be officers of course. It is not a problem that just affects the lower ranks.

This is something that happens in "civvy street" too of course but the difference is that superior officers have immense power over someone in the armed forces that would not be possible in civilian jobs and so the effect is that much greater. Don't get me, or this anonymous soldier, wrong. The disciplinary powers available within the forces are absolutely vital to what is known in the forces' jargon as "good military order and discipline", particularly during military operations, but the ability to abuse those powers can be devastating.

When I was on the Daily Telegraph I covered a number of such cases, most notably the case of a paratrooper called Paul Biddis That was an horrific case and it is unlikely to go away. I understand that his wife Debbie is now writing a book on the incidents that led to their son Chandler becoming disabled. MPs on the Commons committee looking at the Armed Services Bill currently before Parliament could do worse than ask to be able to interview Debbie or even Biddis himself about his experiences in the army's internal appeals process, which is now known as Redress of Complaint - I seem to remember it was redress of grievance in my day. The problems with that system are addressed here by a soldier who not only has experience with his own redress process but has helped others pursue their complaints as well - the sort of role that the Armed Forces Federation recently mooted on the Army website ARRSE might usefully perform. Here is the soldier's article:

Where Were the Officers?

It was interesting to see the thoughtful reaction on the ARmy Rumour SErvice web forum known as ARRSE to my article in this morning’s Sunday Times about the alleged “execution” of an Iraqi civilian at al-Zubayr three days into the Iraq War. Civilians looking to understand how young soldiers feel about the war, the media and virtually anything under the sun could do worse than take a trawl through this website.

Too Many Rotten Apples

The new video footage which allegedly shows yet more Iraqis being beaten by British soldiers is only the latest evidence of abuse to damage the reputation of the British Army. It comes amid claims that large numbers of soldiers from the 1st Bn, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, the unit involved in the Breadbasket prisoner abuse scandal, were using cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana in the run-up to the war in Iraq. This post includes a transcript of a Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch interview, leaked to the Sunday Times, in which those shocking allegations are made.

Iraq and the effect it is having on our soldiers

Well done to the Independent for returning to a subject we covered in the Sunday Times back in November – the increasing concerns over the battle stress suffered by our troops in Iraq. It reports the story of a US reservist who simply couldn’t cope with what the killings and day-to-day stress of being in Iraq had done to him. Last week, Specialist Doug Barber, a 35-year-old National Guardsman from Alabama, changed the message on his voice mail. "If you're looking for Doug, I'm checking out of this world,” he said. “I'll see you on the other side." He then called the police to his house, went out on to his porch with a shotgun, and with the police trying to persuade him to put down the gun, blew his brains out. Barber had given vent to his feelings a few days earlier in this article.