Given that we are still in the month when the British are warned not to forget about their “fallen” perhaps then they should remember the reasons for some of their guys people getting killed in the first place.
This excellent scoop by Brian Brady and Jonathan Owen in the Independent today deserves to be widely read.
Post Suez Britain continued to punch above its weight on the world stage because of the excellence of its armed forces.
In the aftermath of the defeat in Vietnam the British Army was the model for the Pentagon to create a professional all volunteer force with high morale.
The idea that the US military would use the UK armed forces as a positive role model in 2011 model is risible.
However the scoop in the Independent isn’t just about best practice, it’s about the basic minimum standards.
I was in Glasgow last June and walking across George Square I noticed the military vehicles on show. I wasn’t aware it was the UK’s armed forces day. It was the first time that I saw a “Jackal” vehicle of the type that Robbie McKibbon had died in.
https://www.philmacgiollabhain.ie/a-marine-from-mayo/
I had a good chat with the young lad who was sitting on this hi-tech golf buggy. It is open topped. I looked at it and imagined driving around in this thing in a warzone. Dealy Plaza came to mind. With the good natured confidence so common in men in uniform this lad was clearly ready for anything. He was just back from, as he termed it, “the Afghan.”
He told me he was due back there in 2013. I told him that I hoped that he and all his mates get back from there the way that they went out-safe and sound.
I meant it.
I still do.
The idea of this lad and his mates in IED alley in a Snatch Land rover should be a national disgrace in Britain, but strangely it isn’t.
Let me make it simple, or as they say in the military “send it in clear”, just in case someone from the MOD stumbled on here by mistake.
If you send your service personnel into military operations then there is a moral duty to give them the best possible kit available.
Good men and women are in their graves because this rule was not observed which makes this entire Poppy remembrance Mardi gras thing in Britain every November seem like so much gobshitery.
