In August 2007 soldiers of the 1st Bn The Royal Anglian Regiment were engaged in a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In order to win the fight Sgt Mark Perren called in an airstrike. The American F15 that responded dropped a 500lb bomb onto the British troops. 3 soldiers were killed in the Blue-on-Blue incident.
Sgt Perren initially gave the correct coordinates to the American Pilot. However, when they were read back to him a single digit was wrong. Sgt Perren confirmed they were right and the bomb hit the wrong target.
The reason Sgt Perren was unable to clearly hear the Pilot was NuLabours disgraceful underfunding of the military.
There was no headset for his Harris radio. The noise of incoming mortar rounds deafened him. Headsets are relatively inexpensive, but they are the type of equipment that is binned in order to trim a few more pennies of an already stretched budget.
NuLabours failure to properly equip British troops has led to several preventable deaths. Sgt Perren did everything in his power to save his comrades and defeat the enemy. Tragically for the men of the 1st Bn The Royal Anglian Regiment the enemy in Whitehall gave them little chance that day.
I've probably bored you with this before, but a couple of years ago I went to Dartmoor for the Ten Tors, to watch a young lad competing. It was windy as hell, and cold. We had gone to the edge of the moor to wait for the lads and to cheer them on. We pitched up next to the military, who always do the marshalling. Navy and Army men. The signals were there, with their state-of-the-art military radios, upon which they were calling Delta Bravo and all sorts of other codey stuff. You couldn't make out a single word. It was all encrypted and crackling and whistling. What a heap of shit. In the end the signal man pulled out his Nokia and sent a text instead.
ReplyDeleteWe eventually went into their tent, because it started pissing down. Their tent was held down by the net that the helicopter had delivered it in, because the guy ropes were all rotten. It was awash. The soldiers slept in their own tents - they all brought their own.
They made us a cup of almost undrinkable military issue coffee, and shared their chocolate rations with us.
Bloody brilliant, the forces. As I am informed today that the tax TAKE is the fat end of 40% of the GNP, which is just theft, why the blazes can't our boys have some half-decent kit?
I propose that anyone who can just stops paying this TAKE, until they sort their act out. The prisons aren't big enough.
Sadly, nor are most people's balls.