I’ve been accused of jealousy. Some folk out there seem to think that my criticisms of some Canadian books about the war in Afghanistan have been motivated by jealousy. I simply pointed out that in my experience not all Canadian Forces personnel were paragons of courage, loyalty and honesty. And yet reading some of the Canadian books, a reader would think they were; without a single exception. The word for this sort of reporter/writer used to be “troopie-groupie”.  I want to make it clear that the vast vast majority of Canadian soldiers were indeed good people and I had no qualms about putting my life and physical well-being in their hands. But there were a couple I would steer clear of; and so would most of the soldiers if they could. All I was suggesting was that the books could have painted a little more of an accurate picture of what was happening in Afghanistan.
One book that I did give an excellent review to was “Friendly Fire” by Michael Friscolanti, about the deaths of four Canadian soldiers at the hands of an American fighter/bomber patrol in 2002 during a live-fire exercise in Afghanistan. Now, if any book should have excited my jealousy it was that one. It was suggested shortly after the incident I should write a book about it. The soldiers were from Edmonton and I’d interviewed one of them before he went out to Afghanistan. The bomb hit the ground almost exactly where I’d been standing a week before and where I would probably have been standing again if I’d gone out to watch the night-time live-fire exercise. But my real job as a newspaper reporter meant I couldn’t take on the book. As it turns out I probably had a lucky escape from a waste of time. Friscolanti was a reporter on big newspaper in Canada and one of the truths of book publishing is that it’s often not what’s written but who writes it. So, if there was ever a book that could be expected to arouse some jealousy in me, it would have been Friendly Fire. But I gave it an excellent review. So, there.

There’s now speculation that two of the Royal Regiment of Scotland’s five regular battalions may be facing the axe in the next round of defence cuts. The reason given is the RRoS is being targeted is that it’s not filling its recruitment targets.
The plan to cut the number of infantry battalions from 36 to 25 is insanity. If the British Army is having recruitment problems, maybe it should be looking at why that is. Arguing that battalions have to axed because there are not enough men to fill their ranks is a sneaky underhand way to cut the defence budget. Scotland, where there are very few “real jobs” any more, should be a fertile source of quality recruits. The answer is not to cut the number of RRoS battalions or fill its ranks with the very last people who should be trusted with a gun by lowering recruitment standards. The answer is to make the Army a good job again.
I would hate to see a return to something I witnessed as a reporter in England, where little criminals could avoid a fine or jail by joining the local regiment. I lost count of the number of times a defence lawyer at the Magistrates Court would announce that his client would be unable to fulfil his dream of serving in Her Majesty’s Forces if he had a criminal record. The magistrate would then dutifully agree to postpone accepting a plea and announce that if the little darling was indeed in the Army when his case was next called, then the charges against him would be dropped.

Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age; but I couldn’t help wondering why the plan to transfer soldiers from Germany to Scotland is back under discussion. What was proposed last year was that the British Army should have five 6,500 member Multi-Role Brigades and one of them should be stationed in Scotland.
One of the Scottish papers is reporting that someone, anonymously, is suggesting that the Scottish brigade should be comprised of Scots, mainly from the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and claiming that the British Army is concerned that if a future operation involving it went wrong, then Scotland would pay a heavy price. There is no reason why the brigade should be based around the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Two non-Scottish battalion-strength units, the Rifles and 45 Royal Marines Commando, are based in Scotland at the moment. My point is that infantry battalions stationed in Scotland don’t have to be “Scottish”. In any case, I don’t think there are 6,500 front-line soldiers serving in nominally Scottish units – basically the RRoS, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the Scots Guards. The Guards are unlikely to ever be stationed in Scotland. The 1st Royal Tank Regiment also recruits in Scotland but I’m guessing this scare story assumes that the armoured component of the Scots-based brigade will be the Scots Dragoon guards. The Several logistics and support units based in Germany have already been earmarked for the move to Scotland and as far as I know none of them have Scottish associations.
I suspect this story has been planted in the media just to remind Scots that if they vote for Independence in the 2014 Referendum, then the transfer of troops to Scotland by the British Army will not be happening. I think by the time all the unit redeployments resulting from the closure of existing decrepit army barracks and RAF and Royal Naval facilities being taken over by the Army, the move will mean 2,000 more military personnel being stationed in Scotland. The British Army would become one of the biggest employers in Scotland – provided people vote the right way in the Independence Referendum. Who knows how big the Army component of the Scottish Defence Forces would be after Independence would be.

After I posted last week blog which bemoaned the focus on the officers drawn from Britain's fee-paying schools when it comes to the slaughter of Britain’s “brightest and best” during the First World War , I remembered that I had some battalion casualty lists from both World Wars at home. I suggested that the loss of talent to the nation in the form of sergeants and warrant officers is too often fignored in military histories. The sergeants and warrants at least held their positions on the grounds of some merit, and not because they happened to go to the “right” school.  It is not difficult  to argue that perhaps the loss of the “brightest and best” of  working class males could actually have dealt a heavier blow to Britain than that of the officers. Certainly, many battalions found it harder to replace good non-commissioned officers than they did to replace those granted the King’s Commission. The point of mentioning the casualty figures was that it would seem that a senior N.C.O.’s life expectancy on the frontline wasn’t that much better than an officer’s. A look at the casualty lists shows that in some units the life expectancy was about the same. In others, the officer casualty figure is indeed higher, which at first sight might reinforce the myth that those families who could afford private education did indeed make a greater sacrifice in the "War to End All Wars". But perhaps when the number of officers killed who were actually smart working class boys promoted from the ranks of the N.C.O.s is factored in, the casualty rates balance again. All the deaths in the First World War were tragic losses to society. What irritates me is that when many historians talk about the Loss of a Generation they are only thinking of a generation of former pupils from fee-paying schools.
On another subject, no-one got back to me with any information about that book Tales of the RIC. I just noted that the University of Toronto classes the book as fiction, rather than the memoir of a police officer in Ireland during the IRA campaign of the early 1920s that it purports to be.

I was reminded recently about the shambles at the NATO press centre in Skopje when the media rushed to get their accreditation of the 1999 “invasion” of Kosovo from neighbouring Macedonia (or as the Greeks insist it must be known The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).
The press centre was in a hotel and the conference room, or maybe it was the main dining room, was packed with the “cream” of the war zone reporting set. The public school accents and designer khakis, along with the designer Australian boots, were a dead give-away (OK, slight exaggeration but there were more of those kind of war tourists than I expected). I’d just hitched a ride into Macedonia with the last reinforcement flight for the Canadian contingent and was amongst the last people to arrive at the press centre. The line-up was long, very long, and never seemed to move forward. Eventually, I realised that everyone that arrived after me was going into the queue ahead of me. I seriously doubt that they’d all had to leave the line earlier to make an emergency dash to the toilet.
The queue only started to move when a British sergeant with a thick Brummie accent climbed up on a table and announced that he would break the “f-n legs” of the next person to skip into the line. Two hours of not moving an inch forward suddenly became a 20 minute advance to the accreditation desk. I don’t think the sergeant had anything to gain by putting an end to the nonsense, he was just a decent bloke from the English Midlands.
When people talk about the loss of the cream of Britain’s manhood in the First World War, they are often thinking of the private-school boys who died before they could become leading artists, poets, engineers or lawyers. But the fact is that the British Army had an almost inexhaustible supply of public school boys to make into officers. What the British Army really needed and couldn’t find enough of were experienced Non Commissioned Officers to train and lead the citizen volunteers of 1914-16.  We are frequently reminded of the short life expectancy of an infantry officer on the Western Front. But when did you last read of how long a sergeant could expect to survive?All too often the ordinary bloke is marginalised in popular memory thanks to a vocal and well-connected minority who are allowed to set our historical agenda. It’s not enough to be on the winning side to get to write the history. History is written by the winners amongst the winners.