“Things were Different in My Day”
A thought-provoking article by Captain Doug Beattie
“Things were different in my day“, say the old soldiers and they would be right. For while the veterans of the Falklands share the same courage and tenacity as those who have come in the thirty years since, there are a million things that would be unrecognisable to the infantrymen who shed blood, sweat and tears on Tumbledown, Goose Green and Wireless Ridge.
Y
et, it is what happened on those rocky outcrops in the southern Atlantic that lead to much of what has changed,
not all of it for the better. Even as the UK’s Armed Forces – and the Nation with them – celebrated the raising once more of the Union Flag over Port Stanley, it was clear to many senior military figures that victory had been secured despite significant operational and technical weaknesses: hence the review which took place in the immediate aftermath of the conflict.
It is true to say life would never be the same again for the ‘poor bloody infantry‘.
An early casualty of the review was the SLR, a rifle that had been in service for the best part of 35 years. The rifle was heavy, inaccurate, had no automatic capability and couldn’t utilise the NATO standard ammunition of the time. The SLR was replaced by the SA80, which, though itself not immune to problems, is now a seriously good weapon with which to go into battle.
14 Envoy Summer 2012
The old DMS boots – complete with cloth ankle wraps known as ‘putties’ – were also put out to pasture in an attempt to finally eradicate immersion foot (or to give it its more common name, trench foot) a miserable affliction suffered by generations of soldiers over hundreds of years.
For those on the ground it seemed as if everything was going in the right direction. The transformation of mechanised infantry to armoured infantry with the introduction of the Warrior IFV and the change from British standard equipment to NATO standard both had positive effects, and by the end of the 1980s, the UK’s Armed Forces were regarded as amongst the best in the world, a product of their military successes and increasingly good equipment.
But as the last decade of the 20th Century opened, troops started to suffer a crisis of confidence. No longer was their mission simply to ‘close with and kill the enemy‘. ‘Our boys‘ were increasingly being parachuted into volatile and complicated intra-national
conflicts, not to wage war but to keep the peace. Despite valiant efforts from all concerned, it was often a sure-fire way of generating confusion, engendering frustration and fostering a sense of impotence. Across the Balkans there was more than one British soldier who felt guilt in the face of ethnic atrocities, not because of what they had done to help, but what they weren’t allowed to do.
Yet for your average Serviceman there would be little time to dwell on these perceived failings. Early in the new millennium everything changed again with the attack on the Twin Towers. The War on Terror quickly followed and if things weren’t busy enough, in 2003 we were tasked by our political masters to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein.
What defined these conflicts as much as anything was the scrutiny they received amongst the general public. ‘Armchair generals’ came into their own. Sitting back in their seats they were bombarded with a fusillade of rolling news, comment and
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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