Our poor bloody infantry
By RICHARD PENDLEBURY
2nd October 2006
Courage: UK troops on patrol in the lawless Helmand province
World's top 5 defence spending nations (2005)
1) United States - $465 billion
2) Great Britain - $51.1billion
3) Japan - $44.7 billion
4) France - $41.6 billion
5) Germany - $30.2 billion
****************************************
World's top 5 defence spending nations per serviceman (2005)
1) United States - $315, 682
2) Great Britain - $255, 500
3) Japan - $187, 029
4) France - $163, 779
5) Germany - 106, 330
*******************************************
Pay for a private or equivalent - some comparisons
Canada - £15,984
Great Britain - £15, 166
Holland - £14, 496
United States - £9, 971
France - £9, 774
Poland - £4, 400
***********************************
Amount of combat pay per month
Canada - £990
Great Britain - £180
***********************************
Take home pay of a soldier after tax and other deductions
Italy - £3, 379
Holland - £2,361
Canada - £2, 322
Germany - 1, 465
United States - £1, 110
Great Britain - £1,000
Poland - £884
France - £792
They're paid less and taxed more than other Nato troops. In fact, they'd be better off as waiters in a pizza parlour.This damning investigative series reveals how British soldiers on the front line have been cruelly betrayed by their political paymasters
Brian Wood is a hero. As a lance corporal, he won a Military Cross in southern Iraq for leaving his armoured vehicle under heavy fire to lead a bayonet charge to clear a series of trenches of insurgents armed with rockets.
He didn't stop to think; he just did it, as he'd been trained to do. He'd shed blood, and demonstrated leadership and courage; a textbook non-commissioned officer, according to his superiors.
A brilliant career was predicted. But a few months ago, the newly promoted Corporal Wood, 25, decided to quit.
Like all his comrades on the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was being paid less than a cleaner earns for playing his part in the War on Terror. When he won his medal, his take-home pay was £1,300 a month.
After eight years in the Army, what has he to show for it, other the medal and the nagging memory of his platoon sergeant terribly burned by a petrol bomb? He has a broken marriage, a son he has barely seen and no savings.
"My wife Lucy is an office manager and even on our combined salary we couldn't afford to buy a home," he says.
"With her parents' help, we scraped together a deposit to buy a two-bedroom terrace. But the repayments, council tax and income tax were crippling.
"I missed two years of my son's life being away in Iraq. My marriage has collapsed because Lucy was left to cope on her own for such a long time.
"The boys in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for their lives in dreadful conditions. Often we have no sleep or time to eat, the heat is unbearable, our kit is not the best and the fighting is solid. And we're doing it for a pittance."
A Mail investigation into the pay and conditions of serving soldiers reveals they are among the lowest paid employees in Britain - in combat zones, they frequently earn less than the minimum wage.
To compound this, we also found that while soldiers are engaged in combat, their families can be living in atrocious accommodation, without hot water, heating or working ovens for weeks on end.
It's a paltry reward. And so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, 158 servicemen have paid the ultimate price in earning it.
The newly appointed Chief of General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has asked whether the men risking their lives are getting a fair wage.
There are few if any working weeks as short as 55 or 65 hours on the front line.
In besieged Helmand in Afghanistan, soldiers are often on duty for 16 hours or more a day, every day of the week.
A junior private with a year's post-training service earns £39.24 a day. There is an extra £6.02 separation allowance a day for being on overseas operations, giving a total of £45.26.
Based on a 16-hour working day, that's just £2.83 per hour. The minimum wage for anyone aged 22 or over is £5.35; £4.45 for those aged 18 to 21.
Another way of looking at it is that a junior soldier under heavy fire over a 24-hour period in Helmand is being paid an extra 25p an hour above his standard wage for his trouble.
Certainly these highly-skilled professionals would be better off - and a good deal safer - waiting on tables in a pizza parlour back home.
In response to Mail inquiries, the MoD issued this statement: "Simplistic comparisons between a private's pay and the national minimum wage can be misleading. A soldier is paid an annual wage which is not dependent upon their working hours, or on whether or not they are deployed on operations."
So, how does a British soldier's pay compare with other nations on the front line?
A cursory glance at wage structures would lead you to believe our squaddies are relatively well-paid.
The basic pay before tax of a private with two years' service is £15,166.
'Stealth' deductions
That is considerably more than his equivalent in the U.S. Army, who will be on a basic wage of £9,571, the French on £9,744 or the Poles - 1,000 of whom are to reinforce the British in Afghanistan - on £4,400.
Only the Canadians pay more, £15,984, with the Dutch on slightly less at £14,496.
But when the squaddie goes to war and allowances, tax relief, rent, food bills and combat payments are taken into account, the picture changes dramatically.
Neither the Americans nor the Canadians - Britain's main front line allies in Afghanistan - pay income tax while serving in a combat zone.
In contrast - and this causes huge resentment - the British soldier pays the same level of income tax whether he is square-bashing in Aldershot or under fire in Helmand.
As well as receiving the best basic pay, the Canadian soldier gets £990 a month combat pay, more than five times the British private's allowance of £180.
The Polish soldier in the front line receives nearly twice as much in combat and separation allowances than his British comrade. And Italians on active service receive an extra £134 a day.
The British serviceman's pay is also chipped away by 'stealth' deductions.
From their salaries, many soldiers (though not those in combat) have £25.62 a week deducted for mess food, whether they eat there or not - though the Forces are moving towards the American 'pay-as-you-dine' approach.
Soldiers in married quarters also have to pay council tax, whether or not they are based in Britain.
After tax and other deductions, and including operational allowances, a married British private with two years' service, serving in a combat zone, takes home less than £1,000 a month.
This is around £110 less than his U.S. equivalent, but a lot lower than his other allies.
The Italians take home £3,379, the Dutch £2,361, the Canadians £2,322 and the Germans £1,465. Only the Polish, on £884, and the French, on £792, earn less.
Some British military families even qualify for benefits.
"It is disgraceful that we have Army families who need tax credits because of the low levels of their basic pay," says Sammie Crane, chairman of the service welfare charity Army Families Federation - the president, Lady Dannatt, is the wife of the Chief of General Staff.
"They may number less than 1,000, but it is still incredible we have any at all," she says.
American conditions the 'big eye-opener'
"After all, these people are trained professionals who are putting their lives on the line.
"For young, married soldiers, it is very difficult and it does not get any better when they are deployed.
"My comparison is the pay for a soldier when he joins the Army - £12,162 - in comparison to the £19,000 a firefighter gets on joining the service.
"And we feel particularly strongly about the firefighters, because when they go on strike we are asked to come in."
By law, soldiers cannot strike or belong to a union. But it's not just the bald financial figures which are so shocking.
Front line soldiers inevitably compare their living conditions with those of their allies, particularly the Americans.
"One of the big eye-openers," is how one soldier described his reaction on seeing a U.S. base. The Americans are famed for ensuring their troops feel at home while abroad. Major bases are equipped with satellite internet connections, air conditioning, fast-food outlets, cinemas and, in some case, bowling alleys.
But on British bases, a lack of air conditioning, inferior accommodation and few internet points or phones are common complaints.
However, in Iraq, the Americans are mainly in the urban north and centre of the country, where the infrastructure is better than the more arid south, where the British live in huge tented camps.
The U.S. military in Iraq often refers to the 7,000 British servicemen serving there as 'the borrowers' because of their habitual scrounging for basic equipment, or to replace their own inferior kit with American issue.
Such is the squaddies' disdain for what the MoD issues, troops often buy their own boots and bergens (Army rucksacks).
In Afghanistan, a British force of 4,000 has been sent with a nebulous brief to police the most remote and lawless parts of the country. The conditions are grim, inhospitable and extremely dangerous.
'All we want is the sense of being valued'
Small groups of soldiers, deployed in isolated, fixed positions deep in hostile territory, are sometimes having to fight to their last rounds of ammunition.
"Soldiers snatch just a few hours sleep in 'stand to' position because they are attacked nightly without fail," one serving officer told the Mail.
"It is difficult to get bottled water to platoon houses because of the space it takes up on aircraft and lorries. The troops have to fetch river water for washing and use oil drums as toilets, the contents of which are burned daily."
And all this for less than they could earn as a bus driver.
Corporal Brian Wood MC voted with his feet. Now working as a private bodyguard, he earns £45,000 a year, almost twice as much as he did as a decorated NCO.
The situation on the 'Home Front' is equally bleak.
"No one joins the Army to get rich," one soldier observed on an unofficial military internet forum.
"All we want is the sense of being valued and that when we are on yet another six-month tour in some s***hole, our families left behind aren't living in (another) s***hole..."
Some hope. Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are allowed 20 minutes of free phone calls home per week, if and when satellite communication is possible - frequently, it is not.
When they do get through, they often hear tales of domestic hardship from their loved ones.
There are 44,000 homes for married servicemen and women - service families accommodation - in Britain, controlled by the MoD offshoot, Defence Estates Housing Directorate.
By and large, these are not homes fit for heroes. A large proportion are in a dilapidated, damp and sometimes dangerous condition.
The recent Armed Forces Pay review refers to the poor standard and "the message this sends to personnel about how their employer values them".
As Rose Brown of the Army Families Federation (AAF) told its annual conference this summer: "If this was the fire service or the police service, it would be a national scandal.
"Somehow it is acceptable for the families of people who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to cope with this."
Such accommodation is not free, though the soldier pays 40 per cent less rent than a comparable local authority or housing association property, according to the AFF.
Conversely, an Army family cannot choose their home, nor can they carry out alterations or repairs.
What rankles is that a flat rate council tax payment is automatically deducted from the salary of a soldier in married quarters, even if the home is outside Britain.
"It can feel a little strange having to pay it if you are stationed in Brunei," one Army wife told the Mail.
Recently, the maintenance of married quarters was sub-contracted out to private company, MODern Housing Solutions.
Paula Anderton, whose husband is serving in Afghanistan with the Household Cavalry (two members were killed there in an ambush last month) said that despite repeatedly asking for help, she had endured six months of "having a broken window in my house, a gas fire which doesn't work, no central heating for a month and a garden in a despicable condition".
"Nothing is getting done. I don't feel secure. My son has been taken into hospital. He's asthmatic and he came down with a chest infection due to the cold and the broken window. It's not on - it's not fair."
Heather Terrington, an Army wife at Blandford Camp, Dorset, complained: "Service families continue to live in the most appalling conditions. Leaking roofs, damp-ridden houses and unsafe electrical wiring are common, not to mention the Fifties kitchens and bathrooms.
"We even had one family that for three months had to fill their bath using a garden hose from their downstairs sink.
"How long do Service families have to wait until they are provided with safe and basically serviceable housing?"
Vice-Admiral Peter Dunt, the chief executive of Defence Estates, has apologised - and blamed the government.
"I can only spend the money I am given against the priorities that are actually decided by ministers," he says.
"I would dearly love to have the approximately £750million it would take to upgrade our quarters, but a lot of them need to be bulldozed, knocked down and rebuilt."
The AFF put the figure required to provide acceptable military housing closer to £2 billion.
"Unfortunately, housing for the troops is pretty close to the bottom of defence spending priorities," says Rose Brown.
The poor bloody infantry. As the War on Terror enters its sixth year, those in the front line are still underpaid, undervalued and over there.
Additional reporting: Danielle Gusmaroli.
dailymail.co.uk
By RICHARD PENDLEBURY
2nd October 2006
World's top 5 defence spending nations (2005)
1) United States - $465 billion
2) Great Britain - $51.1billion
3) Japan - $44.7 billion
4) France - $41.6 billion
5) Germany - $30.2 billion
****************************************
World's top 5 defence spending nations per serviceman (2005)
1) United States - $315, 682
2) Great Britain - $255, 500
3) Japan - $187, 029
4) France - $163, 779
5) Germany - 106, 330
*******************************************
Pay for a private or equivalent - some comparisons
Canada - £15,984
Great Britain - £15, 166
Holland - £14, 496
United States - £9, 971
France - £9, 774
Poland - £4, 400
***********************************
Amount of combat pay per month
Canada - £990
Great Britain - £180
***********************************
Take home pay of a soldier after tax and other deductions
Italy - £3, 379
Holland - £2,361
Canada - £2, 322
Germany - 1, 465
United States - £1, 110
Great Britain - £1,000
Poland - £884
France - £792
They're paid less and taxed more than other Nato troops. In fact, they'd be better off as waiters in a pizza parlour.This damning investigative series reveals how British soldiers on the front line have been cruelly betrayed by their political paymasters
Brian Wood is a hero. As a lance corporal, he won a Military Cross in southern Iraq for leaving his armoured vehicle under heavy fire to lead a bayonet charge to clear a series of trenches of insurgents armed with rockets.
He didn't stop to think; he just did it, as he'd been trained to do. He'd shed blood, and demonstrated leadership and courage; a textbook non-commissioned officer, according to his superiors.
A brilliant career was predicted. But a few months ago, the newly promoted Corporal Wood, 25, decided to quit.
Like all his comrades on the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was being paid less than a cleaner earns for playing his part in the War on Terror. When he won his medal, his take-home pay was £1,300 a month.
After eight years in the Army, what has he to show for it, other the medal and the nagging memory of his platoon sergeant terribly burned by a petrol bomb? He has a broken marriage, a son he has barely seen and no savings.
"My wife Lucy is an office manager and even on our combined salary we couldn't afford to buy a home," he says.
"With her parents' help, we scraped together a deposit to buy a two-bedroom terrace. But the repayments, council tax and income tax were crippling.
"I missed two years of my son's life being away in Iraq. My marriage has collapsed because Lucy was left to cope on her own for such a long time.
"The boys in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for their lives in dreadful conditions. Often we have no sleep or time to eat, the heat is unbearable, our kit is not the best and the fighting is solid. And we're doing it for a pittance."
A Mail investigation into the pay and conditions of serving soldiers reveals they are among the lowest paid employees in Britain - in combat zones, they frequently earn less than the minimum wage.
To compound this, we also found that while soldiers are engaged in combat, their families can be living in atrocious accommodation, without hot water, heating or working ovens for weeks on end.
It's a paltry reward. And so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, 158 servicemen have paid the ultimate price in earning it.
The newly appointed Chief of General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has asked whether the men risking their lives are getting a fair wage.
There are few if any working weeks as short as 55 or 65 hours on the front line.
In besieged Helmand in Afghanistan, soldiers are often on duty for 16 hours or more a day, every day of the week.
A junior private with a year's post-training service earns £39.24 a day. There is an extra £6.02 separation allowance a day for being on overseas operations, giving a total of £45.26.
Based on a 16-hour working day, that's just £2.83 per hour. The minimum wage for anyone aged 22 or over is £5.35; £4.45 for those aged 18 to 21.
Another way of looking at it is that a junior soldier under heavy fire over a 24-hour period in Helmand is being paid an extra 25p an hour above his standard wage for his trouble.
Certainly these highly-skilled professionals would be better off - and a good deal safer - waiting on tables in a pizza parlour back home.
In response to Mail inquiries, the MoD issued this statement: "Simplistic comparisons between a private's pay and the national minimum wage can be misleading. A soldier is paid an annual wage which is not dependent upon their working hours, or on whether or not they are deployed on operations."
So, how does a British soldier's pay compare with other nations on the front line?
A cursory glance at wage structures would lead you to believe our squaddies are relatively well-paid.
The basic pay before tax of a private with two years' service is £15,166.
'Stealth' deductions
That is considerably more than his equivalent in the U.S. Army, who will be on a basic wage of £9,571, the French on £9,744 or the Poles - 1,000 of whom are to reinforce the British in Afghanistan - on £4,400.
Only the Canadians pay more, £15,984, with the Dutch on slightly less at £14,496.
But when the squaddie goes to war and allowances, tax relief, rent, food bills and combat payments are taken into account, the picture changes dramatically.
Neither the Americans nor the Canadians - Britain's main front line allies in Afghanistan - pay income tax while serving in a combat zone.
In contrast - and this causes huge resentment - the British soldier pays the same level of income tax whether he is square-bashing in Aldershot or under fire in Helmand.
As well as receiving the best basic pay, the Canadian soldier gets £990 a month combat pay, more than five times the British private's allowance of £180.
The Polish soldier in the front line receives nearly twice as much in combat and separation allowances than his British comrade. And Italians on active service receive an extra £134 a day.
The British serviceman's pay is also chipped away by 'stealth' deductions.
From their salaries, many soldiers (though not those in combat) have £25.62 a week deducted for mess food, whether they eat there or not - though the Forces are moving towards the American 'pay-as-you-dine' approach.
Soldiers in married quarters also have to pay council tax, whether or not they are based in Britain.
After tax and other deductions, and including operational allowances, a married British private with two years' service, serving in a combat zone, takes home less than £1,000 a month.
This is around £110 less than his U.S. equivalent, but a lot lower than his other allies.
The Italians take home £3,379, the Dutch £2,361, the Canadians £2,322 and the Germans £1,465. Only the Polish, on £884, and the French, on £792, earn less.
Some British military families even qualify for benefits.
"It is disgraceful that we have Army families who need tax credits because of the low levels of their basic pay," says Sammie Crane, chairman of the service welfare charity Army Families Federation - the president, Lady Dannatt, is the wife of the Chief of General Staff.
"They may number less than 1,000, but it is still incredible we have any at all," she says.
American conditions the 'big eye-opener'
"After all, these people are trained professionals who are putting their lives on the line.
"For young, married soldiers, it is very difficult and it does not get any better when they are deployed.
"My comparison is the pay for a soldier when he joins the Army - £12,162 - in comparison to the £19,000 a firefighter gets on joining the service.
"And we feel particularly strongly about the firefighters, because when they go on strike we are asked to come in."
By law, soldiers cannot strike or belong to a union. But it's not just the bald financial figures which are so shocking.
Front line soldiers inevitably compare their living conditions with those of their allies, particularly the Americans.
"One of the big eye-openers," is how one soldier described his reaction on seeing a U.S. base. The Americans are famed for ensuring their troops feel at home while abroad. Major bases are equipped with satellite internet connections, air conditioning, fast-food outlets, cinemas and, in some case, bowling alleys.
But on British bases, a lack of air conditioning, inferior accommodation and few internet points or phones are common complaints.
However, in Iraq, the Americans are mainly in the urban north and centre of the country, where the infrastructure is better than the more arid south, where the British live in huge tented camps.
The U.S. military in Iraq often refers to the 7,000 British servicemen serving there as 'the borrowers' because of their habitual scrounging for basic equipment, or to replace their own inferior kit with American issue.
Such is the squaddies' disdain for what the MoD issues, troops often buy their own boots and bergens (Army rucksacks).
In Afghanistan, a British force of 4,000 has been sent with a nebulous brief to police the most remote and lawless parts of the country. The conditions are grim, inhospitable and extremely dangerous.
'All we want is the sense of being valued'
Small groups of soldiers, deployed in isolated, fixed positions deep in hostile territory, are sometimes having to fight to their last rounds of ammunition.
"Soldiers snatch just a few hours sleep in 'stand to' position because they are attacked nightly without fail," one serving officer told the Mail.
"It is difficult to get bottled water to platoon houses because of the space it takes up on aircraft and lorries. The troops have to fetch river water for washing and use oil drums as toilets, the contents of which are burned daily."
And all this for less than they could earn as a bus driver.
Corporal Brian Wood MC voted with his feet. Now working as a private bodyguard, he earns £45,000 a year, almost twice as much as he did as a decorated NCO.
The situation on the 'Home Front' is equally bleak.
"No one joins the Army to get rich," one soldier observed on an unofficial military internet forum.
"All we want is the sense of being valued and that when we are on yet another six-month tour in some s***hole, our families left behind aren't living in (another) s***hole..."
Some hope. Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are allowed 20 minutes of free phone calls home per week, if and when satellite communication is possible - frequently, it is not.
When they do get through, they often hear tales of domestic hardship from their loved ones.
There are 44,000 homes for married servicemen and women - service families accommodation - in Britain, controlled by the MoD offshoot, Defence Estates Housing Directorate.
By and large, these are not homes fit for heroes. A large proportion are in a dilapidated, damp and sometimes dangerous condition.
The recent Armed Forces Pay review refers to the poor standard and "the message this sends to personnel about how their employer values them".
As Rose Brown of the Army Families Federation (AAF) told its annual conference this summer: "If this was the fire service or the police service, it would be a national scandal.
"Somehow it is acceptable for the families of people who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to cope with this."
Such accommodation is not free, though the soldier pays 40 per cent less rent than a comparable local authority or housing association property, according to the AFF.
Conversely, an Army family cannot choose their home, nor can they carry out alterations or repairs.
What rankles is that a flat rate council tax payment is automatically deducted from the salary of a soldier in married quarters, even if the home is outside Britain.
"It can feel a little strange having to pay it if you are stationed in Brunei," one Army wife told the Mail.
Recently, the maintenance of married quarters was sub-contracted out to private company, MODern Housing Solutions.
Paula Anderton, whose husband is serving in Afghanistan with the Household Cavalry (two members were killed there in an ambush last month) said that despite repeatedly asking for help, she had endured six months of "having a broken window in my house, a gas fire which doesn't work, no central heating for a month and a garden in a despicable condition".
"Nothing is getting done. I don't feel secure. My son has been taken into hospital. He's asthmatic and he came down with a chest infection due to the cold and the broken window. It's not on - it's not fair."
Heather Terrington, an Army wife at Blandford Camp, Dorset, complained: "Service families continue to live in the most appalling conditions. Leaking roofs, damp-ridden houses and unsafe electrical wiring are common, not to mention the Fifties kitchens and bathrooms.
"We even had one family that for three months had to fill their bath using a garden hose from their downstairs sink.
"How long do Service families have to wait until they are provided with safe and basically serviceable housing?"
Vice-Admiral Peter Dunt, the chief executive of Defence Estates, has apologised - and blamed the government.
"I can only spend the money I am given against the priorities that are actually decided by ministers," he says.
"I would dearly love to have the approximately £750million it would take to upgrade our quarters, but a lot of them need to be bulldozed, knocked down and rebuilt."
The AFF put the figure required to provide acceptable military housing closer to £2 billion.
"Unfortunately, housing for the troops is pretty close to the bottom of defence spending priorities," says Rose Brown.
The poor bloody infantry. As the War on Terror enters its sixth year, those in the front line are still underpaid, undervalued and over there.
Additional reporting: Danielle Gusmaroli.
dailymail.co.uk