SAS veteran Andy McNab (whose face cannot be shown) - famous for writing the book "Bravo Two Zero" - says that the British Army is still the best in the world, as it has been for a long time. No matter how much hi-tech equipment the average American soldier has (although McNab says that many British weapons are superior to their American counterparts), no soldiers in the world can still match the skill and the bravery of the British Army. But he argues that soldiering is no longer as ingrained into British culture as it was in the 1700s and 1800s when the country had an empire to build and British soldiers were posted into every continent on the planet, except Antarctica (and British soldiers don't wear their famous red coats anymore, and haven't done since just before World War I)
Basra Two Zero: An SAS veteran views the Iraq war from the soldiers' point of view
By ANDY McNAB
3rd November 2007
Daily Mail
SAS veteran Andy McNab went to Iraq to see the war from the soldiers' point of view. What he found will amaze you...their kit is brilliant, they say this is a golden age for the infantry and they know they're being used as political ammunition – but they just don't give a damn...
Gordon Brown says our troops are coming home. A thousand will be back from Iraq by Christmas and the rest, it is reckoned, by the end of 2008.
In theory this sounds promising. Indeed, listening to all this talk, you would think our soldiers were lounging round the pool in Basra knocking back a couple of beers before boarding the plane.
Well, not exactly. I was in Iraq two weeks ago with my old regiment. Within three hours of arriving, I came under mortar attack, a common event for our troops. If our work out there is done, the Prime Minister clearly hasn't told the insurgents.
McNab, left, watches as a British soldier gets ready to fire at rebels
I was with 4th Battalion, the Rifles (formerly the Royal Green Jackets), the infantry regiment I joined as a boy soldier. For a week, I accompanied the lads on patrols and witnessed action at first-hand. I saw highly professional soldiers full of enthusiasm for the job – far from the dispirited force some armchair experts describe at home.
Brown was, of course, fiddling around with the figures when he announced the withdrawal, but there is more to it than that.
The British Army's Contingency Operating Base (COB) at Basra airport doesn't look as if it's pulling down the shutters – quite the opposite in fact. It's constructing more permanent, hard-standing parks for tanks, new buildings, more infrastructure.
So sorry Mr Brown, but I don't believe we're going anywhere. And even if we do leave, the Americans will take our place.
In truth, the Prime Minister's announcement owes more to political expediency than practicalities.
Sure, one of the battle groups is coming home and it is not being replaced.
But there will be others still out there. Tanks and armoured vehicles continue to be deployed and soldiers are still getting attacked. Believe me, when you're in a five-hour firefight – calling in attack helicopters and Tornado jets for support – it doesn't feel even vaguely like it's all over.
Andy McNab, left, and a soldier from the Rifles run for cover as enemy gunmen try to ambush them during a patrol in Basra City
At the COB's 4 Rifles camp is a huge engineer-built tented area with every home comfort: internet and phone access for every squaddie, showers and air-conditioning, which is just as well since temperatures can pass 50C. To the south at night, there is the eerie sight of the oilfields burning like big cigarettes on their ends.
Daily life for the British soldiers consists of a lot of snap-shooting (trying to hit the enemy as they break cover for a split second), running around and dodging IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices, as the ubiquitous roadside bombs are called), rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire.
On one stretch of road there might be 40 IEDs. On just one day during the summer, the British base at Basra Palace had 71 separate mortar attacks. Terrifying at first perhaps, but you get used to it.
At the Old State Building, another Army base in Basra city known as the Alamo, there's a sangar – a pill-box shelter – that holds the record for the most hits sustained in the whole of Iraq. It's still standing – just.
One thing was clear from this: the Brits were taking 90 per cent of the violence. That's why they moved out to Basra airport and the Iraqis were given responsibility for the city.
The battle groups are still ready to go back into the city, although now technically at the request of the Iraqis, fighting their way in with Challenger tanks, Warrior armoured vehicles and strike teams.
They will use Tornados or Apache AH-64 attack helicopters to display a show of force. If they are attacked it's zero-tolerance and the job is to kill as many insurgents as possible. If the COB is mortared, there will be six 105mm artillery pieces pounding the enemy's firing point.
My friend Major Paul Harding, a company commander in 4 Rifles, was killed in June after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during a five-hour engagement.
Paul and I had served together in the Royal Green Jackets as teenagers and he was a soldier's soldier.
He would think nothing of exposing himself to the greatest danger for his men. Typically, he was down in the front sangar joining in the fight.
We don't get to hear about this stuff every day. Neither do we hear much about the 450 casualties who have lost limbs or been horrifically scarred since the start of 2003.
A suspected insurgent is led away by the British - many of those fuelling the violence are foreign fighters, slipping across the border into Iraq from neighbouring Iran
In a way, there is an upside to this horror. Combat trauma care is now so advanced that many men survive injuries that would have been fatal ten years ago. I am constantly amazed at the bravery of the wounded. Many do not even consider themselves disabled – they just happen to have a limb or two missing.
I'm a patron of Help For Heroes, a charity raising £5million for Headley Court, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Ashtead, Surrey. We'll get the money but why isn't the Treasury handing it over? It's probably no more than its annual mineral- water bill.
Some things have changed in Basra province. When we arrived we were regarded as liberators but quickly came to be seen as occupiers. We tried a gentle approach, then the hearts-and-minds strategy. Neither worked. So they thought: "Right, let's give them a good slapping." That did the trick. It won them respect.
I believe the British military at the COB who say they have got Basra right and things are improving. Why wouldn't I? I have known some of them since we were 18-year-old Riflemen.
Much now rests on the Iraqi army, and there are reasons for cautious optimism. Two years ago Iraqi forces were known for corruption and chaos but now they have some good people in command.
A lot of the so-called Mahdi army, a paramilitary group created by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been cleared out. The British Army is moving on to a mentoring role and has trained 13,000 soldiers and 15,000 police officers.
Other crucial jobs remain outstanding. We must tackle the fighters coming over the border from Iran.
Make no mistake, foreign insurgents are there even if the British Government has failed to acknowledge it publicly. All the mortars fired at our soldiers have been made in Iran. Persian – the language of Iran – not just Arabic, is spoken by the insurgents.
British troops are trying to identify the crossing points these guys are using and to find the weapons caches. That is no easy task. The border is porous – hundreds of miles of sand and waterways are all but impossible to secure. Mines laid in the Iran-Iraq war also pose constant danger.
A Challenger II tank ready for action in Basra
Meanwhile, the Iraqis just want to get on with life. I remember a curious scene during an earlier visit this year when I joined 2 Rifles. We were engaged in a firefight on a side street in Basra, but in the main shopping area people went about their daily business.
That, perhaps, is the point. Most Iraqis do exactly what we do – go to work and send their kids to school. Ambitious Iraqi families have always been pro-education. Even in Saddam's day they were teaching Shakespeare.
How many comprehensives do that in Britain now? Meet a 12-year-old Iraqi with bare feet and wearing a ripped T-shirt and he'll talk to you in English.
So Basra City is stabilising. It's not the maelstrom of anarchy that has been portrayed. One statistic alone proves that – the murder rate in Basra is half that of Washington DC.
Few Iraqis support the insurgents, even privately. Admittedly, there is a grudging respect for them because they don't baulk at fighting to the death and are very proficient. They are getting one-bullet kills: perhaps that's Iranian training.
However, we are more than meeting their challenge. I met an 18-year-old Rifleman who fired six rounds and killed three insurgents on his first day in Iraq. A sniper used just four rounds to kill three enemy who were laying an IED – fellow soldiers joked that he had wasted a bullet.
During my previous trip I joined 2 Rifles on a "strike op" (house assault) in Basra City.
It's one of the most dangerous things you can do because you never know what is going to happen.
First through the door was a 19-year-old Rifleman. Five years ago that job would have been done by people like me, special forces. That's how professional our troops are.
The Rifles storm a house in Basra . Five years ago, only the special forces would do this sort of thing, but now it is an everyday event for teenage infantrymen
It's another myth that we have poor equipment. The British Army's weapons systems now are stunning – the new SA80 A2 light support rifle, with its optic and laser-sight systems, is better than the standard American M16.
Some of these lads had fired over 700 rounds each in a contact. The new Bulldog armoured vehicle used by 4 Rifles has a computer-guided general-purpose machine gun.
As ever in warfare, the level of the technology rises to meet the challenges. Now nobody goes out of base to fight unless they are protected. Drawing out the insurgents and killing them – that's the name of the game.
The infantry is in good shape and will be that way for at least a generation. A 19-year-old British infantryman today has more opportunity and weapons to kill the enemy than his counterpart did in the Second World War.
Then, a British Army of a million men was spread over several continents. Now, soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan average an engagement every 36 hours, often lasting for hours.
Lance-corporals and corporals who are coming to their third tours of duties will rise further up the ranks and take that experience and knowledge with them. For the infantry this is a golden age.
There has been much handwringing about the morality of the invasion of Iraq. Basically, we followed US foreign policy and the Americans went in because of oil. Simple as that.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, confirmed as much last month in his memoirs.
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq War is largely about oil," he wrote.
People may jump up and down about the wrongs of this conflict, but if there's a queue at the petrol station, they would complain about that, too.
British soldiers are well aware that they are used as political ammunition but they don't give a damn.
The lads loved Brown's visit to Basra in October, not because they wanted political validation but because the Prime Minister looked so ill-at-ease. He simply didn't know how to engage with the soldiers, as if he was having to face the reality of what they do for the first time.
Sadly, some members of the public suffer from similar problems. I was chatting recently to a 20-year-old Rifleman just back from Iraq. As he made his way home, still dressed in his desert camouflage, some lads shouted: "You w*****."
Soldiering is no longer part of British culture. In America, military families get discounts at theme parks and are applauded by the crowds.
In Finland, transport and admission to public facilities are free for its troops.
By contrast, the tax breaks the British Government has given to soldiers on tours of duty are meaningless – they all come out of the defence budget.
The Government, of whatever political hue, has always praised the military but has rarely translated warm words into cold cash. Despite fighting two major campaigns and placing constant demands on its Armed Forces, Britain spends less of its wealth on defence than Bulgaria, Greece or Turkey (though more than France, Germany, and Italy).
And according to the Conservatives, defence spending as a proportion of the UK's gross domestic product is at its lowest since 1930, before Britain recognised the threat of Nazi Germany.
I don't think we will put out the bunting for returning soldiers again but it's not sentimentality that matters – it's practicality. It starts with giving soldiers and their families decent accommodation and proper pay. Things are getting better but there's much to do.
It is wrong that a soldier with three children should have to go cap in hand for State tax credits because he isn't paid properly.
If you're a Jock squaddie based in the South of England, you can't afford to jump on a train to go to see your family.
It would be terrific if someone like Sir Richard Branson were to declare: "I'm not interested in the politics of the war but I want to support our troops. So show your identity card and get a discount on your train fare." A small gesture for a billionaire, but it matters.
---------------------------
• The campaign for Headley Court is run by Help For Heroes, www.helpforheroes. org.uk.
Andy McNab's website is www.andymcnab.co.uk. His latest novel, Crossfire, is published tomorrow by Bantam Press priced £18.99. To order your copy at the special price of £17.10 with free p&p, call The Review Bookstore on 0845 606 4213.
dailymail.co.uk
Basra Two Zero: An SAS veteran views the Iraq war from the soldiers' point of view
By ANDY McNAB
3rd November 2007
Daily Mail
SAS veteran Andy McNab went to Iraq to see the war from the soldiers' point of view. What he found will amaze you...their kit is brilliant, they say this is a golden age for the infantry and they know they're being used as political ammunition – but they just don't give a damn...
Gordon Brown says our troops are coming home. A thousand will be back from Iraq by Christmas and the rest, it is reckoned, by the end of 2008.
In theory this sounds promising. Indeed, listening to all this talk, you would think our soldiers were lounging round the pool in Basra knocking back a couple of beers before boarding the plane.
Well, not exactly. I was in Iraq two weeks ago with my old regiment. Within three hours of arriving, I came under mortar attack, a common event for our troops. If our work out there is done, the Prime Minister clearly hasn't told the insurgents.
I was with 4th Battalion, the Rifles (formerly the Royal Green Jackets), the infantry regiment I joined as a boy soldier. For a week, I accompanied the lads on patrols and witnessed action at first-hand. I saw highly professional soldiers full of enthusiasm for the job – far from the dispirited force some armchair experts describe at home.
Brown was, of course, fiddling around with the figures when he announced the withdrawal, but there is more to it than that.
The British Army's Contingency Operating Base (COB) at Basra airport doesn't look as if it's pulling down the shutters – quite the opposite in fact. It's constructing more permanent, hard-standing parks for tanks, new buildings, more infrastructure.
So sorry Mr Brown, but I don't believe we're going anywhere. And even if we do leave, the Americans will take our place.
In truth, the Prime Minister's announcement owes more to political expediency than practicalities.
Sure, one of the battle groups is coming home and it is not being replaced.
But there will be others still out there. Tanks and armoured vehicles continue to be deployed and soldiers are still getting attacked. Believe me, when you're in a five-hour firefight – calling in attack helicopters and Tornado jets for support – it doesn't feel even vaguely like it's all over.
At the COB's 4 Rifles camp is a huge engineer-built tented area with every home comfort: internet and phone access for every squaddie, showers and air-conditioning, which is just as well since temperatures can pass 50C. To the south at night, there is the eerie sight of the oilfields burning like big cigarettes on their ends.
Daily life for the British soldiers consists of a lot of snap-shooting (trying to hit the enemy as they break cover for a split second), running around and dodging IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices, as the ubiquitous roadside bombs are called), rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire.
On one stretch of road there might be 40 IEDs. On just one day during the summer, the British base at Basra Palace had 71 separate mortar attacks. Terrifying at first perhaps, but you get used to it.
At the Old State Building, another Army base in Basra city known as the Alamo, there's a sangar – a pill-box shelter – that holds the record for the most hits sustained in the whole of Iraq. It's still standing – just.
One thing was clear from this: the Brits were taking 90 per cent of the violence. That's why they moved out to Basra airport and the Iraqis were given responsibility for the city.
The battle groups are still ready to go back into the city, although now technically at the request of the Iraqis, fighting their way in with Challenger tanks, Warrior armoured vehicles and strike teams.
They will use Tornados or Apache AH-64 attack helicopters to display a show of force. If they are attacked it's zero-tolerance and the job is to kill as many insurgents as possible. If the COB is mortared, there will be six 105mm artillery pieces pounding the enemy's firing point.
My friend Major Paul Harding, a company commander in 4 Rifles, was killed in June after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during a five-hour engagement.
Paul and I had served together in the Royal Green Jackets as teenagers and he was a soldier's soldier.
He would think nothing of exposing himself to the greatest danger for his men. Typically, he was down in the front sangar joining in the fight.
We don't get to hear about this stuff every day. Neither do we hear much about the 450 casualties who have lost limbs or been horrifically scarred since the start of 2003.
In a way, there is an upside to this horror. Combat trauma care is now so advanced that many men survive injuries that would have been fatal ten years ago. I am constantly amazed at the bravery of the wounded. Many do not even consider themselves disabled – they just happen to have a limb or two missing.
I'm a patron of Help For Heroes, a charity raising £5million for Headley Court, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Ashtead, Surrey. We'll get the money but why isn't the Treasury handing it over? It's probably no more than its annual mineral- water bill.
Some things have changed in Basra province. When we arrived we were regarded as liberators but quickly came to be seen as occupiers. We tried a gentle approach, then the hearts-and-minds strategy. Neither worked. So they thought: "Right, let's give them a good slapping." That did the trick. It won them respect.
I believe the British military at the COB who say they have got Basra right and things are improving. Why wouldn't I? I have known some of them since we were 18-year-old Riflemen.
Much now rests on the Iraqi army, and there are reasons for cautious optimism. Two years ago Iraqi forces were known for corruption and chaos but now they have some good people in command.
A lot of the so-called Mahdi army, a paramilitary group created by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been cleared out. The British Army is moving on to a mentoring role and has trained 13,000 soldiers and 15,000 police officers.
Other crucial jobs remain outstanding. We must tackle the fighters coming over the border from Iran.
Make no mistake, foreign insurgents are there even if the British Government has failed to acknowledge it publicly. All the mortars fired at our soldiers have been made in Iran. Persian – the language of Iran – not just Arabic, is spoken by the insurgents.
British troops are trying to identify the crossing points these guys are using and to find the weapons caches. That is no easy task. The border is porous – hundreds of miles of sand and waterways are all but impossible to secure. Mines laid in the Iran-Iraq war also pose constant danger.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis just want to get on with life. I remember a curious scene during an earlier visit this year when I joined 2 Rifles. We were engaged in a firefight on a side street in Basra, but in the main shopping area people went about their daily business.
That, perhaps, is the point. Most Iraqis do exactly what we do – go to work and send their kids to school. Ambitious Iraqi families have always been pro-education. Even in Saddam's day they were teaching Shakespeare.
How many comprehensives do that in Britain now? Meet a 12-year-old Iraqi with bare feet and wearing a ripped T-shirt and he'll talk to you in English.
So Basra City is stabilising. It's not the maelstrom of anarchy that has been portrayed. One statistic alone proves that – the murder rate in Basra is half that of Washington DC.
Few Iraqis support the insurgents, even privately. Admittedly, there is a grudging respect for them because they don't baulk at fighting to the death and are very proficient. They are getting one-bullet kills: perhaps that's Iranian training.
However, we are more than meeting their challenge. I met an 18-year-old Rifleman who fired six rounds and killed three insurgents on his first day in Iraq. A sniper used just four rounds to kill three enemy who were laying an IED – fellow soldiers joked that he had wasted a bullet.
During my previous trip I joined 2 Rifles on a "strike op" (house assault) in Basra City.
It's one of the most dangerous things you can do because you never know what is going to happen.
First through the door was a 19-year-old Rifleman. Five years ago that job would have been done by people like me, special forces. That's how professional our troops are.
It's another myth that we have poor equipment. The British Army's weapons systems now are stunning – the new SA80 A2 light support rifle, with its optic and laser-sight systems, is better than the standard American M16.
Some of these lads had fired over 700 rounds each in a contact. The new Bulldog armoured vehicle used by 4 Rifles has a computer-guided general-purpose machine gun.
As ever in warfare, the level of the technology rises to meet the challenges. Now nobody goes out of base to fight unless they are protected. Drawing out the insurgents and killing them – that's the name of the game.
The infantry is in good shape and will be that way for at least a generation. A 19-year-old British infantryman today has more opportunity and weapons to kill the enemy than his counterpart did in the Second World War.
Then, a British Army of a million men was spread over several continents. Now, soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan average an engagement every 36 hours, often lasting for hours.
Lance-corporals and corporals who are coming to their third tours of duties will rise further up the ranks and take that experience and knowledge with them. For the infantry this is a golden age.
There has been much handwringing about the morality of the invasion of Iraq. Basically, we followed US foreign policy and the Americans went in because of oil. Simple as that.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, confirmed as much last month in his memoirs.
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq War is largely about oil," he wrote.
People may jump up and down about the wrongs of this conflict, but if there's a queue at the petrol station, they would complain about that, too.
British soldiers are well aware that they are used as political ammunition but they don't give a damn.
The lads loved Brown's visit to Basra in October, not because they wanted political validation but because the Prime Minister looked so ill-at-ease. He simply didn't know how to engage with the soldiers, as if he was having to face the reality of what they do for the first time.
Sadly, some members of the public suffer from similar problems. I was chatting recently to a 20-year-old Rifleman just back from Iraq. As he made his way home, still dressed in his desert camouflage, some lads shouted: "You w*****."
Soldiering is no longer part of British culture. In America, military families get discounts at theme parks and are applauded by the crowds.
In Finland, transport and admission to public facilities are free for its troops.
By contrast, the tax breaks the British Government has given to soldiers on tours of duty are meaningless – they all come out of the defence budget.
The Government, of whatever political hue, has always praised the military but has rarely translated warm words into cold cash. Despite fighting two major campaigns and placing constant demands on its Armed Forces, Britain spends less of its wealth on defence than Bulgaria, Greece or Turkey (though more than France, Germany, and Italy).
And according to the Conservatives, defence spending as a proportion of the UK's gross domestic product is at its lowest since 1930, before Britain recognised the threat of Nazi Germany.
I don't think we will put out the bunting for returning soldiers again but it's not sentimentality that matters – it's practicality. It starts with giving soldiers and their families decent accommodation and proper pay. Things are getting better but there's much to do.
It is wrong that a soldier with three children should have to go cap in hand for State tax credits because he isn't paid properly.
If you're a Jock squaddie based in the South of England, you can't afford to jump on a train to go to see your family.
It would be terrific if someone like Sir Richard Branson were to declare: "I'm not interested in the politics of the war but I want to support our troops. So show your identity card and get a discount on your train fare." A small gesture for a billionaire, but it matters.
---------------------------
• The campaign for Headley Court is run by Help For Heroes, www.helpforheroes. org.uk.
Andy McNab's website is www.andymcnab.co.uk. His latest novel, Crossfire, is published tomorrow by Bantam Press priced £18.99. To order your copy at the special price of £17.10 with free p&p, call The Review Bookstore on 0845 606 4213.
dailymail.co.uk
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