My training at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst was very good;
although it can be a horrible slog at the time, that’s part of the
point. It definitely prepares you for things that you don’t know you’ll
face until later on, when you’re in combat. Officer training is better
than many areas of army activity – more thought and more money is
invested in it – and compared to the basic training received by the
average soldier, it’s very good indeed.

After graduating from
military academy, I went to Afghanistan last year, and although I felt
well-prepared, I have some reservations about the overall approach to
training all our troops for that particular theatre. There’s been an
emphasis in the military on training for a war, as opposed to the war,
so we spent a lot of time training for more conventional warfare –
which isn’t what we are fighting in Afghanistan, or what we were
fighting in Iraq. These days, going to Canada and training in big
armoured exercises isn’t the best preparation. I’m of the view that
training needs to help us win the war that we’re fighting – and we are
not going to be fighting a tank battle any time soon. However, things
are starting to change here, with more time spent on training tailored
to Afghanistan.

Setting priorities

A lot has been said in
recent times about the equipment and kit provided to our troops. And
while we are a lot better equipped than we were a few years ago, it’s
still a highly sensitive subject – especially for those of us who have
served alongside the Americans. In Afghanistan we used to look at
soldiers from the United States, and see what they had – and we hadn’t.
As I said, things have got better – particularly in relation to ration
packs – but I think there’s a realisation that we are never going to
have quite what they have. This still rankles with many people, when
they think about defence priorities. I haven’t canvassed opinion among
squaddies, but I get the sense that many wonder why so much money is
being spent on things like aircraft carriers when soldiers in
Afghanistan still need better kit.

One of the positive things
the chief of the general staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, has done is to
institute a kind of feedback mechanism: he sends groups of people out
to talk to soldiers and listen to their complaints. In fact, one of the
points Sir Richard himself has made in discussions on the armed forces
intranet is that we need to spend more on the war we are fighting in
Afghanistan, rather than future aircraft carriers, joint strike
fighters and the like.

Stretch marks

Over the past few
years, there had obviously been a problem with overstretch of the
military. When both Iraq and Afghanistan were at the peak of conflict,
people were getting thrashed with successive tours, but that’s unlikely
to be the case now. In fact, I know a number of people who are keen to
get away on tour but can’t – though that might change soon if, as some
suspect, the Americans put pressure on us to send more troops to
Helmand province. One of the consequences of that overstretch was
probably an increased turnover of officers over the past few years –
either because of the demanding tempo of tours, or because after
several relatively quiet years for the military people could now retire
having seen real combat, with a few stories to tell.

Civil
service bosses are probably not as well-known or understood within the
army as our own leaders, and I think most soldiers probably feel less
well-supported by civilians in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) than by
the bosses of the military. Sadly, I would say opinions of civil
servants are probably mistakenly coloured by negative perceptions of
MPs, and of the political class in Westminster generally. This is
probably especially true among the squaddies. I’ve heard some talk
about the MPs’ expenses scandal, and people are questioning why MPs
have their second homes paid for when troops on operations have to stay
overnight in pretty basic transit accommodation.

Although I’m
based out in Germany now, I still feel plugged in to the mainstream of
the British army. If I had one message for policymakers at the MoD, I
think it would be that they really need to decide what they want to
achieve with the British army. Something that came out of the recent
Institute for Public Policy Research report (see CSW, June 30, p1) is
that we’ve been trying to maintain ‘full-spectrum’ defence
capabilities; almost a mini-US style force. However, when we tried to
fight two medium-sized wars with our forces, the flaws in that strategy
were revealed. The small size of our armed forces means that some
operations are beyond us – and if there are more defence cuts, we’ll be
able to do even less.