Tuesday, August 01, 2006
British soldier forced by shortages to give body armour to others!
Read this Finally the truth has come out!The "Politburoes" penny pinching led to the death of a soldier!-Tell me something I don't know!The sad truth is it's been going on for years,cutback after cutback has stripped our armed forces to the bare minimum in equipment and manpower.Serving soldiers are forbiden to speak out,being forced to sign a non disclosure agreement with the threat of prison to anyone who makes a fuss!The MOD,through history,have always been run on a shoestring,having to settle for scraps of the treasury plate,only recieving adequate funding during wartime itself-Never before,even when the signs of war were evident for all to see they simply buried their heads in the sand and pretended it didn't exist!The fact that our armed forces have done so well,with so little,is a testiment to their profesionalism and training,however enough is enough!Having recently served in Iraq myself,returning in December 2004,I can confirm the dangerous state of our armed forces.We were short of everything!Not enough ammunition for our weapons(Considering the threat we were up against-attack by 100+ insurgents,we were only going out with 4 mags of 120 rounds per man!),Not enough mini mi machine guns(THREE per platoon!),under-slung 40 mm grenade launchers (or grenades(we had NINE grenades for my whole platoon!),Radios that were ancient and didn't work properly-The "Clansman" series(We had to rely on mobile phones that only worked occasionaly!)No mini-flares and not enough parachute flares for night illumination,No white phos smoke genades(I didn't see one in theatre!)insufficient amounts of signal grenades,No 24 hr emergency rations,Vehicles that were totaly useless(We've all read about the "Snatch" landrover-enough said!)We didn't have enough night sights,thermal imagers or IR torches-Just the mark one eyeball!The Lynx helicopter could only fly below a certain temperature-Not very good in a desert!(I only saw one fly in six months!)We didn't even have enough breakdown kits for our "Always breaking down, over-used,tottaly useless" vehicles!All in all I don't know how any of us made it back alive at all!The Government must be brought to task over this unforgivable policy of penny pinching over soldiers lives before more avoidable and pointless deaths occur!
