A collective failure

In 2003, Sgt Steve Roberts gets shot in a "friendly fire" incident in Iraq. Having handing in his body armour, he dies as a result. There is a six-day hearing and, on 18 December last year, Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner for Oxfordshire, says: "To send soldiers into a combat zone without the appropriate basic equipment is, in my view, unforgivable and inexcusable and represents a breach of trust that the soldiers have in those in Government."

This unleashes a torrent of media comment. The BBC has the verdict as its lead item on its national televised news. Every major newspaper covered it and the Independent gave over the whole of its front page. Google News recorded over 1,300 separate media reports.

However, tragic though the death was, this was one soldier. Since the incident, the MoD has issued high-tech, state-of-the-art body armour to all troops in the field and, barring the odd case, all soldiers at risk are equipped with it.

On the other hand, yesterday, there was an inquest into the deaths of three soldiers - Pte Phillip Hewett (pictured), 2nd Lt Richard Shearer and Pte Leon Spicer. These were the three soldiers from the Staffordshire Regiment who were killed in Al Amarah, Iraq on 16 July 2005 by a roadside bomb while riding in a lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rover.

Oxford coroner, Selena Lynch, returns a verdict of "unlawful killing" but says she can make no recommendation to the Ministry of Defence about the use of the Land Rovers because it is beyond her jurisdiction.

However, in addition to these three deaths, there have been at least 20 more soldiers who have died, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, while riding in lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers. Many more have been injured, some very seriously indeed.

Furthermore, although the MoD promised that there would be an "effective capacity" of the Mastiff mine and blast-protected vehicle in Iraq by the end of last year. So far, only four have so far arrived and it will be next month before there are just 20 in place.

In Afghanistan, the situation is even worse. Troops are having to patrol (and fight) in unarmoured "WMIK" Land Rovers and the promised Pinzgauer Vector replacement is, if anything, more dangerous than the vehicles it replaces.

Nevertheless, by the early evening there had been only one media report on the verdict, on the BBC's Stoke and Staffordshire local television news. The national television and radio news did not even mention it and, in the national dailies, it got one brief "meanwhile…" in the Daily Mirror attached to the tail end of another inquest report on the "friendly fire" incident involving A-10s.

All we got from the national BBC television was the News 24 programme with an amazingly superficial "puff" for the up-armoured "Bulldog" FV432 armoured personnel carrier, embellished somewhat on the national website. With a picture of the Pinzgauer Vector and the heading, "troops get new armoured vehicles", it could almost have been written by the MoD – and will certainly trouble it not.

This dire performance was only partially remedied by a BBC Radio File on 4 documentary – co-incidentally broadcast yesterday evening. But, in the whole 40-minute programme, only the death of Pte. Hewett was discussed, along with the deaths of two other soldiers in unrelated incidents, one from heat stroke and the other from a training accident on a firing range.

Better in some respects than the appalling programme in in October, featuring the dreadful Allan Urry, this one – with Jenny Cuffe - still failed to give the equipment issue the depth of coverage it needed.

We have, of course, covered the vulnerability of the "Snatch" Land Rovers extensively on this blog. Then, immediately prior to the Coroner's finding, there were two media reports, one in The Telegraph, yesterday morning, and one at the weekend in the Observer.

From both we got Sue Smith, Pte Hewett's mother, charging that the three soldiers would still be alive today if the MoD had purchased adequately protected vehicles. But there was no attempt to widen the issue and neither newspaper even began to address the current defects in the system. Both uncritically reported on the purchase of the Pinzgauers, failing to pick up the delays in supplying the Mastiffs.

Thus have soliders been completely let down by the fourth estate. At the time of the Roberts' inquiry, we warned of the danger of focusing on the one issue of the body armour - which had actually been sorted. We wanted the journalists, who were then so full of themselves, to note that Sgt Roberts's widow, Samantha, was already saying that the body armour issue had been resolved. "This is Steve's legacy," she had said, adding: "we must ensure that these failures are not repeated with other basic kit."

But her words have gone unheeded and will continue to do so by journalists and editors alike. Our trivial, venal media is fundamentally incapable of doing its job. They can bleat and blether when it no longer matters but, when they could make the difference, they are silent. All they have to offer is their own collective failure. And so dismally ignorant are they that they do not even have enough knowledge to appreciate that they have failed. That is their legacy.

* * * *

The top photograph is of a "Snatch" Land Rover, this one operated by the support company, Welsh Guards, who are providing security for the Royal Military Police. It is pictured in Al Amarah by a smoking chimney from the local brickworks. The picture is from the "Smugmug" gallery posted by S D C Carter, one of the finest collection of photographs of contemporary British military operations in Iraq that I have seen. Mouse-click on the face of the picture to enlarge.

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Getting away with it

Even by the standards of our idle media, it would have been news: two soldiers killed in Land Rovers on consecutive days, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. But it was not to be and what could possibly be a major story goes begging.

It starts on Thursday, when we get a report from the MoD that a soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, after his vehicle is involved in an explosion. There are no pictures and few details and only later does it emerge that the "explosion" was caused by a landmine. And although the MoD must have known the vehicle type involved, very carefully it does not identify the type. Most likely, though, it is a Land Rover, and quite possibly a "Snatch".

On the Friday, however, The Times, to its credit, questions the type of vehicle, establishing that it is unarmoured. But the rest of the media dutifully copies and pastes the MoD press handout in what passes for news coverage.

The same day we read The Times, we get a report of the death (as we are later told) of Sergeant Graham Hesketh, from a roadside bomb while he is on patrol in Basra. But, in the eyes of the media, there can be no link with the Afghanistan incident. The MoD report makes it quite clear (untypically clear) that the Sergeant Hesketh is riding in a Warrior MICV.

Also, atypically, there are no agency photographs. This is very unusual. Of virtually every bombing incident involving the death of a UK soldier, there are one or more images recording the aftermath. And in this case, as the MoD helpfully informs us that Sergeant Hesketh's patrol "was travelling towards the Old State Building, a British Army Base in the centre of the City, when the device activated."

This is not in some remote part of Iraq so, if not of the actual bombed vehicle, at the very least, one would expect to see agency shots of British troops "securing the scene" - such as the one here after another recent incident. Instead, what we actually get is pictures of an apparently unrelated incident showing two burning "Snatch" Land Rovers after – as we are led to believe – another bomb incident.

These initial reports make no reference to casualties but we then get Reuters yesterday quoting a Captain Olly Pile claiming that "one British soldier was slightly injured", only to be followed by an AFP report today (see below), which states that a roadside bomb hit the patrol, "killing an unidentified soldier".


Already, we have the MoD website offering a picture of Sergeant Hesketh, sitting atop a Warrior, and it makes the direct claim that he was "commanding a Warrior Armoured Fighting Vehicle on a routine security patrol." But, strangely, the report also includes a tribute from Sgt Hesketh's father, Kevin, who writes: "Graham was killed in action while patrolling in Iraq by a kerbside bomb exploding under his Jeep...".

To have two bomb attacks on British vehicles on the same day is very rare - to the point of being unprecedented. Are we therefore being misled (one assumes deliberately) by the MoD about Sergeant Hesketh's death? Was there one incident, not two and was the Sergeant patrolling not in a Warrior but in a "Snatch" Land Rover, which his father describes as a "jeep"?

The question is, would the MoD lie about such a thing? Surely it would be found out? Well, after the bomb attack on the boat on the Shatt al-Arab on 12 November, killing four service personnel, it claimed on the day and then two days later that it was "an attack on a Multi-National Forces boat patrol".

But, as we observed, it never was a patrol. This was an attack on a "water taxi", a routine movement of personnel between Basra Palace and Shatt al-Arab Hotel. And, it transpired, there had been 16 previously recorded attacks, clearly indicating that the use of unprotected boats was highly risky.

Yet, despite there being plenty of questions, the media let the issue ride and the MoD got away with it - for the time being. Clearly, the media prefer to be spoon-fed, so where you get a coroner's report, and the criticism is nicely packaged and "safe", they will go to town on it - nice cheap journalism.

Once again the MoD looks like getting away with it. And it has a lot to hide. Not only are troops still being killed in vulnerable and inadequate Land Rovers, the Minister promised of the Mastiff armoured vehicles that there would be an "effective capability in place in Iraq by the end of the year."

Of course, we fully understand that the media have far more important things to write about. And today, it is this. Gerald Howarth has finally got his name in the papers.

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Where were you?

Yes, Mr Bush, we know it is bad - we've been saying so for a long time. Yes, we agree with you when you tell our prime minister, Tony Blair, that "we need a new approach". And yes, we entirely agree with General Sir Mike Jackson (now retired) that it would be "morally wrong" to pull out of Iraq at the moment.

And we even agree with Jackson when he accused the government in his speech of neglecting soldiers and of "asking too much" of the armed forces.

But what we also want to know is why it has been left until now? What have our professionals and analysts being doing all these years and, in particular, what was the professional head of the Army doing in August 2003?

This blog, of course, didn't exist back then. But General Sir Mike Jackson – or "Macho Jacko" as he was already known - was Chief of General Staff, the professional head of the Army. He had been appointed on 1 January 2003, he had seen the successful assault on Basra by British troops and then enjoyed the short-lived fruits of victory with the official termination of hostilities in Iraq on 1 May 2003.

Then, on 14 August - two days after Basra had been swept by organised riots, with mobs protesting against the lack of fuel and electricity in the city – when British forces were shot at and returned fire, killing at least one Iraqi - Captain David Jones was travelling from Basra with his driver in a clearly marked military ambulance (pictured above left), conveying a soldier to the military hospital in the Shaibah logistics base outside the city. He never arrived. Shortly after 9am British time, the vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb, killing Captain Jones and injuring the other two soldiers, and badly damaging the vehicle (illustrated right).

One national newspaper at the time reported that this had been the most serious attack on British forces since six military policemen had been killed in Majar al-Kabir, north of Basra, on 24 June. Furthermore, as this was the very first roadside bomb attack on a British military vehicle, the fear was that the "honeymoon" was over – that British troops in the southern, mostly Shia, part of Iraq, were now to be targeted by guerrilla attacks. Up to date, these had been reserved for American troops in the ethnic Sunni area around Baghdad.

As reported by The Scotsman, the BBC had defence analyst Paul Beaver saying that the attack had been very different to any incident dealt with by British forces in Iraq before then. "This looks like a step up in operations by a group you can only call terrorists," he told BBC News. "This is very much a pre-meditated act of terrorism. There's no doubt at all what we're actually seeing here is someone making capital out of the fact there is now a greater awareness of discontent in the Basra area."

The newspaper suggested that the campaign in Iraq had "entered a dangerous new phase".

One swallow does not make a summer though, but any thoughts General Sir Mike Jackson might have had of disagreeing must have been disabused by reports of an incident on 23 August. Three soldiers from the Royal Military Police - Major Matthew Titchener, Co Sergeant Major Colin Wall and Corporal Dewi Pritchard - were killed in an ambush in central Basra.

Witnesses said the RMPs were riding in a sports utility vehicle in a routine two-vehicle convoy and came under small-arms fire from an unknown number of men in a pick-up truck at around 8.30am. The soldiers returned fire, but appear to have been killed either by a grenade thrown from the other vehicle or when their own vehicle crashed into a wall.

Then, on 27 August, Fusilier Russell Beeston, a Territorial Army soldier in the 52nd Lowland Regiment, was killed on after a crowd surrounded his patrol vehicle in Ali As Sharqi, southern Iraq, and opened fire with guns and rocket-propelled grenades. He was 26 and from Govan. Shortly afterwards, on 7 September, a roadside bomb in Basra exploded when a British diplomatic convoy was passing killing four people of unknown nationalities, wrecking the car and flipping it upside down. When a later explosion killed ten more, there can have been no doubt. The honeymoon was definitely over and an insurgency was in progress.

Now, in his speech entitled, "The Defence Of The Realm In The 21st Century", General Sir Mike Jackson tells us his lecture was "a way of taking stock". He has been considering "what may be demanded for the defence of the Realm in this uncertain century; and how ready we are for those demands."

But he adds: "We also need to be honest as to how well we are meeting these demands now," effectively admitting that we are not doing enough. He says: "we must do better in this complex situation, faced as we are today by a determined and ruthless enemy".

That "determined and ruthless enemy" was to continue slaughtering British troops. But, in August and September and points thereafter, Jackson was not only thinking about the war in Iraq. As befits the professional head of the Army, he was thinking in grander terms, of the longer term. "How should the United Kingdom position and defend itself?" he was asking.

He doesn't actually tell us the timeline but we know from other events that this was the thinking going on in the MoD. The arch Europhile secretary of state for defence, Geoff Hoon, had his own political priorities. They were to put clothes on Tony Blair's 1999 initiative, making good his St Malo promises to co-operate with Jacques Chirac, building a European Rapid Reaction Force.

Through 2003, as the attacks on British troops intensified, Blair's high-level political initiative was filtering down to Army level for implementation. General Sir Mike Jackson was thus required to look at the broader strategy - a European strategy to balance the US-orientated Iraqi strategy. As conveyed to us in the Dimbleby lecture, he rationalised it thus:

The UK cannot isolate itself from the wider world, so I'm not at all sure that it is an available strategy, even if we wanted to choose it. That said, I think perhaps the most fundamental question, is the relationship, the strategic relationship, between the United States and Europe. ...

And the UK's position as between the US and Europe has been a dilemma for this country for many decades. A black or white choice, one way or the other, would be fatally flawed. The fate of this country, given its geography and its history, is to wrestle with the conundrum that whilst we sit unequally in geographical distance between the United States and the mainland continent, of Europe, the political distance is a much more equal proposition.

We had our "special" relationship with the US but, "we are also part of the continent of Europe, and a member of the continent's polity, the European Union." Thus said the General, "...it is inevitable that there will be an ebb and flow to the UK's relationship with these two centres of gravity." We could not sit on the fence, he mused. "We are so closely involved strategically with both the United States and with Europe, that in our strategic posture we must embrace both."

So, instead of concentrating on dealing with the war in Iraq, with its special equipment needs, in November 2003 he palmed the troops off with second-hand "Snatch" Land Rovers, drawn from stocks held in store in Belfast. That done, he then devoted his energies to feeding the European fantasy, as he set about reorganising the Army to fit in with the demands of the ERRF.

The rest, as they say, is history. The attacks continued, "Snatches" burned and soldiers died.

Except that the history has yet to be written. Thus, in his Dimbleby lecture, General Sir Mike Jackson put in his bid for his version. "We could well be asking too much of our Army," he says.

It all comes down to a question of balance: balance between capabilities within the defence budget - how much of this, how much of that; current operations against what may be required in the future; not only current operations, but current training which is the investment for our capability in the future; people against technology - that's pay for example, accommodation standards for example, against current and future equipment.

This should not be a dilemma incidentally, this should not be a zero sum or an either/or. We should be able to provide what is required for soldiers to be fully and properly equipped, thoroughly trained, decently paid, and, together with their families, decently housed. They deserve nothing less.

So they do, General Sir Michael Jackson, GCB, CBE, DSO., so they do. At a time when even the Americans were beginning to realise that better equipment, like the superb RG-31, was needed (even available as an ambulance), why weren't our soldiers "fully and properly equipped" instead of being palmed off with second-hand Land Rovers?

So, when the real history comes to be written, it will include the question: "Where were you, General Jackson, when the Army really needed you?"

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