The Army

There are reports in the media that the Army is getting nervous that the Defence Review will cut its cloth more than the other two services. I hope it does. This is not an army country.

Today, in addition to celebrations with the Pope, this nation celebrates what is now seen as one of the greatest strategic victories of all time and many historians now believe the decisive battle of WWII. The Battle of Britain. This was won by young men in the skies above us in the R.A.F. But it was not just the pilots, decisive though their valour was; it was also the ground operators, the technicians , the scientists and the engineers, the women in the factories, the firemen and the medics; it was the indomitable spirit of the ordinary people. All came together in this titanic struggle because the Army, with its French and other allies had lost, spectacularly, the crucial land battle on the continent.

Hitler had to get control of the sky to cross the channel. He also had to get control of the sea. Before him stood the RAF and the Royal Navy. The combination was overwhelming. Britain would not make peace, because she knew, inspite of the faint hearts in government, the Tory party, the aristocracy, parts of the Royal Family and in the Army, that overall she was too tough a nut to crack. This blew Hitler’s strategic plan. He turned, too early, on Russia. Failure at the channel coast cost him the war.

There was no doubt that the German Army could defeat the British Army, which was tactically obsolete, under equipped and badly lead. It had among the finest troops in the world, but as we saw in the string of defeats to follow in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Far East, their courage alone was not enough against a resourceful, intelligent, modern, but often numerically inferior, enemy. Both Germany and Japan inflicted defeat after defeat until Montgomery appeared in 1942.

Had it been up to the Army we would have lost WWII within eighteen months. It was the other two services that held the line and gave us time. The nature of this island, its culture and its people requires a light, small specialist army, mostly home based, with special forces available to infiltrate and destroy terrorist cells. It needs to be able to aid the civil power in time of emergency. The security of our island homeland rests with the Royal Navy and the RAF. These are the front line of defence. They are the shell which makes our nut too hard to crack. 

The Army needs to be brought home and cut back. It must stop waisting the lives of its brave young men on wars that can never be won and should never be fought. The Foreign Office needs to wake up to the fact that invading sovereign states, never a good idea, is well beyond its reach. It too needs to feel the pinch of deep cuts.