New Regiments

[bushfighter]

Thanks boysoldier

You understand the connection to the people of a specific region that was the British infantry's strength.

I am sorry that most of the other comments sounded like those from unimaginative auditors justifying a management system (which is in fact flawed because the campaigns we have embarked upon actually need more highly-trained & disciplined infantry & less fast-jet planes).

I would have liked to see two options practised by regiments that were amalgamating: Disbandment, & Change to an international development role.

DISBANDMENT

In my time I have witnessed two fine old regiments disband.

A Scots one went out in style with its own final religious service guarded by outposts in the hills.

A northern one, so I was told by a serving officer, decided to cadre train all its soldiers in as many military skills as possible before disbandment.

This made the soldiers very useful when posted to new units, & three of them became RSMs in regiments that they had not enlisted in - quite an achievement.

Disbandment allowed a regiment to retire from the military scene with tradition, honour & dignity intact - & holds open the possibility of future re-formation.

AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ROLE

I have spent most of my life working in developing countries but I have never seen one develop. That is because it usually is not in the interests of influential people in the country to let it develop.

Why? - primarily because there is too much money to be made out of foreign aid donated for development.

I would have liked to see some of our amalgamated infantry regiments converted to assault pioneer skills (like the old Indian Army Pioneer Regiments), manned by volunteers in a form of National Service that you had to apply for, leavened by a few sapper tradesmen, & then deployed into the vast, enormous Third World to directly work at ground-level with groups of villagers on installing basic infrastructure items such as school & clinic buildings, earth dams, boreholes, piped water, sewage disposal, solar power cooking & lighting, "irish bridging" of water courses etc etc etc.

The foreign aid budget would have paid for the pioneer units so created.

With military discipline in place the aid money would have been spent properly. The young pioneers would have learned basic military & construction skills, seen the world, interfaced with other cultures & made a real difference to alleviating poverty that often breeds the threats we now face.

Other countries have schemes aimed at delivering similar programmes - why didn't we think wider & bigger than the VSO system & find a development role for our military OUTSIDE THE DEFENCE BUDGET?

(And if each of our Pioneer Regiments had a regimental band that toured the development sites giving concerts & marching displays, then the bands would have been so popular that any local political objection to our method of spending our aid budget would have melted away.

And we could have maintained some proud old regimental titles.)

Have I spent too long out in the mid-day sun?

Harry

[Steven Broomfield]

Have I spent too long out in the mid-day sun?

Harry

No, probably not (well certainly not in late-November UK, you wouldn't), but the only real problem I see with your plan (which has many merits) is highlighted at the start of your thoughts: why would a developing country's ruling elite which was resistant to accepting development, as you suggest, take a quasi-military force from a donor country and allow it to do the very developing it is resisting?

[delta]

I like your idea of using the pioneer units - I also like the idea of young people serving overseas carrying out a development role.

Sadly, the reason that the Regiments were disbanded because they could not recruit enough youngsters to fill the ranks

[Pete1052]

What pray tell is the purpose for being, the raison d'etre, for the armed forces?

[bushfighter]

Pete

To man fire engines during strikes; to rescue civilians from mountain accidents & floods; to stand in lines behind important people when press cameras click; to support the Police whenever required; to train certain young offenders (this seems to have dropped out of sight); to provide display teams for some public events; to "show the flag" & make overseas courtesy visits; to support NATO & other less formal alliances; to fight the Queen's enemies.

I personally believe in various means of pre-emptive action to avoid the last item listed.

British Pioneer units of young people interfacing with & living & working alongside youths in some deprived areas of the world would be our weapon against radicalisation.

Delta

The key words were National Service.

As our nation slumps into separate groups of people with different cultures, religions, beliefs, languages & loyalties we need to find & practice methods of unification.

National Service, which can be applied in many different civil & military forms, is one answer.

A type of military service in the Armed Forces (& their could be different types) would utilise the history, prestige, discipline & training ability of the Services to bring our youth together with a common purpose.

(Of course the Service Chiefs would be against it - that's a given, but none of them ever experienced the positive aspects of National Service.

Just look back to WW2 & see how different people from the whole of the Empire & Dominions coalesced together in the service of the King.)

Steven

A typical conversation would run like this:

"This is all you are being offered. If you do not want it then it will be offered elsewhere.

However, should you accept the offer then we will require business people within your nation to deliver to these sites this specified list of materials from these nominated suppliers at these listed prices.

We will penalise lapses in specification, but these prices include a very reasonable profit for the supplier."

And please don't think I was joking about the regimental bands.

I don't think that the average Briton has any real concept of how a family in the developing world lives.

There's no electricity so half your life is spent in darkness without televisions.

The people crave for entertainment. I have seen visiting USA gospel preachers, after a 3-day live performance, walking away with scores of plastic bucketfuls of cash that the poorest in the world have donated because they appreciated the entertainment (& hoped for a little piece of the salvation being offered).

Free Regimental Band performances would unbelievably uplift the spectators in such villages, & have the people on the side of the development project.

Harry

[Pete1052]

I hear what you're saying, Bushfighter, but I'm wary of continually redefining the mission of the armed forces. The problem as I see it is how to train the forces for a multiplicity of missions. Worst case is heavy-duty kinetic war--combined arms tanks, mechanized infantry and artillery fighting a scenario such as we prepared for in Germany during the Cold War. Lesser levels of intensity include counterinsurgency, nation-building, peacekeeping, etc. How do we train people to do all those things and be able to mentally switch gears between them to suit the occasion?

These issues are further discussed in an article written two years ago by the British Army's Brigadier Nigel R.F. Aylwin-Foster, "Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations." The U.S. Army's Military Review republished it and a copy is available here. It's an Adobe PDF file that you'll have to open yourself.

[Tom A McCluskey]

Hi All,

Sorry to be picky, but the South Wales Borderers did not fight at Rorke's Drift, the 2nd Battalion, 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot fought at this battle. Brummies would be in this Regiment, much the same as a Fifer would be in the Black Watch .

Aye

Tom McC

[Chris Boonzaier]

A silly Question...

If they had to restructure and rename...

Why did they not keep the names alive as battalions?

instead of creating "The queens Suffolk, Devonshire, Royal Scots Fusiliers"..

Keep the regimental names and traditions alive as battalions, and give the new regiments a new district level name.

So a soldier could still say "I'm in the Black watch" meaning the battalion as opposed to the regt.

The whole system could have been kept alive but on a smaller scale.

[bushfighter]

Pete

The Regular Army will always mess around with tanks etc - the politicians want it that way.

And once or twice every 50 years the tanks can be used fruitfully.

But where is the military initiative to defeat an enemy that does not use tanks but still succeeds - Vietcong, Lebanese militias, Somali clans, Iraqi insurgents & Taliban?

Once we Brits had a strong position in the Middle East. We ran the MECAS Arabic culture & language training centre in Lebanon, turning out diplomata & generals who had been given sound understanding of the region, & on the ground we had chaps (of which I am very proud to be numbered) who, on their own & working within the local culture & language, commanded Arab & other muslim squadrons & companies around the Gulf, often in situations involving fierce fighting (without the helmets, body armour, signals equipment, gun-ship back-up & fast casevacs that are mandatory today).

During that time we only lost two confrontations - significantly both against Arab peoples whose outside political support we had failed to assess correctly.

Now, by going the kinetic way, we have lost the ability to go up into the hills, live & talk within the local culture, & earn respect at ground-level.

We too now cannot win our wars.

So I want our Regulars to continue messing around with tanks - it's what they believe in & are happy at doing.

But let us please have other initiatives, from the heart of one people to the heart of another, using mutual understanding amongst youth who would otherwise be warriors, to pre-empt the carnage & the eventual defeat of our own kinetic forces.

So that's where my Pioneers thoughts come from - both practical experience on the ground & dismay at how poorly our de-humanised heavy-metal military fares when confronting enemies that draw their strength from within their own culture & peasantry.

Good Luck Pete.

I suppose that I'm lucky because I lived in an age when we won (most of the time).

H

[bantamforgot]

Hi Chris,

If you are talking of the latest re structuring, your remarks have to some extent been realised, as with the "Mercian " brigade with the three battalions. However with the Queens & Rifles it would be rather difficult as so many units have been absorbed over the years, just look at the Queens list.

I am not knocking your ideas Chris, I apreciate & wish it were so, however the powers that be much prefer todays "476th. foot & mouth ". Tradition is being weeded out of the Army in particular , to the detriment of same.

Cheers.

Colin

[stevem49]

I found yesterday that the merging of Regiments does have one plus point.

Whilst the Worcestershire -Sherwood Foresters where digging through old papers in Worcester recently, they dug out complete lists of Officers who went to France and Italy Between 5th Aug 1914 and 30th Nov 1918 with dates and Battalions joined. Of course my 9th Bn went to Gallipoli first so by the time they reached France many officers were dead.

You never know, they might find that list as well or even the 9th Bn War Diaried pre July 1916

SteveM