The men of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment are apparently being trained in riot control. This, I understand, is in anticipation another summer of riots in the United Kingdom. And yes, I know last summer’s riots were all in England. Many will remember when British units posted to Northern Ireland they were trained to fulfill their duties in “support of the civil power”. And of course before police forces were introduced, riot control was one of the British Army’s main functions. Before and during the First World War it was not unheard of for armed battalions to march through areas hit by strikes if trouble was expected.
My point is, the British Army has a long record of appearances on the streets of Britain. I remember sharing a flat with a fellah from Yorkshire. His father and brothers were all miners. A friend of one of his brothers was on the picket line in Yorkshire during the Miners’ Strike in 1984-85. There was a heavy police presence at the pit. But it could be that there was an army presence too. My Yorkshire pal says his brother’s friend had a brother in the Army. The Army brother was supposed to be in Northern Ireland. But he was seen clad in police riot gear facing off against the pickets, or so my Yorkshire pal’s story goes. So, the Army’s experience in dealing with riot and dissent may be even greater than has been admitted.

There was saying when I was a reporter that “names make news”. Sometimes, it’s not what’s happening but who it’s happening to that gets the readers’ attention. So, if one the Scottish infantry battalions is facing disbandment, the story gets more attention if it’s said that it's the Black Watch that’s threatened with the axe. So, I don’t know how seriously to take newspaper reports that the Black Watch will be on the chopping block come the next round of defence budget cuts. The same report also mentions the Parachute Regiment could get the chop.
I don’t know by what criteria the Black Watch has been singled out, if indeed it has been. Maybe it has the largest recruiting short-fall of the five battalions in the Royal Regiment of Scotland (RRoS). In the old days, the very old days, it used to be the most recently raised regiment which was disbanded as the army contracted in times of peace – that would put the 5th Battalion RRoS, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders top of the list. But at least the Argylls have kept their pre-First World War identity. With the exception of the Black Watch, all the other battalions of the regiment were created by a series of amalgamations which began  in 1959.
I’m also a little baffled as to why the Parachute Regiment would be threatened, if it is. It’s been suggested that as they haven’t parachuted into action since Suez in 1956 that they’ve outlived their usefulness. What nonsense. The regiment has had its problems in the past but there’s no denying they are very committed soldiers and part of that comes from parachute training. It makes as much sense to suggest that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers should be disbanded because they don’t carry fusil muskets any more.
Civil servants have never understood the British Army. Once a regiment is disbanded, it’s gone for ever. It’s like social workers putting all the kids in a family in different care homes and then reuniting them seven years later and expecting “happy ever-after”. The problem is that many of the British generals today  see themselves more as civil servants than soldiers. This is not a time to do anything rash. Before the Second World War, the infantry battalions were reduced to a couple of hundred men each, who used football rattles during training to simulate machineguns. There was just enough time to bring them back up to strength and equip them before Hitler invaded Poland. How Hitler would have loved the present day Ministry of Defence.

Regular visitors to this site will know that I try to post a book review a week. I always give my true opinion of the book, without fear or favour. If you’re wondering what I mean by that and why its worthy of remark, have a look in the Blog Archive for 29th December 2010 "Book Reviewing 101".
But what about the reviews I don’t post? I have two very very critical reviews of books by Canadian authors which I never quite seem to get around to posting. I don’t get paid for the reviews and have to buy the books myself. My point is that I’m not committed or obliged to post a review of any given book.  I have little to gain through this service and perhaps much to lose. People can be very petty. I’ve been critical of Canadian writers in reviews that I’ve posted in the past but the two books I'm sitting on the reviews of are truly dreadful. There’s a good chance that the two authors involved, or  close friends of theirs, will be asked to review my work. I suspect that ripping them a new arsehole for their sloppiness could cost me dear. So, sorry, for the time being I’m taking the coward's way out. I just thought you should know; in the interests of full disclosure and all that good stuff.

I was just watching Kelly’s Heroes and was struck by Clint Eastwood’s careful crafted coiffure. It struck me that in a lot of war films, the uniforms are pretty accurate but the hair cuts are all wrong. Mind you, in Kelly’s Heroes the uniforms aren’t as scruffy as real-life US soldiers fighting in Germany were. Now, I don’t know if the hair cut thing is down to a lack of interest in realism or actorly vanity. A brutal hair cut of the type inflicted on soldiers in the Second World War would not have looked good on Clint. More attention seems to be paid to hair cuts in more modern movies but they’ve pretty much stopped making Second World films, at least ones that don’t involve killing-Hitler fantasies. So, here’s a plea to anyone planning to make a “historic” war film; get the hair cuts right, doing that adds a lot to the feeling of time and place.
On the subject of war movies, I recently saw a really good one. It was an American one called Battleground and was about a platoon from the 101st Airborne during the Battle of Bulge. It was made in 1947, when a chunk of the audience would have been battle veterans and would have laughed much of the nonsense which followed in later years off of the screen. One of the sergeants even goes through the fighting wearing a greatcoat held closed with a giant safety pin.  The film was nowhere near as gung-ho as I’d expected. In fact there was a lot of shirking and ambiguity in there.

While researching the Scottish Military Disasters chapter on the exploits of 11 (Scottish) Commando at the Litani River in 1941 I was lucky enough to stumble across a website run by the son of one of the Scots who fought there. I say “lucky” because it prevented me repeating an error which appeared in nearly every book I consulted. The website identified the Regimental Sergeant Major who took command of one of the parties after all the officers were killed or wounded as Lewis Tevendale. And yet book after book gave his name as, I think, Campbell. The website acted as a red flag and after a lot of further research I confirmed the name Tevendale. Journalists here in Canada are supposed to get a second source for key information.  But because two people say the same thing doesn’t make it true – not if it turns out that their information is based on a single source further down the chain. My research on Tevendale eventually led me to the book that originally named him as Campbell. That mistake was then repeated again and again in books that followed. I was very lucky not to be the latest in a long line of writers giving out wrong information. The book involved was at one time THE book on British commando operations during the Second World War and was by a very highly respected author. Three cheers for websites run by the sons of guys who were there!