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SCRIBBLINGS……

News & Comment for, about and from

members of The Pen & Sword Club

February 2017 Editor: Mike Peters

Defence Select Committee Chair is Club’s next speaker

r. Julian Lewis, Member of Parliament and the Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee is the Pen & Sword Club’s guest speaker at the February light lunch. In a new double billing the club will also welcome The Times defence

specialist, Michael Evans who was unable to attend in January due to a family bereavement. The lunch will be held at the Naval & Military Club in St, James Square, London following the very favourable comments on this venue from those attending the Christmas event. Assemble 12 noon. Dr. Lewis has “a formidable reputation in the field of defence and disarmament, “said former Prime Minister David Cameron. The PM went on to say: He (Dr. Lewis) led the challenge to dangerous unilateral disarmament in the Eighties and was proved right on this crucial issue. Julian is held in very high regard by defence experts and has brought his real experience and expertise to my front bench team.” Dr. Lewis was elected Member of Parliament for New Forest East in 1997.

Media Operations Group is 21 this year.

he Pen & Sword Club was founded by the TA Pool of Public Information Officers and then continued to be fostered by Media Operations Group (V) when it changed names in late 1996 following a submission to the Ministry of Defence by Colonel Mike Peters with

the backing of Director of Public Relations (Army) – now Lt General Sir Philip Trousdell, a Vice President of the club. To mark the anniversary old comrades will be invited to another special event in the Autumn.

Throughout the year, Scribblings will dig into the history of the unit and come up with stories of how it all began…..

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In days of old…. familiarising themselves with the Army Air Corps and a weekend of helicopters the TAPIOs assemble at Middle Wallop. This picture, was taken by Major Chris Vere who was to go on and win the MBE for his work publicising the Army in the North West, and shows some of the early members. From left to right:

Major Stanley Baldwin Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was night editor of the Times and a qualified barrister. He was to write the definitive book on the ‘TA Forward Everywhere: Her Majesty’s Territorials.’ Like all members of the Pool he was medically catergorised FE. His regimental connections with the Tower of London allowed the Pool access to the Ceremony of the Keys, and the officers’ mess.

(2) A visiting member of the RNR Public Affairs branch – both the RNR and the RAFVR media units regularly joined in TAPIO training:

(3) Captain (later Major) Gerry Nicholas, formerly Manchester Regiment and latterly Light Infantry, was probably the most prolific writer of local boy and home town stories which was not surprising considering his journalistic experience. As a reporter, he covered many Editor Abroad visits including being in Crater in Aden at the time of the rioting. Today he is known for his professional acting ability and has appeared, for example, in Only Fools and Horses and Coronation Street. His impersonations of Sir Winston Churchill take him worldwide and he is especially popular at RAF social functions:

(4) Major Colin Mason, Royal Regiment of Wales, a BBC journalist who was to become the founder and owner of a number of radio stations including Chiltern radio. Colin became the second to hold the appointment of Commanding Officer and ended his career in 15 Psy Ops as a Colonel. Colin was awarded the OBE for his work in psyops and contributions to MoD broadcasting. Today he is Vice Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire and stills run radio stations.

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(5). Major Jim Campbell, also RRW, was to become Senior Information Officer at HQ Wales, and worked at senior level in several government information departments. An academic, Dr. Campbell, writes on military history:

(6) the late Major John Mills, Royal Artillery, was then SO2 P Info at HQ Land Forces at Wilton and ‘managed’ the Pool. He was to be promoted Lt Colonel to accompany the Governor on his return to the Falkland Islands in 1982:

(7) In the background is Major Derek Burgoyne who won an MBE for his TAPIO work in Northern Ireland:

(8) Major Mike Peters, then newly arrived from 5th Battalion The Light Infantry as unit Training Major became the unit’s first Commanding Officer and served two tours in that role and two tours as Colonel Media Operations. He was to persuade the MoD to change the unit title to Media Operations Group (V.) Mike ran the Army Press Desk during the Falklands War and served in the aftermath of Port Stanley. He was part of the Multi National Force sent to Sinai in 1981 and on Operation Hyperion in Beirut in 1983:

(9) Lt Colonel Alan Protheroe, often known as the Father of the Pool, was a National Service Officer in the Welsh Regiment before becoming the first Senior TAPIO. He was also the first to hold the unit’s Colonel appointment and was awarded the CBE. A brilliant TV and Radio reporter Alan was then the Assistant Director General of the BBC. One of his famed stories was when wearing the somewhat lurid Pool’s silver and black tie to a BBC Board meeting the Director General, Billy Cotton quipped: “do you have the dressing gown to go with that.”

(10) Last but not least is Captain (later Major) Willie Morrison, a Highlander in the TA and the editor of a Scottish weekly newspaper. Willie was and remains a prolific write and a connoisseur of malt whisky. He was an investigative reporter of some style and reputation. While on exercise in Germany he visited two Scottish regiments and discovered that twins who had been separated at birth were now serving, one in each battalion. His story of their reunification went nationwide.

‘British Army Could Be Wiped Out by Russia In an Afternoon’

Report from Forces TV

ritain's ability to "deliver and sustain" an effective fighting force in the face of a "competent" enemy like Russia has been "effectively removed", according to the Army's think-tank .A paper from the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research (CHACR), seen by the Sunday Times, says

defence cuts have caused the "hollowing out or deletion of the Army's deployed capabilities." It also warns that the danger of its one fighting division being wiped out in an afternoon will "weigh heavily" on commanders.

The paper, which was put together by serving and retired army officers and academics after two days of seminars last summer, said there are "a few plausible scenarios" which would see Britain dragged into a war after an attack on another country, despite there not being an "immediate risk of a direct attack by a foreign state". It continued: "This raises an important question: is the British Army ready for such a possibility? If one merely sees preparedness through net manpower and kinetic force capacity, the answer might be a simple 'no': the British Army is at its smallest and has faced years of budget cuts."

Under 2015's Strategic Defence and Security Review it was announced the Army's sole "war-fighting division" would be expanded from up to 30,000 troops to up to 50,000, and equipped with more heavily-armoured vehicles.

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The paper warns, however, that with this division making up over half of the Army's 82,000 regular soldiers, there would be "political pressures" to safeguard it if the UK was at war. It said: "The 'prospect of losing the division in an afternoon' will weigh heavily on the chain of command . . . as politicians appreciate the stakes involved in committing the division to battle. "It added that the Army must be able to "regulate how much risk" the division is exposed to during war "unless we are prepared to lose it".

The seminars also discussed how the Army had been "distracted by counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan for a decade" and that it now "lacks some of the tools that would be required against a threat from the East".

Ben Barry, a former brigadier who works at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, said there is a "clear and present" danger of a "military miscalculation" with Russia, and that the Army "might struggle" to deploy as many troops as it did to Iraq in 2003.

There was also a "consensus" that Britain doesn't have enough large aircraft and ships "to transport a large-scale fighting force and its stores". According to the paper, the military would rely on allies or commercial companies to get more than one of the division's three brigades to war: “The ability to get an entire division's component parts swiftly and safely into a theatre of operations is identified as a key concern."

It comes after the Army moved tanks through the Channel Tunnel to test its ability to move equipment by rail last week. Challengers were taken to France and back on trains during the exercise; reportedly in case of an invasion of Eastern Europe. The paper, meanwhile, also warned that the military "does not yet comprehend" the cyber-threat and the danger of future enemies engaging in "hybrid warfare", while "air defence" - the ability to protect troops from enemy aircraft - is described as a "capability gap".

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson, however, said: "The Army, in line with the Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2015, is ready and capable of deploying a potent, large scale, war fighting force at divisional level with sufficient notice."

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Sleep walking into catastrophe? Scribblings looks at the January House of Lords defence debate in January with the help of Commentary produced regularly by club member, Howard Wheeldon.

aligned by some, ignored by others, I do not apologise for having long placed importance of the views on defence and other matters expressed by members of the House of Lords. I have in the past been able to address various groups of House of Lords members in respect of defence issues

and I have long respected the wisdom and often unhindered views that members of House of Lords express, particularly if they are none party aligned former senior members of the UK military or past Secretaries of State for Defence. Put another way, I have no-doubts whatsoever that their lordships, be they Conservative, Labour, Liberal-Democrat or Crossbencher, really do understand the serious issues that we must address in respect of UK defence. Having returned from RAF Marham on Friday afternoon, I found myself listening to a repeat on BBC Parliament of the long and very interesting defence debate that had been held in the House of Lords the previous afternoon. Those speaking either had significant experience in defence, having for instance been past members of the military such as the highly respected crossbencher, Air Chief Marshal Lord Stirrup and Lord Craig of Radley, both of whom had been former Air Staff Chiefs and Chief of the Defence Staff, former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West or former Secretary of State for Defence such as Lord King of Bridgewater, Lord Reid of Cardowan, Lord Hutton of Furness and the much respected Lord Robertson of Port Ellen and who, being also a former Secretary General of NATO, had opened the debate. Below, intertwined with my own comments, are just some of the views expressed by their lordships and one’s that I fully concur. Unusually and because many views expressed in this interesting debate are I know already shared by many of us and whilst apologising for the length of today’s commentary, I have chosen to edit some of the

speeches made by those taking part in the Defence Debate held in the House of Lords last Thursday and to put this out as UK Defence (266). I have excluded some only on the basis of space, available space and relevance in my view. Most speakers in the debate were either Cross-Benchers, Labour or Lib-Dems and I have attempted to be both unbiased and properly balanced in my choosing of contributions made in the debate. In his opening of the debate Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab) talked of what he considered to be the greatest threats and challenges to UK security including migration flows, the spread of religious experience extremism and jihadi violence, a restive and resurgent Russia; a rising China and the disruption by North Korea. Add to that, he said, the “fragile and failed states spreading mayhem across borders, international conflicts, climate change, cyber warfare and the global

proliferation of lethal technology, weapons” and on “top of all that, there is the rise and dominance of organised crime, population growth, pandemics and financial instability. Interestingly, Lord Robertson’s answer to the question posed above of what was the greatest threat, he said this was “ourselves, we” he said “are our own worst enemies. We are short-sighted, penny-pinching, naively optimistic, complacent and ostrich-like to the way in which the world has become interconnected and more fragile, unpredictable and incendiary. We are grossly unprepared and under-resourced to meet the challenges of the coming years. These threats are potent and deadly, and some of them are very urgent. I have long had great respect for Lord Robertson and while I accept that with SDSR 2015 there has been a very small upward turn in Government attitude to defence and security I, as most of you who read my commentaries also do, recognise that the small increase in defence spending, is far from enough.

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Lord Robertson went on to remind that at the end of the Cold War he had made a speech at Chatham House in which he coined the now much-quoted phrase that there had been a “bonfire of the certainties”. “The fall of the Berlin Wall” he said “had unleashed a flood of optimism that had made Kremlinologists redundant overnight and robbed us of the albeit, dangerous manageability of the Soviet/West confrontation. Some were even rash enough to say that it was the “end of history”. “All of us” he said “took a substantial peace dividend and defence budgets were cut radically over the next five years” And then he said that “I believe that we are now seeing another bonfire, this time, one of the post-Cold War certainties. In doing so, we have left ourselves vulnerable and, in many ways, unready. If we look at the way in which we have responded to this new world of regional conflicts, violent civil wars and other violent manifestations of the turmoil that I have already listed, we see that it hardly measures up to the scale of what faces us. Later during his opening of the debate Lord Robertson reminded that [this week] we will have President Donald Trump [installed in the White House] as the leader of the western world. This was, he said, the “same Donald, with his Mexican wall, with new protectionism and isolationism combined with his serious questioning of NATO solidarity [combined with other beliefs] and Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn as his key security adviser. “Perhaps” Lord Robertson said “we do not actually need more enemies in the world today”. “In our crazy complacency” he said “we seem quite oblivious to the fact that the relative peacefulness of the world today, as we look over a new precipice, has been achieved by our nuclear deterrent and by our institutions and processes, which require diplomacy, intelligence, involvement and crucially, when it is required and at the end of the line, decisive interventions. Where will the space be left for all that as we paddle through the treacle of dismantling 40 years of integration?” Lord Robertson, right, was the Defence Secretary for the Labour Government between 1997-99 before becoming the Secretary General of NATO 1999 – 2004. During that time his media communications were handled by Club Vice President and former BBC Defence Correspondent Mark Laity.

Lord Robertson went on to say that “what confirms again that we are our own worst enemy is the attitude to spending on defence and security. Yes” he said “I agree with and welcome the fact that we are spending the NATO target of 2% and that we are right in many ways to crow that we are among the few who do. That is good so far as it goes” he said “but we should wait for a moment, after all, have we [not] stretched the definition of 2% to get there? Are we not confusing percentages with capabilities? Who can doubt, as well, that the Brexit devaluation of the pound will now have a serious effect on the defence budget? I hope that the noble Earl the Minister (Earl Howe] will tell us how much it is estimated that blow will cost his department. He went on to say that “in 1997-98, as Secretary of State for Defence, I led the strategic defence review with, among others, my noble friend Lord Reid. It radically remodeled and modernised our post-Cold War forces. In the preface to the review, I said that post-Cold War problems pose a real threat to our security, whether in the Balkans, the Middle East or in some trouble spot yet to ignite. If we are to discharge our international responsibilities in such areas, we must retain the power to act. Our Armed Forces are Britain’s insurance against a huge variety of risks”. That he said, “Is as true today as it was when I wrote it. The question is whether we in this country have properly retained that power to act. Some doubt will be cast on that by the distinguished speakers who will speak after me in this debate.

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“The Minister (Earl Howe] he said “will undoubtedly tell us at the end of the debate that there is formidable hardware in the pipeline, from Trident to the carriers that were the centrepiece of my 1998 review. The question remains, though: is it enough to meet the challenges we are facing when so many of them are urgent and so potent? My worry is that we are sleepwalking into a potential calamity. My depressing catalogue of threats “does not even take account of what I said in 1998 of trouble spots yet to ignite”. As I wrote those words he said “we could not have foreseen the conflict the very next year in Kosovo, the attacks of 9/11, the implosion of Syria, and the whole of the Arab spring and, indeed, the rise of Daesh/ISIS/ISIL. We have today a crisis of optimism—hoping for the best and failing to prepare for the worst.

So what Lord Robertson asked “should [we] be doing”? First, he said “we must retain and protect our own defence industrial base. That alone gives us some real control in the UK. At the same time, we must encourage and participate in joint projects with our European NATO allies. European contributions to NATO are not just limited by financial shortcomings but by wasteful duplication, and

we must continue to press our NATO allies to boost spending and capabilities. If they—and we—did that, we might help expand the growth in our economies.’

‘Our communication policy is pathetic’ Secondly, we must continue to promote our values and principles on the world stage. We must defend NATO as the cornerstone of our national and collective defence and tell the people of this country, and indeed the wider world, how essential the alliance remains. Article 5, where an attack on one is an attack on all, is not a choice; it is a solemn obligation. Anybody who questions it questions the whole basis of collective security. Our communication policy on this whole issue is, frankly, pathetic. Thirdly, we must be aware of and act on the dangers inherent in the present confrontation between Russia and the West. Without the tripwires and warning arrangements of the Cold War, we are in grave danger of making a mistake or a miscalculation with potentially catastrophic results. Our much-reduced military is still among the very best in the world. Our diplomats have few peers internationally. Our intelligence services are relied on by most of the free world. It is now time for our Government to recognise the dangers to Britain and to live up to their high standards. Never in my lifetime was bold and courageous leadership more necessary and more urgent. Lord King of Bridgwater (Con) opened by reminding that the House of Commons Defence Committee in a report had said “The world today is at its most dangerous and unstable since the end of the Cold War”. Tellingly he said that as a result of a pretty unbalanced procurement programme “we have some impressive capabilities coming forward and that, as long as nobody attacks us before 2025 or 2030, we will be in good shape to meet them. I would not, he said, want to be too cynical about this, but there is a real imbalance in the resources and the capabilities we have at present. Lord King reminded that Julian Lewis, Chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, has [recently] said that the last time we faced a combination of a threatening Russia and a growing terrorist threat was in the 1980s. Back then, he said, the proportion of GDP we spent on defence was about 5%. He reminded he

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had been much criticised when he conducted “Options for Change” [in 1997] for daring to reduce the Armed Forces to 350,000 men in uniform adding that “as I look at the 144,000 [numbers] that are now indicated as our present strength, you will understand that I have great concerns”. In finishing, Lord King agreed with Lord Robertson that key to our defence is NATO. He went on to say that “while we were concerned about certain comments from President-elect Trump, that he was encouraged by the further remarks that [Donald Trump] has made in his conversations with British Prime Minister, Theresa May adding also that he hoped “that the appointment of General Mattis [as US Secretary of Defense] may reinforce support for NATO.

Vladimir Putin, right. Is he listening?

Lord West of Spithead (Lab) talked of rising Russian investment in military capability, Russian actions in Crimea and Ukraine, threats to the Baltic States, cyber-attacks in Estonia, France, Turkey, Ukraine and the USA, aggressive intrusion into NATO air space and near misses plus Russian nuclear submarines are threatening our SSBN [Submarines]. Vladimir Putin, he said, is a revisionist, [he] believes in spheres of influence and understands hard power. His loose talk of the use of nuclear weapons is a particular concern. We must strain every sinew to understand him and keep open a dialogue. Lord West went on to talk about instability in the Middle East and that it was difficult to identify a country that is not in turmoil—Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya plus countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, [all of which he said] are under severe strain. The flexing of muscles by Iran and Turkey, as regional powers; the Sunni/Shia divide; Russia’s recent success as a key power broker and he asked the question “where will this all go?” Lord Craig of Radley (Crossbencher) talked of the Royal Air Force that he had had the privilege to lead in the mid-1980s was [then] close to 100,000 personnel with more than 30 combat squadrons. Today’s Chief of the Air Staff, he said, “has a force of less than a third of that in personnel, and a quarter in squadrons. Yes, airframes and perhaps even people are more capable than their predecessors but small numbers today mean that they lack a key fighting quality, that of resilience in combat against other than a very poorly equipped or incapable foe. Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab) mentioned that [in terms of extending presence] a good start was made by the recent visit of Royal Air Force Typhoon aircraft to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, and by the successful Red Arrows displays in the Middle East and China. But he also reminded that the Royal Navy surface fleet has halved, even in the period since both he and Lord Robertson had been at the Ministry of Defence. A very unfair comparison is sometimes made in the form of the old cliché that we have more admirals than we have

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ships. It is unfair because the service produced by our admirals goes well beyond the number of our surface fleets, but it illustrates where we are now. We have, he said, only “19 [destroyers and frigates] in our surface fleet, possibly 11 at any given time in operational terms. Similarly, he said, the Royal Air Force has “between n five and seven operational squadrons, compared to 30 to 35 only 20 to 30 years ago.” Lord Reid went on to say that “leave aside even the £700 million cost of the fall in the value of the pound, the truth is that our [defence] spending, including our contribution to NATO, has been subject to “creative accountancy” as we are now “including in the 2% “of GDP spent In talking about suggested views for the EU about forming a separate EU defence command structure to NATO, Lord Walker of Aldringham (Cross Bencher) added that in 2008 the EU as a whole spent more than €200 billion on defence. By 2013 the sum had dwindled to €170 billion and that analysts reckoned that it will soon shrink to about €150 billion. “In the face of such declining resources” he said, “creating yet another major EU structure simply does not make sense. To imagine that European nations would be more prepared to increase their defence expenditure for a European military capability when they have shown a collective reluctance to meet the 2% target for their NATO capabilities seems wildly optimistic. But, of course, unless they did so there is no way that that the Union could be taken more seriously as an international force”. Lord Jopling (Con) said that “we are all concerned at the continued aggressive attitude of Russia [and] which threatens the NATO powers. Following the outrageous behaviour in Georgia, the Crimea and Ukraine, it has relentlessly threatened the eastern border of NATO. He said that Vladimir Putin “will no doubt use his usual posturing to claim that the NATO four-nation battle groups are threatening Russia and that he is, as we know, a master of disinformation. But”, he said “I cannot understand how he [Putin] might argue that this purely defensive move—which it is—can be construed as threatening Russia. Certainly 1,000 troops in each of the Baltic countries and Poland could hardly be suggested to be an invasion force. What the four battle groups will be is a warning trigger that any incursions by the Russian military will trigger the Article 5 arrangements and all the consequences of that”. “I believe” he suggested “that Mr. Putin must realise that any repetition of his Ukraine adventures in the territories of NATO members will lead to an immediate, full-hearted response”. Lord Burnett (Lib-Dem) mentioned he was surprised to read in the Times of 6 January 2017 an article by Deborah Haynes with the headline, “Navy battling to save £500 million after bungled deal for ships”. I would describe the article as authoritative because it included much detail and quoted a former First Sea Lord. There was speculation that one option was to cut the size of the Royal Marines. The noble Earl, along with the Secretary of State, are political members of the Defence Board. Both of them know that recruiting and retention for the Royal Marines, despite the high standards required, is excellent. They know that the Royal Marines need core manpower strength to fulfil many of the specialist roles with which they are tasked. They also know the uniquely high proportion of badged members of UK Special Forces that is drawn from the Royal Marines and the uniquely high proportion of marines who pass the arduous selection process. My noble friend Lord Slim, a great man, who knows more than most about these things, has often reminded the House that if you require Special Forces troops you need a sufficient pool of talent to recruit them from. The same is true of the other specialist troops drawn from the corps, not least the mountain and arctic

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warfare specialists. As the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke would be interested to know, we also have our own cyber force, drawn from highly intelligent members of our corps. There is insufficient time to list the other vital tasks performed by the Royal Marines, other than the main one: manning the 3rd Commando Brigade. I very much hope that the noble Earl, and the Secretary of State, will not permit any cuts to the corps. It would be deeply destructive to punish success and destabilise the morale of one of the few fully-manned formations of the highest quality in UK defence—and, for that matter, elsewhere. I have little time left but I ask the noble Earl to confirm that if there are barracks closures—and that is likely—new state-of-the-art barracks will be built in suitable locations with all the necessary communications, computer, fitness and other important facilities, and with proximity to challenging training areas. Will there be wide consultation with the chain of command before any final decisions are taken? Finally, I understand that the new aircraft carriers will be able to take a commando unit with all attached ranks, weapons and helicopters. I understand that they will have all the necessary command communications and control systems that are crucial for amphibious operations. Is there currently a plan to replace the landing craft capability of the assault ships—the landing platform docks? That role is currently provided by HMS “Bulwark” and HMS “Albion”. If we as a country desire expeditionary capability, we must have the specialist and best troops to do the job Lord Ramsbotham (Cross-Bencher) who, when an Adjutant-General, was responsible for implementing the reduction in the size of the Army by a third over three years, from 156,000 to 104,000, said that our key worries about implementing the requirement at the time can be encapsulated in two words—uncertainty and sustainability. General Lord Ramsbotham, right, served as Director Public Relations (Army) between 1982-84 during the Falklands War; he retired from the Army after three years as Adjutant General and was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons 1995- 2001. He is Patron of the Pen & Sword Club. Uncertainty coloured our thinking about force structure, in the context of the lessons of the first Gulf War, which included the inadequate size of infantry battalions, not having been assimilated, and the emerging requirement to provide contingencies to peacekeeping operations and post-conflict reconstruction. Sustainability coloured our thinking about the ratio between cuts to teeth or tail. Noble Lords will therefore appreciate that we wondered whether we were being required to make a jump too far, in isolation of consideration of the current international situation. To jump to today, plans to cut the Army yet further, to 82,000, were made before 23 June, and I submit that that needs to be rethought in the light of the changed international situation. Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab) mentioned the importance of attrition suggesting that as far as he could see no allowance (within SDSR 2105) has been made for attrition of key weapons and platforms. In times of peace, he said, that “may be fantastic, but at times of war it is not such a clever strategy—particularly if, heaven forbid, we found ourselves pitted against a technologically equivalent power; that is not an impossibility”.

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His main concern was the Royal Navy which, he said, “is under the greatest pressure of all the three services and has been cut disastrously to below a sustainable level, both in platforms and in people” adding that “I do not dispute for a second that the Type 45 destroyers and the Type 26 frigates will be much more capable platforms, delivering much more kinetic power, but they can only be in one place at a time”. “We simply do not have enough platforms, particularly if we have to prepare for the possibility of the carrier battle groups. The Queen Elizabeth class ships would have to be defended entirely by Royal Navy assets”. I think, he said, that “we are going to struggle to do that, and it is critical that the Government address that point”. Finally, Lord Hutton said that “the Royal Air Force is already operating flat-out on its existing missions. The air police work in the Baltics, in Syria and in Iraq, and providing quick-reaction aircraft in the Falklands (not to mention Quick Reaction Alert capability for the UK itself and a number of other very important missions around the world) adding that I do not see any spare capacity there at all. Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab) suggested our armed forces personnel and their families see the 2% (of our GDP being spent on defence) as smoke and mirrors. They do not understand why pensions should be included in defence spending. An accountant may be able to argue that but you will never convince our people, or many of us in the Chamber today, that that is spending on defence equipment and personnel. They saw last year the announcement by the Government that from 2016 [for the next four years] the maximum pay award they will get year on year will be 1%. Our Armed Forces people are not slow off the mark; they know what is going on and in evidence to the review body they asked why that should be imposed on them when the very people who are imposing it—MPs—are getting more than 1%. Yet we expect our Armed Forces to continue to give the commitment that they have given. She mentioned that the [Armed Forces Pay Review Body] is independent, that “it has been respected by Governments across the piece and yet, in 2010 and again last year, the Treasury quite arbitrarily, without reference to the review body, cut the commitment bonuses—the commitment to go and do the job. It is in the report [and] it makes worrying reading indeed [that] just 14% of our Armed Forces think that morale is high, just 36% were satisfied with their lifestyle and remuneration package. In a very interesting and, in my experience, rare intervention on defence from a member of the church, the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth said that “this debate requires us to consider critically whether we have the capacity to determine our own strategic path in the realm of defence and security. The extent of our global reach must reflect our economic and strategic interests as well as our security and military concerns in these changing times, which now make these considerations, as one analyst has put it, “supercharged”. My anxiety, he said “was that there is a gap, if not sometimes a gulf, between rhetoric about our concerns and ambitions on the one hand and our constrained capability on the other. For example, he said, “not long ago the Foreign Secretary declared that we are “back east of Suez”. It is true that the Gulf and Asia are regions of growing global importance, and this country has new defence centres in Dubai and Singapore. We have some Army presence in Oman and joint training with Singapore after 70 years of this co-operation with only the US”. A naval support facility has opened in Bahrain and the new aircraft carriers will have what is called “a presence” in the Pacific “but our capacity to sustain and resource effective presence and capacity remains limited. Our only garrison in Asia, in Brunei, is funded by the Sultan. We have small quantities of advanced, expensive equipment, of which the new carriers are the most obvious example, but sparse support capacity”. The Bishop went on to say that In a Royal Navy of 19 just surface vessels [Destroyers and Frigates] an effective carrier group needs most of the deployable capacity adding that “my spellchecker has substituted “deplorable capacity” for my intended words “deployable capacity”. Viscount Hanworth (Lab) mentioned that NATO is committed to defending the sovereignty of the Baltic States. Britain has contributed 500 combat troops to the region, to which it has also consigned four Typhoon jets for periods of four months in the year. At any one time, only two of these jets are operational. This

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provision, together with the lesser contributions of our NATO allies, does not constitute a realistic deterrent and that if the US were to disengage from NATO, as Donald Trump proposes that it should, then Britain would be expected to become a natural leader of the alliance. We are ill-equipped for such a role. Lord Bilimoria (Cross-Bencher) reminded that thankfully, not one member of the UK Armed Forces was killed in operations in 2016 and that this was “was the first time since 1968 that no one had died, although sadly there had been deaths on exercises”. He reminded what Lord Robertson had said earlier with crystal clarity in his brilliant opening speech that “the challenges that we face globally are, in his words, a “bonfire of certainties.” He reminded too that the head of the Defence Select Committee, Julian Lewis MP had [previously] said that the last time this country faced a threatening Russia as well as a major terrorist campaign, the UK was investing between 4.3% and 5.1% of GDP in defence. It is, he suggested “a measure of just how low our expectations have fallen that here we are celebrating the minimum of 2%, and [that] there are debates about how this 2% is measured. He suggested that 3% would be a much better level of spending. Lord Bilimoria reminded that General Sir Richard Barrons, the retired head of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, had [recently] said that we are “dangerously squeezed” in manpower and he asked “can the Minister [Lord Howe] confirm that there is a shortfall of 22% in our Maritime Reserves and 12% in the Army Reserves? Importantly, he reminded that “as far as the Defence Medical Services are concerned, we no longer have military hospitals and what exists now is within the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, these being attached to the University of Birmingham Medical School where I am proud to be Chancellor of the University of Birmingham”. He suggested that “there is a shortage of medical doctors being recruited, retained and motivated. Such under-manning” he said “has led to a reliance on Reserve Forces which are also under-recruited and that Sir Richard Barrons [had] also said in 2016 that the UK and its NATO allies had “no effective plan for defending Europe from a Russian attack because of splits in the alliance”. “We are”, Lord Bilimoria said, “the fifth largest economy in the world” but that because of the uncertainty the world sees before we leave the EU and the devaluation of the pound, we are no longer fifth. “India” he said “has overtaken the UK as the fifth largest economy in the world and will soon overtake the UK as the fifth largest defence spender as well.

Two percent: Not a Target but a Minimum Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab) brought the subject of 2% of GDP up and having reminded that the UK is one of only five NATO members to spend 2% of GDP on defence that this includes £820 million on war pensions, £400 million on our United Nations peacekeeping missions and £200 million for pensions for retired Ministry of Defence civilian staff. For the very first time, it includes spending on the single intelligence account and on one-off items that cannot be counted towards the 2% in years to come (he could also have mentioned the plan to spend an additional £1 billion plus on Cyber Security). He suggested that “the 2% figure should not be a target: it should be a minimum”. Lord Stirrup (Cross Bencher) spoke towards the end of the debate and what he called “a long list of wise and knowledgeable contributors”. Importantly, the highly respected former Chief of the Defence Staff reminded that “throughout the history of warfare, surprise has been one of the most critical factors in achieving success”. This he said “may seem a statement of the obvious but we should bear in mind that our opponents and potential enemies also recognise the importance of this dictum and, not unnaturally, they will usually seek to surprise us.” He suggested that they “will also” if they are sensible, “try to attack us where we are weakest. We should therefore not expect to be able to predict the location, timing or nature of any future conflict”. Lord Stirrup went on to say that “most past wars have surprised us to some degree and we have found ourselves inadequately prepared for the demands that they make on us. This is not, or at least not entirely, because of a lack of planning or foresight. The future is to a degree not only unknown but unknowable, and no amount of horizon scanning or scenario planning can make up for that. I am not suggesting that such

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activities are unnecessary; there are after all many facets of future conflict that can and should be subjected to careful analysis and for which we should prepare. One such example is the increasing importance of the cyber domain, to which several speakers have already referred, and on which I will merely say I entirely agree with them. However, we run the risk of persuading ourselves that because we have new challenges we can forget about old ones. Just because the cyber domain is such a promising field for our enemies does not mean that we will never again face a violent attack in the physical world. It does not mean that our use of airspace above the battlefield will never again be contested or that antisubmarine warfare is a thing of the past. None of these, or similar, propositions are safe. We must prepare for the future as best we can, but we must also prepare to be surprised. There is, however, an answer to this conundrum. The most important capabilities that we will need in our Armed Forces in the years ahead are the ones that have served us so well in the past: agility and adaptability. In this context, agility is our ability to use existing systems in new and innovative ways, and adaptability refers to the process of altering those systems quickly in order to meet the unexpected and unforeseen. “The design and production lead times for weapon platforms are long, and we have to do our best to match them with future needs. At the same time, we must recognise that something will come along that will surprise us, and make allowances for this. We therefore need a broad spectrum of capabilities that can be adapted rapidly to meet new challenges as they arise and as they are recognised, and the agility of mind, of doctrine and of training to employ our capabilities as the situation demands, not just as we have done in the past”. “Finally,” he said and as has been said frequently during this debate “all of this requires investment—in equipment, in research and development, in industries on which we rely for our adaptability, and in our people. We are currently doing a little better in this regard, but still not well enough; there are danger signs on the horizon. The noble Earl [Howe] the Minister, will in his response] no doubt point rightly to the quality of our forces. Quality is indeed more important than quantity, provided that we have lots of it. In this uncertain and dangerous world, there can be no greater priority for the Government than matching our defence investment to the high level of risk that we face. Baroness Jolly (Lib-Dem) suggested that unconventional terrorist threats continue, requiring international co-operation. In addition, climate change and mass migration are growing issues, which may effectively be tackled only multilaterally. Within this context, she said, “UK Armed Forces do not currently have the capability to address the range of threats. Spending is down across NATO and the UK conventional Armed Forces are the smallest in the P5—and, of course, there is the Brexit factor to consider, which reduces our buying power. Technologically and in terms of equipment, we do not necessarily hold an advantage. To ensure that the UK is able to insure itself in an unstable world, while promoting stability, trade and liberal values overseas, we must do everything possible to preserve and build our alliances and international institutions, while re-evaluating current defence policy in light of fast-changing global circumstances. New strategies should be developed to stay ahead of adversaries, not a commitment to fighting yesterday’s war. The rise of hybrid warfare, cyberattacks on western interests and large-scale online assaults on allied

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nations’ systems mean that cyberspace should be considered an additional, non-kinetic strategic space. Informational systems and institutions must develop resilience against cyberattacks and the effects of anti-satellite warfare. Lawfare—the strategy of using law rather than traditional means to achieve an operational objective—is likely to be used more prominently. On a more specific level, the UK must retain the ability to respond to any Russian attempt to test NATO’s commitment to Article 5 defence of the Baltics and other allied countries and interests in a resolute but proportionate way. To preserve the domestic and global economy, the UK must have the ability to ensure safe and open trading routes across the global commons, especially in the South China Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Baroness Jolly said that in 2015, our defence spending was equivalent to about £46.5 billion, or 2.05% of GDP. In 2015-16, 56,860 UK Armed Forces members were deployed around the world and that in April 2016, the number of regulars was 151,000, with 84,000 reserves—the smallest force of the UNSC P5. She went on to remind that “General Sir Richard Barrons had produced a private memorandum for the Secretary of State for Defence criticising the state of UK defence policy and that some of the key criticisms were that the MoD was working to “preserve the shop window” while critical technical and logistical capabilities had been “iteratively stripped out” and that Sir Richard had said that there was no military plan to defend the UK in a conventional conflict. In his words “Counter-terrorism is the limit of up-to-date plans and preparations to secure UK airspace, waters and territory … There is no top to bottom command and control mechanism, preparation or training in place for the UK armed forces”, In concluding Baroness Jolly said that “when the 2020 SDSR team sits down to start its planning it will need to look at our defence policy in the light of possible future conflicts and not only in the light of counterterror operations. She suggested more investment in research and development and that we need to increase our work in conjunction with both universities and the private sector”. The defence industry she said “should become a sizeable part of the soon-to-be-published industrial strategy”. She also suggested that “we were top of the soft power league both in 2010 and 2015. This position was deserved and in our current situation is no bad thing, but we need to use our diplomatic and soft power wisely to ensure that our allies take defence seriously. Collective self-defence is cheaper and more secure than all the alternatives. Lord Touhig (Lab) reminded that, as Lord Reid had previously pointed out, “we now have an Army smaller than the one we put in the field against Napoleon, that the Royal Navy has just 19 escorts, six of which have propulsion problems, that we have no [commissioned] aircraft carriers and will have none until early 2020s, that there are currently only seven RAF fighter squadrons and that two of those exist only by extending the life of the Typhoon until 2040”. He reminded that the Government had revealed that “one third of our Typhoon and Tornado aircraft are in long-term maintenance and unable to fly, that [as yet] we have no Maritime Patrol Aircraft [capability] while the Russians increase their submarine activity around our seas, that there is an overdependence on recruiting reservists and that, despite millions being spent on recruitment, that targets for all three services have been missed.

He suggested that morale [in the Armed Forces] was poor, that 54% of service personnel are dissatisfied with service life and that, according to a recent National Audit Office report on military accommodation, that “poor housing was affecting morale, recruitment and retention”. These failings he said were “not the responsibility of our Armed Forces but rather, the consequences of the Government’s policy of cuts, mismanagement and poor forecasting”. One thing he said that we can all agree “is

that the service men and women in our Armed Forces are committed professionals and the best in the

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world. They are the best trained, the most highly motivated and very effective at what they do. But we have to make sure they remain so. That means that we have to make sure that our Armed Forces are adequately funded”. He called for “better management of our resources” mentioning that the [amphibious capability support ship] HMS Ocean had a £65 million refit completed in 2014 only for the Government to announce one year later that she would be decommissioned in 2018. We will, he said. “now spend £60 million adapting one of our new carriers to perform its tasks” He went on to talk about the [Royal Fleet Auxiliary] vessel RFA Diligence, above, which is the UK’s only at-sea repair ship and that between 2007 and 2015 the Government had spent £44 million on refits only to put the vessel up for sale last year. This he said “was an appalling waste of scarce defence resources”. He reminded also that Lord Murphy had referred to comments made recently by Nia Griffith (MP for Llanelli) reminding that the present 2% spending of GDP on defence includes £825 million of war pensions, £400 million on UN peacekeeping and an estimated £200 million on pensions paid to retired civil servants and that she had said “Pensions are very important but they in no way contribute to defence capabilities”. Lord Touhig added “faced with a potential aggressor, how will the Government use pensions to defend Britain? Perhaps, like some latter-day Ethelred the Unready, they could use the pensions to buy off the threat. He also reminded of an article written by Edward Lucas in the Times on December 22nd last year in which the author wrote “Putin is decisive; we are not. He is willing to accept economic pain; we are not. He is willing to break the rules; we are not. He is willing to use force; we are not” Lord Touhig added that he “shared Lucas’s concern that we may not be able to rely on the United States to help defend us in the future. President-elect Trump unsettles many of us—as he reassures some who are not our friends—with his pronouncements about Russia, NATO and the defence of Europe”. In his response, the Minister of State, Lord Howe (Con) said that it is undoubtedly true that the world is a more dangerous and uncertain place today than it has been for many years. Despite encouraging advances, the threat from Daesh remains substantial. Russia, as noble Lords have said, continues to show its force through both conventional and novel means. New theatres of conflict, most notably cyber, demand new and complex capability. And the transition to a new US Administration has been seen by some as an opportunity to question, perhaps even attempt to undermine, the role of the rules-based international order. He reminded that in the 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, we wrote “the world is changing rapidly and fundamentally”. He went on to say that we cannot claim to have foreseen the seismic political events of the past 12 months, but we recognised the uncertainty and volatility characterising our current era and we conducted our analysis and reached our conclusions accordingly. I align myself with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, in this area: no Government can predict the future, but we can prepare for the unpredictable. The SDSR presents a clear plan for doing precisely that. He said that “I remind the House of the four most pressing challenges to UK defence and security, as identified in 2015: first, the increasing threat posed by terrorism, extremism and instability; secondly, the resurgence of state-based threats and intensifying wider state competition; thirdly, the impact of technology,

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especially cyber threats; and finally, the erosion of the rules-based international order, making it harder to build consensus and tackle global threats. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, rightly warned us against complacency. We cannot be complacent about recent developments in our strategic context, but I am confident that this list of challenges is as accurate today as it was just over a year ago, and that the plan we have constructed to respond to them stands up to scrutiny and that in the context of enduring change and uncertainty, two principles must be central to our response. First, we must plan to be adaptable: the threats we face are varied and diffuse, and we must be ready to respond rapidly and effectively however and wherever they become manifest. Secondly, we must strengthen and deepen our international partnerships and alliances: now more than ever we must place an international approach at the heart of all of our defence and security plans. I will address both of these in turn”. He suggested that at the heart of Joint Force 2025 is the ability “to deploy a highly capable expeditionary force of around 50,000. That is a step change in our ambition from the “best effort” deployment of 30,000 planned for in the 2010 SDSR. It will fully prepare us for the most substantial challenges to our national security, including a call to war fighting under NATO Article 5.” And that “increased agility and versatility increases our security. It sends a powerful message of deterrence to our adversaries, and lets our allies and partners know that we are willing and able to tackle our shared problems side by side. This point cannot be over-emphasised in the wake of last year’s referendum”. Moving on to talk about a second strategic imperative in SDSR 2015 he reminded of the “need to strengthen and deepen our international partnerships and alliances. In the SDSR, we wrote that our defence policy and plans will be “international by design”. Our interests are inextricably linked to global security and prosperity, and we will continue to play a leading role in protecting global stability. We cannot, and do not, hope to do this alone. It is not just a policy choice but a necessity that we become more deliberate in our international approach across all defence activity. We will build an international dimension into defence planning from the outset. In practice”. In practice, he said “that means [having] strong strategic bilateral and multilateral relationships. He talked of interoperability being developed and that NATO remains the key vehicle for maintaining an integrated and interoperable military force. We will, he said “work with alliance members to train and exercise together, and to share doctrine, tactics and procedures. We will also continue to develop collaborative capabilities with our key allies wherever there is an opportunity to share expertise and cost in the development of new defence technology. Taken together, and supported by the Government’s global defence and diplomatic network, this will allow us to build coalitions throughout the world in the pursuit of shared interests and in support of the rules-based international order.

A genuine reason for looking at SDSR 2015 Summing up, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said that “it is difficult to mount any form of attack on the noble Earl who is so gentle and so apparently reasonable that we are all disarmed at the end. But there is a long-standing belief that no plan survives the first engagement with the enemy. Since the SDSR was published last year, we have had the Brexit referendum, with profound implications for the direction of British defence policy. Secondly, he said, “Donald Trump has been elected as President of the United States of America, with all the statements that he has made about NATO undermining, in many ways, a lot of the solidarity that is there. So there is a genuine reason for looking at SDSR 2015, if only to look at the activities of President Putin now that he is a major player in the Middle East”. (The above are edited speeches taken from the official Hansard record of the House of Lords debate) Howard Wheeldon FRAeS, Wheeldon Strategic Advisory Limited

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Geoff finds Scribblings another great story

Every editor knows that copy always turns up eventually.

But when it comes as a surprise it’s even better. A letter dropped into my postbag a few days ago containing a copy of 1940, the magazine of the Friends of the Few.

With it was the reminder that Club honorary member, freelance Geoff Simpson is the editor of the pages that support the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust in maintaining the National Memorial to The Few at Capel-le-Ferne in Kent.

Geoff, pictured above in front of the surviving Dover chain home towers and the field from which the Royal Flying Corps took off for France in 1914, has just been appointed a member of the Royal Historical Society. He specialises in stories covering World War 2 and writes frequently for Britain at War. He is the author of a number of books including A History of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association and a thoughtful work on Guy Gibson, Dambuster. In the 2017 edition of 1940, Geoff includes one of the most famous pictures of its time which gives Scribblings the opportunity to highlight the work of one the Royal Navy’s best known photographers of World War 2. He tells too of the man who took the photo – Herbert Mason, the Chief Photographer of the Daily Mail who was to be commissioned and serve as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy photographic branch for the rest of the war.

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Max Hastings wrote of Herbert’s photography a few years ago when he described the scene in Central London as German bombers carried out the Blitz. Such was the impact of the raid on the night of December 29, 1940, that the photograph was censored for several days while others were to be held for over a year before publication.

Herbert was fire-watching on the roof of the newspaper’s offices between Fleet Street and the Thames while the Luftwaffe’s attack was at its height. There had been a brief pause decreed by Hitler on Christmas Day, and then Goering’s bombers had resumed their almost nightly pounding of the capital.

When darkness fell on December 29, the Heinkel and Dornier planes came again to launch their 125th attack since the campaign began — which inflicted unparalleled devastation on the old City of London. Barely 30 minutes into the raid, Luftwaffe aircrew counted 54 major fires beneath them; in three hours of early evening bombing, 120 tons of explosive and 22,000 incendiaries fell, inflicting appalling damage.

On the roof of the Mail’s office Herbert, right, gazed on the inferno around the cathedral, less than half a mile from where he stood — and raised his camera. ‘I focused at intervals as the great dome loomed up through the smoke,’ he later said. ‘The glare of many fires and sweeping clouds of smoke kept hiding the shape. Then a wind sprang up. Suddenly, the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno. The scene was unbelievable. In that moment or two, I released my shutter.’

Herbert knew nothing of the extraordinary drama taking place in St Paul’s, even as he took the picture that became the transcendent image of the Blitz. Falling rubble had blocked emergency services from getting through the streets and an abnormally low tide in the Thames caused hydrants on which firemen’s pumps depended to run dry.

When a fire broke out in the cathedral’s library aisle, there was no mains water to fight it — the blaze was eventually suppressed with stirrup pumps, buckets and sand. Then, soon after 6.30pm, an incendiary bomb — one of 29 to fall on and around St Paul’s that night — pierced the lead roof of the dome and lodged in its timbers.

Hundreds of buildings in the heart of the financial district were set ablaze; eight Christopher Wren churches were destroyed and the 15th-century Guildhall was set on fire. One bomb landed near the Monument, erected by Wren to commemorate the 1666 Great Fire of London. An eyewitness of the time wrote: ‘Terrible fires in London. ‘We went up on the roof to look. At Shepherd’s Bush, flames were leaping, and towards the City they were gigantic. As I walked up the road I could see the smoke. A great red glow filled the sky — I had no need of a torch — I could see every step I took and could have read a book if I had wished. The glare of many fires and sweeping clouds of smoke kept hiding the shape. Then a wind sprang up. Suddenly, the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno.

The scene was unbelievable. “American reporter Ed Murrow pronounced the great building’s obituary in a live broadcast to the U.S.: ‘The church that means most to London is gone. St Paul’s Cathedral is burning to the ground as I talk to you now.’ His valediction was premature: as he spoke, two teams of specialist fire watchers recruited from the Royal Institute of British Architects — and hand-picked because they had heads for heights — were crawling along the wooden beams with hand pumps to reach the blazing section.

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Herbert’s photograph went unpublished for two days while censors considered whether it would serve Britain’s cause; others — for example, one of Bank underground station after a raid which killed 111 people sheltering on its platforms — were held up for as long as a year.

Herbert, who died in 1964, came from Great Yarmouth where he worked on the local newspaper, the Yarmouth Mercury, before moving to London where he joined the Associated Press news agency before the Daily Mail. As Lieutenant Mason he is well known for the photos he took on the Atlantic and Arctic convoys during the war and he was present at the Casablanca conference in 1943 and took pictures of Sir Winston Churchill and the American President Franklin D Roosevelt as well as with Lord Mountbatten.

And you think you have media problems…….

y first job on leaving grammar School at 18 was as a Clerical Officer in what was then the Ministry of Labour and National Service, writes Stu Read. At that time the employment records of people leaving HM forces were annotated “Ex reg” for ex regulars, “NS” for national service and those who served in wartime were shown as “HO” for Hostilities Only.

These two words came to mind often while I served for 13 months (without remission) as Chief Press Officer for Her Majesty’s Prison Service at its HQ in Westminster. That period during 1994 and 1995 was certainly one of the worst periods in the Service’s history. Incidents abounded. Six IRA prisoners and a London gangster escaped from the Special Secure Unit in HMP Whitemoor, a jail deep in East Anglia. The SSU was a high security prison within a prison. All seven scaled the perimeter wall using poles and rope but were recaptured with the help of a police helicopter. Three equally dangerous men escaped from HMP Parkhurst on the Isle of White. They’d made a key, had tools, a gun, blank ammunition and £200 in cash when they got out. They were at large for several days and nearly managed to fly off the island in a private light aircraft. The media had a field day trumpeting security lapses and soft governorship. An operations room was set up to manage major incidents. At one time there were three ops rooms all running at the same time. Fred West committed suicide on New Year’s Day 1995. Myra Hindley was alleged to be having an affair with a foreign woman criminologist. Hindley was moved to another jail where she broke her leg standing up after sitting on a bench. Still kept in chains despite being in labour, a female prisoner at HMP Styal gave birth to a baby. This caused outrage from the human rights lobby. The tabloids, even the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key brigade”, had a field day.

M

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Riots, coyly described by the Prison Service as “disturbances”, were many. There were hostage takings and woundings, boiling oil scaldings in kitchens, as well as inwards smuggling of drugs, mobile phones and weapons. Illicit brewing of alcohol was not unusual. There were assaults by prisoners on prisoners and assaults by prisoners on staff. Prisoners regularly made allegations of ill treatment by staff. There were indeed some misdemeanours and security blunders by prison staff too. When keys went missing or were compromised every lock in the prison had to be changed. Such incidents were far from rare. The Prison Service was far from perfect but none-the-less there were hundreds of dedicated governors, prison officers, chaplains and administrative staff who gave their utmost to their jobs. Some worked tirelessly to reform and rehabilitate inmates. They got little thanks for their efforts. Away from the “coal face” inside prisons the political mood was one of being tough on crime and tough on criminals. The press loved this and were baying for blood at every chance. Stories of “soft” prisons, lavish Christmas dinners, taxis being used to transfer prisoners from one jail to another, raised the hackles of readers up and down the country. Attempts to introduce Harvard Business School style working practices and incentives were met with stiff opposition. In the main, Prison Governors and Prison Officers were unhappy with these sorts of changes. Unofficial leakage of information was colossal. Staff associations and staff unions tittle-tattled to the media all the time. Prisoners sometimes used their telephone cards to speak to newspapers direct. At every opportunity, prison reformers, cruelly referred to as the “bleeding hearts” wanted their say too. On top of all this, political advisors within the Home Office undermined Press Office statements with behind the hand briefing of media contacts The press office was under siege every day and out of hours too. At one period, teams of journalists from the same paper kept up a bombardment of the same questions the whole day long. Fortunately, Press Officers had the opportunity to escape the frantic atmosphere of the Press Office and visit actual prisons preparing for Ministerial visits or escorting approved journalists. They saw some great work being carried out in education, social skills development even parental skill training for young offenders in custody with girlfriends and wives with babies on “the out”. One prison in the midlands was so industrious and productive that a night shift was being considered for

its workshops. It was difficult to put out these and other positive stories but there were some successes with local papers. Lifers in a number of prisons turned tiny patches of garden into spectacular, prize winning, floral plots. One became a specialist at bookbinding and restoring family bibles. Some inmates studied successfully for degrees and academic qualifications that they could be proud of. Illiterate men and women were taught to read and write. Some got religion and strove hard to mend their ways. Anger management classes helped unruly prisoners reform themselves. Officers raised thousands of pounds for charities by sponsored running, cycling and swimming but not many wished to be identified publicly. Prison farms remained an untold success by keeping down costs, providing food for prisons themselves and selling produce to supermarkets. For obvious reasons retail outlets were reluctant to advertise this. Many Prison Officers and Governors were just as valiant as soldiers. Many were indeed ex-regulars. In tough, grim nicks they stood toe to toe with the most aggressive inmates risking assaults and verbal abuse on a

daily basis. Rightly, uniformed Prison Officers now march alongside servicemen and policemen in the annual armistice parade. There was some light relief. A prisoner in East Anglia produced a prize winning National Lottery ticket. After receiving a fax of the ticket, Camelot verified that it was indeed the winning number.

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To everyone’s relief, closer inspection revealed it to be a really good forgery. Everybody loved watching “Porridge”.

New Members

Major Chris Cobb-Smith, recently retired from Media Operations Group, joined the club in January. He served in the Royal Artillery including 29 Commando Regiment RA, for 19 years, and is best known as one the elite who guard the backs of TV and news crews in hot spots of the world. Chris is a Director and a founding member of Chiron Resources which provides security and logistic support to the media in hostile environs, and has also served as a weapons inspector with the United Nations Security Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq and with the Organisation for Security & Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo. His experiences also include Libya, The Philippines, Crimea, Somalia,

Yemen, Gaza and Kurdistan. In his six years as news safety adviser to the BBC he won an international media award in 2011. Chris is a member of the Front Line Club.

ROC veteran

John C Millidge also joined the club at the beginning of the year. John was a Group Officer with 2 (Horsham) and 4 (Colchester) Groups of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) from 1977 until they were stood down in 1995. A leading light in the ROC Association John also works with a veterans group based on his old school, Christ College, Brecon.

The Corps has a long history commencing in the First World War through to the Cold War. Observers acted as the eyes and ears of the Royal Air Force in the Second World War and undertook a number of special duties. Including providing specialists for the D-Day invasion Fleet. During the Cold War the Corps went underground and trained to provide nuclear weapon information to the UK Warning & Monitoring Organisation.

The club has a number of former ROC officers on the membership list including the Club President, Hugh Colver and Executive Vice President Mike Peters.

After the Fall of France, the goal of Germany was to achieve air superiority over Great Britain by destroying RAF fighters, both in the air and on the ground, and by bombing aircraft manufacturing facilities. Winning the Battle of Britain was Germany's prerequisite in preparation for the invasion of Britain. The British Chain Home radar defence system was able to warn of enemy aircraft approaching the British coast, but once inside the coastline the Observer Corps provided the only means of tracking their position. During the period from July to October 1940, the Corps was at full stretch operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, plotting enemy aircraft and passing this essential information to RAF Fighter Command Groups and Sector Controls.

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As a result of their role during the Battle of Britain, in April 1941 the Observer Corps was granted the title Royal by King George VI, and the Royal Observer Corps became a uniformed civil defence organisation administered by RAF Fighter Command.

In 1944, during preparations for the invasion of France a request for volunteers from within the ranks of the ROC produced 1,094 highly qualified candidates, from which 796 were selected to perform aircraft recognition duties as Seaborne Observers.

These Seaborne Observers were temporarily seconded to the Royal Navy with the rank of Petty Officer (Aircraft Identifier). During the D-day landings, two Seaborne Observers were allocated to all participating US Navy vessels and Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships. The Seaborne Observers assumed control of each ship's anti- aircraft batteries with the intention of reducing the previously high incidence of friendly fire, (between allied vessels and allied aircraft.

The success of the Seaborne Observers can be measured by a signal sent from Wing Commander P.B. Lucas, Air Staff Officer, who stated that: "The general impression amongst the Spitfire wings, covering our land and naval forces over and off the beach-head, appears to be that in the majority of cases the fire has come from British Navy warships and not from the merchant ships. Indeed, I personally have yet to hear a single pilot report that a merchant vessel had opened fire on him"

During Operation Overlord a total of two Seaborne Observers lost their lives, several more were injured and 22 survived their ships being sunk. In addition, ten Seaborne Observers were mentioned in despatches. The deployment of Seaborne Observers was regarded as an unqualified success and in recognition for their contribution to the success of the landings, King George Vl approved the permanent wearing of the SEABORNE shoulder flash on the ROC uniforms of those individuals who had taken part.

The ROC provided an additional and highly useful function to the war-time UK Government by providing a plausible cover story for a number of covert war-time operations. Up to 20 highly

secret electronic warfare units and Y-stations were established across the UK, with their associated scientists and technicians being dressed in ROC uniforms so as to avoid arousing any suspicion while entering and leaving RAF, Army and Royal Navy establishments.

By the mid-1950s, the greater speeds and altitudes attained by jet aircraft combined with the improved performance of radar led to a reduced requirement on the part of the RAF for the services of the ROC in tracking aircraft. However, to compensate an additional role for the ROC was raised in the defence against the effects of nuclear weapons was announced. The first significant exercise undertaken by the ROC involving a simulated nuclear attack took place during 1956. In 1957, the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) was established under Home Office control. It was intended that the UKWMO would provide both

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civil and military authorities in the UK with essential information during a nuclear attack, with the ROC providing primary data on the position and magnitude of atomic weapons detonated during any such attack. This data would be used by the UKWMO, in conjunction with weather information provided by the Meteorological Office, to produce a forecast of radioactive fallout. Fallout would be monitored as and where it occurred, with its actual location and strength mapped using data obtained from instrumentation by ROC following any nuclear event.

Between 1958 and 1968 a countrywide building programme resulted in a network of 1,563 underground monitoring posts, approximately eight miles apart, distributed throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, at an estimated cost of almost £5,000 each. The posts were excavated to a depth of 25 feet. Entry was facilitated by a steel ladder in a vertical shaft leading to a single room, providing accommodation for three observers to live and work for up to 21 days. Conditions in these spartan posts were cramped, cold, and in some cases damp.

COMMENT: How A British Army Major Saved My Life

Mike Evans. former Defence Editor at 'The Times and an Honorary member of the Pen & Sword Club, will talk about his new First with the News book at the February 15 lunch in London when copies will be available. The following story was published by Forces TV.

s we cowered below the embankment of the river, the tall good-looking lieutenant from

the 2nd Battalion Mercian Regiment lay down on the dusty path and started to inch forward towards the suspected buried improvised explosive device. We were in Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It was May 2009.

We had been on patrol since 5am but this was the main mission, to examine what three Taliban fighters had dug into the ground close to a bridge We had two American bomb-disposal specialists with us, but it was the lieutenant’s job to scrape the soil around the suspected device and to make a judgment before their demolition skills were called upon. Watching the lieutenant as he snaked his way closer and closer to the concealed IED, it struck me, not for the first time, that young British Army officers, not that long out of Sandhurst, were required almost on a daily basis - whether in Afghanistan or Iraq - to put their lives at extreme risk. At such a young age, they were required to shoulder the gravest of responsibilities.

During the many occasions, I spent embedded with British Army and Royal Marine units in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as a war reporter for The Times, I never ceased to be amazed at how calm the young officers and the men under their command were during moments of intense danger. In the Bosnian War in the 1990s, my life was literally saved by a major of the Light Dragoons when, after stopping at a village near Brčko in the north, we were targeted by mortar fire from a Serb unit in a forest 100 yards away. One mortar rocket exploded to the left of our vehicle and a second one to the right. Anticipating the third would hit us right on target, the major grabbed me and hurled me into the back of a Spartan armoured vehicle, which reversed at speed.

These sorts of experiences did not put me off covering wars for The Times. Indeed, I always wanted to return, not because of some personal sense of bravado, but because I had grown to trust the men and

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women of the British armed services, and knew that I could rely on their professionalism and training to help me if I ran into trouble.

Although I had reported on the Falklands War in 1982, and the Gulf War in 1991, I did so from the safety of Whitehall as a defence correspondent. But when the Bosnian War erupted I went off to gain my first experience as a correspondent in the field and quickly learnt that following behind a Warrior en route to a dangerous spot was a lot healthier than driving off on my own in my Lada Niva, protected only by a "PRESS" sticker on the doors.

Mike Evans, pictured right, in blue.

I discovered in every war zone that the average British soldier and Marine is blessed with a special sense of humour that helps to ease the tension of the day. As a reporter armed only with a notebook and pen, I was always treated with immense respect and friendship.

There was never resentment that the officer in charge of a patrol had the added responsibility of looking after a civilian. In Whitehall, writing about key defence issues, it is impossible to understand and appreciate what life is like on the ground for soldiers and Marines deployed to wars overseas. It is the duty of defence correspondents to exchange their suits for flak jacket and helmet and to experience first-hand what that life is like. For me, the experiences I had in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan changed my life.

I learnt how to take risks but never to be so foolhardy that by the end of the day I was unable to file my articles back to London. I always listened to the advice and judgment of the military units I worked with, knowing that their instincts, knowledge and grasp of local terrain were always going to be infinitely superior to mine.

In some of the most isolated outposts in Afghanistan, I witnessed extraordinary camaraderie. In a tiny, remote base in northern Helmand province, I watched soldiers taking part in fitness challenge races which involved each soldier dragging a massive tyre along the ground, attached to a rope looped around their chests. This was in the heat of an Afghan summer. It was both bizarre and enlightening.

It was because of these experiences that I felt the need to write a memoir*, to show my appreciation and admiration for the men and women who were prepared to risk their lives in the service of their country.

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Snow & Steel: Battle of the Bulge 1944-45 Snow and Steel, by Peter Caddick-Adams is now available as a paper back. The book is a huge reassessment of Hitler's last great throw of the dice: 'The Battle of the Bulge', the battle for the Ardennes 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. This is an utterly fascinating five weeks when, for a time, it

looked like Hitler had outflanked the allied armies pushing toward the Rhine and might just throw them back to the Normandy beaches. It is also the context for the catastrophic events at Bastogne depicted so graphically in Band of Brothers. For military history fans this is one of those touchstone battles of the Second World War, written by a former member of Media Operations Group. Peter uses primary archival material and personal interviews to write a controversial, commercial, landmark book. Says Professor Chris Bellamy, formerly the defence correspondent of The Independent: "Caddick-Adams is probably the best military historian of his generation, and Snow and Steel is the definitive account of one of the key punctuation marks in history, when the western Allies thwarted Germany’s last attempt to turn the tide of the Second Word War. He combines a sweeping command of politics and strategy with authoritative detail worthy of Ian

Fleming, and deep empathy for the individual characters in the story. His opening portrait of Hitler, turning in a moment from a ‘broken man’ to a passionate orator as he outlines the plans for Operation Autumn Mist is a masterly opening to a work combining scholarship and readability in perfect balance."

Paul researching the life of the ‘world’s greatest aviator’

lub member Paul Beaver has started researching material for a new book on the ‘world’s greatest aviator,’ Captain Eric

‘Winkle’ Brown, RN CBE DSC AFC. Paul, Chairman and Head of Public Affairs at Defence Communications Limited is looking to publish in 2018

"Winkle" Brown was the Royal Navy’s most decorated pilot and died last year at the age of 97. He also held the world record for flying the greatest number of different types of aircraft - 487. A record unlikely to ever be matched. He also held three absolute Guinness World Records, including for the number of aircraft carrier deck landings and types of aeroplane flown. He piloted 2,407 aircraft carrier landings and survived 11 plane crashes and the sinking of HMS Audacity in 1941.

A linguist with a detailed knowledge of Germany, Captain Brown Interrogated some of the leading Nazis after the war, including Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and Belsen's chief guards Josef Kramer and Irma Grese.

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Universally known as 'Winkle' on account of his diminutive stature he was educated at Edinburgh's Royal High School, before studying at the University of Edinburgh, where he learned to fly. He had caught the bug for flying at the age of eight when his father, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War 1, took him up in a bi-plane. "There was no second seat, but I sat on his lap and he let me handle the stick," he told the BBC in 2014.

Captain Brown retired from the Royal Navy in 1970 but became the director general of the British Helicopter Advisory Board and later the president of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1982