Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGo Again, Sir?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2015
I have a deep aversion to being a member of "teams": they seem to me to be essentially lots of people answerable to a "Big Man" with a mid-level of incompetent sycophants (the sort of stuff David Maister recommends). But in reading Toby Harnden's history of the Welsh Guards in Helmand the regiment reminds me of one grouping which I do enjoy: family.
This is a big old book and it starts conventionally with a description of the main officers using the sort of terms one might expect in a Telegraph obituary: in this style of writing there are few bad officers, but those that are bad carry the sins of many. Push through this section because these stereotypes will fall away in the heat of battle. The central figure is Colonel Thorneloe, a man whose work for the politicos comes back to haunt him in the field: and who, when faced with this, picks up his shield and marches forward. But this is not just a book about thoroughly good chaps, all ranks are represented, described and speak for themselves. Harnden gives this detail so as to pull us into the story of this unit, and this is all the more effective when combat strikes often ripping apart men whose story we have followed. At some stages of the book an introduction of a squaddie is a certain forerunner of doom. It is like the Iliad out there with slaughter being wreaked continually. Harnden intends to confront us with the reality of death, and the reality of surviving, and in many cases the reality of being uninjured physically but battered mentally. Yet alongside this maelstrom of fear and flesh comes the sheer exhilaration of combat. Harnden's tale is not a simplistic one.
The book also covers the planning and execution of Operation Panther's Claw. As seemed to be the way then the Army is under-resourced not just because it lacks the kit, but because its leaders bite off too much to chew. Thorneloe repeatedly points out where the operational planning fails to adequately provide for sufficient troops to hold terrain which they capture so bloodily, and where progress is always assumed to be faster than it is. One feels that Boy Browning of Arnhem fame may still walk amongst us. Of course if the Welsh Guards are talking a battering so are the Taliban as two sets of strong beliefs meet each other head on. The chapter on snipers is particularly effective here.
Finally, throughout the whole operation one key change resonates: the use by the Taliban of low metal content IEDS, effectively blinding the Guards to their biggest killer. Caught in the first moments of a technological shift to the enemy the Guards respond with bravery and suffer tremendous morale difficulties which are overcome (where they are) by a familial solution. To the dead, the injured, and the traumatised Harnden adds those who left the army. He also compares the style (and resourcing) of the USMC where mines and IEDS are (literally) rolled over, and platoons sent to places we sent a section.
But in the midst of all this carnage we are provided with no easy answers. The politicians clearly got it wrong, but I do wonder if they ever got told clearly what the limits were. British understatement is a wonderful thing but I do think it lead all parties to make mistakes that would not have occurred if someone had stood up and said "no". But then armies are not built on saying no, and those who do say no are often removed from teams for this very sin. The result is an almost Greek tragedy where the best features of all parties are the seeds of their failure.
Recommended.
