Fighting the enemy, the Quartermaster – and the state

The increasingly-criticised Jackal patrol vehicle

IT WAS an ambush executed in a way all-too-familiar way to British troops, and it was to claim another soldier’s life, the 32nd this year in Afghanistan. Major Sean Birchall, married with one son, was killed only a few hours before Father’s Day – and only days ahead of his 34th birthday – as the Jackal vehicle he was travelling in was destroyed by a Taliban-planted roadside bomb.

A depressing statistic accompanied this heartbreaking story: the death rate in Afghanistan, at an average of one every three days since May, is now double that at the height of the Iraq War – some 15 deaths per 1,000 personnel per year served, compared with 7.5 in Iraq.

Of those killed so far in 2009, three quarters have died in such explosions, and many of them in Jackal patrol vehicles. The army turned to them because it was not supplied with enough helicopters, and because snatch Land Rovers and Vector troop carriers proved to be even more inadequate than Jackals.

The British army is not alone in losing troops to roadside bombs – or mines, of which thousands remain as deadly relics of the Soviet War of the 1980s. Two improvised explosive devices – IEDs – killed four US troops in two explosions just miles apart at the start of this month, bringing the numbers of its war dead for 2009 in Afghanistan to 64, almost double the 36 that died during the same period last year, making it the worst year for American forces since they first entered the country back in 2001. Military officials believe roadside bomb attacks will increase by 50% this year.

Beaten in firefights, the Taliban have engaged in an roadside bomb arms race – the more armoured the vehicle, the bigger the IED. It’s an arms race that British forces are losing, and the families of the dead have now lost patience. When the inquest begins in July into the death of Adrian Sheldon, a 25-year-old rifleman who lost his life to an IED while travelling in a Jackal in Sangin in Northern Helmand last month, his mother Dianne will be the latest parent to have a lawyer for the family present.

“We want to make sure we have the right people there helping us ask the right questions to make sure we get the right answers,” she told The Sunday Times. “I had heard about the issues surrounding the vehicle; could its failing have contributed to my son’s death?”

Tony McKibben, whose Royal Marine son Robert died in very similar circumstances near Garmsir last November, said: “If it (the Jackal) doesn’t do its job properly it needs to be looked at. If nobody stands up, nothing is done. I’ve lost my son but this could stop someone else losing theirs.”

More searching questions and the increasing use of lawyers could lead on to litigation against the Ministry of Defence. The way was cleared back in 2008 when the High Court ruled that families of British troops killed in war zones because of faulty equipment could sue the Government for a breach of human rights.

The landmark decision found that the Army’s duty to protect soldiers could extend to patrols outside a military base – and even to a battlefield. Mr Justice Collins said members of the armed forces serving abroad could not expect absolute protection. But he ruled that the MoD had an obligation to avoid or minimise risks to the lives of its troops, wherever they were serving, under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards the right to life.

The ruling prompted debates about whether this meant the end of the British army as a fighting force. In fact, it was welcomed by many soldiers, who understood that there is now a legal duty upon the MoD to provide its soldiers with equipment that will protect them – exactly the debate currently growing around the Jackal. families of soldiers, both dead and serving, want to ensure that the Government – to use that time-worn phrase – is not sending troops to their deaths.

As far back as the Crimea, when all kinds of exotic diseases were contracted from poisoned food and water stocks, the British army has had to fight both the enemy and the quartermaster – a role not always untruthfully portrayed as best suited to the sadist. In recent years, we have had boots that melt, radios that don’t work when something as inconvenient as hills get in the way, and in the main issue weapon, the SA80, a firearm that operates in fewer conditions than Network South East trains (although problems with these three have now been remedied).

With the exception of the Falklands, this mattered less as most post war British soldiers have only been forced to contend with very occasional violence in Northern Ireland, or Balkans-based peacekeeping roles that were more traumatic than combative. However, with the Iraq counter-insurgency and Afghanistan in particular, our army has faced implacably ruthless enemies and the requirement for working kit has taken on a new importance, particularly as the Taliban continues to flower into a national movement that is becoming harder to pin down and defeat.

The debate surrounding battlefield litigation has been spectacularly muddied by the compensation case of a still-unidentified RAF clerk, who received £484,000 several years ago after successfully suing the MoD for loss of earnings following a typing injury. At the time, payouts for serious combat injuries, such as loss of limbs, were significantly less – although, over the course of a lifetime (as the payment to the clerk was for), it adds up to significantly more. It was the one-off payment that led to so many adverse headlines.

However, it remains a national disgrace that British soldiers are sent into Afghanistan without the very tools that would allow a reduction in deaths, beginning with a full compliment of helicopters. If it falls to the courts to drag the MoD – and the Treasury – into providing proper equipment, then the oft-derided European Convention on Human Rights will have served its use. In the meantime, if the Government continues to commit itself to fighting the good fight, wherever that may be in the world, without committing the right resources to those who do its fighting, it will rightly be judged to be holding its soldiers in contempt.