The British Army is running a free fitness course designed to get people to a level of fitness that would qualify for joining the TA - and in only fourteen weeks. The Army's course is based on using everyday objects that can be found in and around the home or office as gym equipment. Designed by the Army's own highly trained PTIs around the use of desks, chairs and even handbags, the course is a great way of recovering from the excesses of the Christmas and New Year festivities.
Although the idea is to encourage army recruitment, there is no reason why anybody cannot take advantage of the course even if they have no intention of joining the Armed Forces. The course is free and registration can be made at the Army Fit website.

BBC: Army's regime claims 14-week weight loss
MoD ArmyFit: There's fit and there's Army fit

The U.S. Army has admitted that 7,000 family members of soldiers killed in the Iraq or Afghan wars were mistakenly sent letters addressing them as "Dear John Doe."
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey was sending a personal letter of apology to all the families who received the improperly addressed letters.
The original letters were sent out by the U.S. Army Human Resources Command's Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Center late

last month to inform survivors about private organizations that offer gifts, programmes and other assistance to families that have lost soldiers in Iraq or other countries where they are deployed for the war on terrorism. A mail-merge process should have replaced the placeholder greeting "Dear John Doe." with the specific name of survivor; unfortunately it didn't.
"There are no words to adequately apologize for this mistake or for the hurt it may have caused," Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones, the Army adjutant general, said in the statement to be posted. He went on: "It is important the original intent of the letter is not lost. The organizations mentioned are dedicated to honoring loved ones and recognizing their sacrifice and commitment."

What a mistake to make. I thought this sort of thing could only happen in the UK.

Army.Mil: Army Issues Apology for Letter Error

While their troops and service families have to live in sub-standard housing, Britain's Army elite are living it up in luxury mansions and regal apartments paying only peppercorn rent to the MoD for the privilege.
Last year the MoD spent £4.4million providing a lavish lifestyle for a just few very senior officers.
Julie McCarthy, chief executive of the Army Families Federation, condemned the millions spent. "The amount of money is horrendous," she said. "We've got units coming back from

overseas and we don't have sufficient houses in the right area, so have people being spread to the four winds."

What must be really galling to frontline troops - with their families back home having to put up with leaking roofs, broken heating and damp walls - is that their C-in-C, General Richards admits in his Christmas message that much more needs to be done to improve military accommodation; he no doubt dictated his message while puffing on his cigar, drinking his Johnnie Walker Blue Label and sitting in front of his cosy fire in his subsidised mansion.

Rank has its privileged lifestyle.

The Independent: Luxury for generals but hovels for the soldiers

In a recent article posted on the PajamasMedia website, Michael Yon describes the unique fighting style exhibited by the Lithuanian Special Forces in Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

Here's the Lithuanian bit: Hell’s Angels — Lithuanian Style:

"U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Zabul Province give high marks to the Lithuanian Special Forces, who like to ride these captured Taliban motorbikes to sneak up on, and chase Taliban fighters. The “LithSof” are on their way to becoming living legends: Both Afghans and Americans report that the Taliban are afraid of the Lithuanians. Stories about them are filled with dangerous escapades and humor.Americans say that the Lithuanians are sort of a weaponized version of Borat, who think nothing of sauntering around a base in nothing but flip-flops and underwear. “They look like mountain men. They never shave, sometimes don’t bathe, and often roll out the gate wearing nothing but body armor and weapons. Not even a t-shirt,” an American soldier told me. The Lithuanians may be a little bit nuts, but the Americans love to have them around because Lithuanians love to fight, and when you need backup, you can count on them. That contrasts starkly with many of the NATO “partners.” Maybe when your country spends almost a half-century with the Soviet boot on its neck, its first generation of free soldiers know what freedom is worth — and that you sometimes have to fight for it."

Michael Yon: On the Front Lines in Afghanistan, Part Two

The MoD has announced that the e-bluey email service has now been fully implemented for all UK Service personnel on overseas deployment.

It's called a hybrid messaging service, or h-mail, because the message is first e-mailed to the serviceman or woman's area of deployment where it is then printed automatically and popped in the post for hand delivery. A maximum of 24hr delivery time is promised.
The message can be entered at either a dedicated e-Blue terminal on via the British Forces Post Office website. One of the most important claims for the system is that it is two-way: those service personnel with access to the Internet can send e-Blueys back home.

Not wishing to knock this improvement on the traditional bluey..... but the US military has recently launched its TroopTube video-sharing website. This functions in a way similar to YouTube but is restricted to serving personnel and their families. Videos can be uploaded/exchanged by both service personnel or by their families. Seeing and hearing the person sending the message greatly improves the level of contact, especially when loved ones are deployed miles from home for long periods of time.

MoD: Getting online to the front line
BFPO e-Bluey micro-site

The MoD is so short of cash these days that they are having to sell some of their stock on eBay.

Here they're selling 24hr RatPacks - 10 for £50 - with a use by date of March 2015 - a bargain!

They only need to sell 3,200,000 and they can afford another Watchkeeper UAV.

• "Storm on Horseback" by John Freely
• "The Enemy at the Gate" by Andrew Wheatcroft
• "The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of Anglo-Saxon England" by Harriet Harvey Wood
• "Charge! The Interesting Bits of Military History" by Justin Pollard
• "Admirals" by Andrew Lambert
• "Scrimgeour's Small Scribbling Diary" introduced by Andrew Lambert
• "Tommy's War" edited by Ronnie Scott
• "The Day We Won the War" by Charles Messenger
• "Borrowed Soldiers" by Mitchell A Yockelson
• "Baghdad at Sunrise" by Peter Mansoor

The Independent: Written by the victors: The best military history books of 2008

A new Armed Forces social networking website has just been launched.

Forces365.com is primarily aimed at serving and ex-serving members of UK Armed Forces for the sharing of photos, blogs, videos and interests and for reuniting servicemen and women across the world. The website is free to join and is also open to anyone with an interest in the military.

The Mirror: Facebook battles it out with new Armed Forces website
Forces365

Talking of other countries pulling their weight, the German parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, has just reported that: "'Plainly put, [German] soldiers are too fat, exercise too little, and take little care of their diet."
No only that but while UK and US troops are not permitted alcohol, German soldiers in Afghanistan are allowed two pints a day; in the first six months of 2008 the 3,500 soldiers downed 896,000 pints of beer.

The Mail: German soldiers are 'too fat to fight' Taliban because they drink so much (while our boys go dry)

The British Forces Broadcasting Service broadcasts three radio stations and two TV channels to Britain's Armed Forces around the world. The charity Services Sound and Vision Corporation which runs BFBS has just announced that it is looking to restructure its services and this may result

in the loss of 30 jobs. "BFBS has proposed restructuring to focus on connectivity between the UK and Operations (Iraq & Afghanistan), while increasing efficiencies in its traditional overseas areas (Germany, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Canada, the Falklands and Belize). These proposals reflect the way our forces now deploy".
BFBS was set up in 1943 in North Africa and has been broadcasting to the Forces ever since. Not only does BFBS offer a wide range of entertainment, sport and news, it also provides a valuable morale booster linking Britain's Forces with their families and friends back home in the UK.
In an article in today's Guardian the proposed restructuring may result in the cutting of one radio station, BFBS2, completely. The loss of this radio station would be a serious blow as it is the station that broadcasts news, current affairs and chat providing, as SSVC says, "the Forces with their own window on the world".

The Guardian: Forces' TV and radio set to cut 30 jobs

The British Army is offering to help create a museum in Basra in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. British military planners have codenamed the project Operation Bell, after Gertrude Bell, the archaeologist who helped establish the Baghdad Museum in 1926. The British Museum has also offered to help in the project.

Saddam's Lakeside Palace will probably be selected as it lies in its own secure area just 2km from Basra city centre. The opulent palace was built in the 1990s alongside an artificial lake and overlooking the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Major Rupert Burridge of the Royal Engineers has carried out an initial survey and believes that the palace's marble interior could be made to provide a large exhibition space relatively easily. The museum would hold artefacts from ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilisation - those artefacts that survived the post-Gulf War looting that is.

The Guardian: Saddam's palace may help restore civic pride to Basra

Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall, from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, had been out drinking with some mates in Wigan on July 27th when he was arrested following a case of mistaken identity over a man said to have been causing a nuisance to paramedics .He was originally found guilty and made to pay the policemen £250 in compensation as well as being given 200 hours community service. However CCTV footage shown at his appeal revealed how the three policeman had viciously set upon him when they were making the arrest. Their assault on Mark was so brutal that the Appeal Judge remarked “I am shocked and appalled at the level of violence". Mark was acquitted and the policemen, who have been made to repay the £250, are now themselves

under investigation for their brutal, violent and cowardly attack on the war hero..
Mark had fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan and had been praised for his bravery against the Taliban. His commanding officer, Major Christopher Bell wrote a letter praising L/Cpl Aspinall as “a model professional". “He personally fought almost daily, and was under enemy fire constantly. I know that he accounted for a significant number of targets as a Warrior Armoured Fighting Vehicle gunner and it is not an exaggeration to say he held the lives of his comrades in his hands constantly.”
Mark said: “I went in to the Army thinking this country was worth fighting for. I put my life on the line every day in Afghanistan, so to come back and be treated like this for no reason was just so depressing. My plan was to join the fire service when I came out of the Army – but I was rejected because of my conviction. It meant I was unemployable for anything I wanted to do.”

Perhaps he could get a job with the police; it sounds as if they could do with some decent people.

The Times: Police officers investigated after assault of Mark Aspinall caught on CCTV

The Taliban and other warlords could clear a profit of £300million from Afghanistan's opium trade this year — money that will help finance insurgent attacks, the U.N.'s drug czar reported. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime said:"Not surprisingly the insurgents' war machine has proven so resilient,

despite the heavy pounding by Afghan and allied forces". The potential profits are dramatically higher than the $100 million that the Taliban is believed to have received last year from the multibillion-dollar trade.
Costa also reported that the Taliban appears to be stockpiling the drug to manipulate its price. Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient for making heroin.
The figures are a worrisome sign for NATO commanders who have long insisted that there is a direct link between the insurgency they are fighting and the booming drug trade, especially in Afghanistan's south. In a sign that the military alliance sees the drug trade as a strategic threat, NATO defence ministers authorized their troops in Afghanistan last month to attack drug barons deemed to be supporting the insurgency. The only way to keep prices and production down — and thus keep money out of Taliban pockets — is by "destroying high-value targets like drug markets, heroin labs and trafficking convoys moving to the southwestern borders," Costa said.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime: Drugs finance Taliban war machine, says UN drug tsar

The Sun has boosted British forces’ morale in Afghanistan and Iraq – by sending over its "Page Three-dom fighters".
Their mission was to hand out a special edition of The Sun which had been printed just for UK Forces on the frontline. The edition contained thousands of messages and photos from

loved ones – as well as others from famous wellwishers like Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Jeremy Clarkson and John Terry.
Major Rupert Lewis of the British Forces in Helmand said: “The Sun girls did themselves proud. The blokes were tickled pink and the special editions went down a desert storm. To overcome their very natural fears to come out here to cheer up the troops was tremendous and very much appreciated.”

You can bet!

Well done The Sun! Well done the "Fearless Five"!

2,800 of which are German. Until now, they have been stationed only in south west Germany. The Franco-German Brigade was set up in 1989 by the then French President Francois Mitterand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to increase military cooperation between the two countries.
"Germany has agreed in principle to transfer members of the Franco-German Brigade to France, that includes German troops," Steg said, calling the move "highly symbolic and historically significant". Steg added that both Merkel and Sarkozy believe the joint initiative should be kept going. The countries' defence ministers are set to meet next year to thrash out a clear plan for the brigade's future.

You never know, they might decide to support their NATO allies by sending the brigade to Afghanistan. More likely it'll be used to try to recover some of France's national prestige in Chad or even more likely the troops will sit around eating sausage and drinking beer in some cosy French billet.

year and their second, being released in time for Christmas, is sure to do the same. One of the tracks on the album, 'In Flanders' Fields' was written especially to mark the 90th anniversary of the Armistice.
With all profits going to Army charities, it's hoped "the recording will increase respect for the Forces and provide a connection with British troops overseas".

[the tank misses him, by the way]

The Telegraph: Spirit of the Glen: pipers at the gates of war

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War and Medicine Exhibition - 22nd November-15th February
a joint Wellcome-MoD production
in response to artist David Cotterrell's experiences of travelling to Afghanistan where he spent time with British soldiers observing & capturing their daily lives.

"As humankind has developed increasingly sophisticated weaponry with which to harm its enemies, medicine has had to adapt to cope with the volume and the changing nature of resulting casualties. Concentrating on the modern era, 'War and Medicine' will consider the constantly evolving relationship between warfare and medicine, beginning with the disasters of the Crimean War and continuing through to today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Wellcome Collection: War and Medicine
MoD: 'War and Medicine' on the front line

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You've heard of Yorkshire Terriers - well now there's Yorkshire Ferrets.1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment have just taken delivery of two new regimental mascots just before they leave for Iraq. The mascots - two ferrets named "Imphal" and "Quebec" after two of the Regiment's battle honours - were a gift from local people in Yorkshire, a tradition dating back to WW1. The ferrets will be kitted out in tiny uniforms in regimental colours and will form up on parade with the Battalion - on leads of course.
“The morale boost is amazing,” said Captain Laurence Roche. “The soldiers are fiercely proud of these things.” And there good for catching rabbits too

The Local: British Army deploys ferret forces to Münster

Historical re-enactment took a new twist last week when The Royal Welch Fusiliers took on the Panzergrenadiers in a football match in a field in northern France. The match was held to commemorate the Christmas Truce of 1914 when British and German soldiers climbed out of their trenches and played a game of football in No-Man's-Land.
In 1914 this brief flame of humanity was soon extinquished by the military elite which feared the effects of such fraternization; in 2008 the Germans won 2:1.

MoD: Germany v England 1914 football rematch
The Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum: The Christmas Truce at Frelinghein