Posted on 08/23/2006 6:45:57 PM PDT by blam
British to adopt the tactics that beat Rommel
By Oliver Poole in Amarah
(Filed: 24/08/2006)
The soldiers of the Queen's Royal Hussars will today board a fleet of stripped-down Land Rovers, festooned with weapons and equipment, bound for the depths of the Iraqi desert.
Their mission is to adopt tactics pioneered by the Long Range Desert Group, the forerunners of the SAS, more than six decades ago in the campaign against Rommel in North Africa. They will leave Camp Abu Naji, the only permanent base in Maysan province near the local capital of Amarah, and head into the remote region near the border with Iran.
Rather than staying in a fixed spot well known to enemy fighters in the most violent of all the Iraqi provinces under British control, they will live, camp and fight on the move. Roaming through the sparsely populated areas of Maysan, an area as large as Northern Ireland, they will travel without heavy armour that would become bogged down in the sand dunes and sleep under the stars.
advertisement Resupply will come from air drops or transport aircraft landing on temporary runways. Lt Col David Labouchere, the regiment's commander, said that when they needed to act they would "surge" from the wilderness.
"Maysan is and will always be a problem child," he said. "These people are a little like Texans - armed and against anyone who is not one of them. They do not like foreigners and we are a foreign tribe in their midst."
The men are stoical about the prospect of living in gruelling desert conditions. One captain said: "Those who have been on desert training exercise are less keen. They know that after six days, you realise this is not so special after all. But it is good not to be a fixed target any more. Being here is very wearing on the nerves."
The Army stresses that this redeployment is not linked to constant mortar and rocket attacks on the old base of Camp Abu Naji. There, troops have endured a sustained attack, shredding nerves and marking their time with blood and lost limbs.
At least 281 mortars and rockets have hit the camp since the Hussars arrived in April. In the early months of the British presence, attacks were limited to one or two rounds a night. Now the Shia militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiercely anti-western cleric, have taken to firing barrages. One night in May, 54 mortar rounds detonated one after another.
On Tuesday, while the troops worked to pack up the camp, 17 more 122mm mortar shells came in, causing such fires that the camp ran out of fire-suppressant foam. The exact number of injured has not been made public.
Today the Union flag that has fluttered over the camp since the British arrived in April 2003 will be taken down and the base handed over to the local Iraqi authorities.
Brig James Everard, the commander of British forces in south-eastern Iraq, stressed that responsibility for security in Maysan province would not be transferred to Iraqi control.
The adoption of tactics from an older era of British desert warfare would allow proper control of the border area for the first time, he said. America has frequently alleged that weapons and volunteers are being brought in by Iran. One of the first tasks of the Queen's Royal Hussars will be to discover whether this is true.
'Didn't Monty win just one battle without Patton running interference for him?'
Sheer ignorance.
Try:
El Alamein
the Eastern Italy campaign
Caen
the Scheldt campaign in 44
Operation Veritable(the defeat of the Germans up to the Rhine in Jan 45)
The Reichswald Forest
the liberation of Denmark
Bremen and North Germany
the liberation of Holland by Anglo-Canadian forces
'Yeah. But the Brits were reading all the Enigma traffic out of Africa and Italy - and they still couldn't beat him.'
cough....Kasserine Pass...cough.....
'Ah, since the Brits are not up against armor, or even uniformed combatants, the lessons applied might better be from Yeman - no wait, they lost that one...'
Funny,I could have sworn that we retook the Crater district and inflicted heavy losses on the NLF.
Also,the British had agreed in 1964 to leave,BEFORE the NLF started its terror campaign.And it was ADEN,not Yemen.It was South Yemen only after 1968...
Kasserine was a major U.S failure...But Rommel wouldn't have launched it if he wasn't sure that Monty would be sitting on his @ss in front of the Mareth Line undertaking the inevitable - and long - preliminary buildup to any action at all.
Black Sheep Squadron
Remember:
1--that the Mareth Line was virtually impassible due to appalling weather.Patton wouldnt have even tried a mass attack in early Feb...
2--Sorry but the Germans ALWAYS had a plan from Nov onwards to strike at the Americans.So Kasserine wasnt as ad hoc as you make it sound.
"Black Sheep Squadron"
That was a 70s show.... But still memorable.
Wow, all that.........I wonder why America felt the need at all to enter the European war?
You got a serious point to make?.
Ah... no wonder I hadn't heard of it until the History Channel put it on. I was off of war shows and onto hippie shows then.
"The tactics that beat Rommel"?? They're going to outnumber them 10-to-1?
Did I miss something?
He was being recruited to fly it.
Sure, from your post of all the Brits did, it would appear that we weren't needed in Europe.
Merely showing you what we DID do.
In case you thought we sat around drinking tea....
LOL, no I recognize that the Brits did far more than sit around and drink tea. As the Brits are currently doing in Iraq, they are also doing far more than sitting around and drinking tea.
I know.Sorry,just my usual sarcasm.
Its just that sometimes I think and fear many Americans(and even the younger generation of British,of which I am one) dont realise just how much Britain contributed in ww2.Which given we fought from 1939 and fought most of 40 and 41 alone means ours surely was greater than even America or the Soviet Union and your contibution for example was IMMENSE....
As regards Monty,the man was NOT a genius and he did make errors,but he was a far better general than modern opinion(esp in the US) gives him...
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