Ask a Soldier

I've never been in command of men using the M16, but my guideline is that so long as the barrel is clear and the bits are working I don't care for the shine on the metal. We get issued with pull-throughs and flannelettes, which do the same job and are more durable

Shine on metal isnt what I was talking about. Shiny metal isnt condusive to good cover/concealment, however, having a clean firing assembly is kinda crucial. So I was talking about cleaning the inside of the weapon, not the outside.
 
That's what I'm talking about - in general, if it's not black it'll work. If I'm happy it'll work, I won't make a man sit there making the bits gleam. Did you know that men on ops behind enemy lines are ordered not to shine their boots for that reason (painful for one man I knew who came from the Coldstream Guards)

Anyway, someone ask something else before I annoy just about every other NCO and officer on this forum
 
I'll give it a try:
what do people talk like, as compared to in civilian life?

have you ever seen any serious case of mental strain?

when you were posted in germany (you were, right?) how big did the soviet threat feel? (i.e., did you all feel you could keep them at bay, or was there real concern that you'd wake up tomorrow and they'd have punched through?)
 
What's the Army food like over there?

I like both the field rations and the camp food; if you eat school dinners (which I started doing about three months ago) it's like that I think.

what do people talk like, as compared to in civilian life?

Pretty normally, excepting the orders, jokes about each others' mothers and humour

have you ever seen any serious case of mental strain?

A few, but my sort of men tend to keep quiet. I know one Parachute vet from the Falklands wrote a book which is probably symptomatic of PTSD

when you were posted in germany (you were, right?) how big did the soviet threat feel? (i.e., did you all feel you could keep them at bay, or was there real concern that you'd wake up tomorrow and they'd have punched through?)

We looked at it as a holiday. The single biggest thing we did was buy our cars (because we don't pay tax). I never really thought I'd hear the bugle and see Russian tanks rolling over the plain.
 
Hope this isn't too mundane...

What's your favorite 'military movie' and why?

Spoiler :
Thin Red Line for me. Because it is different from the rest.
 
What is your favorite part of your job?
 
Hope this isn't too mundane...

What's your favorite 'military movie' and why?

Spoiler :
Thin Red Line for me. Because it is different from the rest.

Zulu. It's a great film

What do you think of Thatcher? :scan:

I like her, not for her politics but because she had the balls to stand up to Argentina.

What is your favorite part of your job?

Call me a psycho, but the sort of thing I always loved doing was like we did in the Falklands - living in the wild, and fighting battles. That's what I joined for - I always loved camping, and left the Scouts because I thought they were too soft
 
What is your opinion of the general quality of the officers? Do you still get many officers from the Peerage, and if so are they notably different from other officers?
 
I've never met one. In general, above Second-Lieutenant they're good, but I have a loathing for new 2lts especially those I call the tenures, who go in for ten years then stick it on a CV and go into business
 
This is a horrible generalisation, but in general privates are working-class while officers tend to be middle-class (or in the Household Cavalry, where I don't go near, the officers are all sons of the duke of wherever). In Special Forces, the recruits tend to be very hard, working-class sorts of people
 
This thread is a chance for people to ask any questions they like about all things military. As many of you will know, I spent 25 years in the British Army (specifically the Parachute Regiment, see my sig), enlisting as a Private soldier and rising through the ranks to hold every rank (except, to my continued regret, Regimental Sergeant-Major) in my regiment up to Captain.
All right, I will shoot. :)
Apparently, pre-WW2 USSR was absolutely obsessed with parachuting.
Spoiler :
While other countries were just beginning to experiment with military parachutists, the Soviets had already established a military parachute school by the mid-1930s. Even more important for training airborne troops, however, had been the absorption of all parachute clubs in 1933 into Osoaviakhim (loosely translated as the “Society for the Promotion of Aviation and Chemical Defense”), a paramilitary group roughly similar to the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts and geared towards teaching skills applicable to the Soviet armed forces. In addition to parachute training, many young men and women were receiving training in flying both gliders and powered aircraft. By 1936, there were 559 parachute towers in the Soviet Union and 115 parachute training schools. In that same year members of Osoaviakhim and other civilians made 1,600,000 jumps from towers and 30,000 jumps from planes.

As a result of this intensive civilian training program, it is estimated that in 1940, over a million Soviet men and women were trained parachutists. Osoaviakhim had taught many of the most promising parachutists other military skills. Marksmanship, map reading, first aid, and physical training, for example, were included as adjuncts to parachute training. Mass jumps were made by groups who assembled after landing to undertake some “mission.” “Missions” included long hikes, “attacks” on communications objectives or factories, and what would now be called orienteering exercises.

As a result of this intensive preparation, most pre-war recruits into the Soviet airborne forces were already well grounded in basic skills when they commenced their military training. Female involvement in the Osoaviakhim parachute program also was the basis for the Red Army’s airborne doctors and nurses who jumped to give medical aid to the partisans during the war.

Since educational standards were higher for airborne recruits they normally picked up skills more quickly. Five years of schooling were required for airborne enlisted personnel and seven years for officers.
Training for enlisted men lasted four months and for officers six months. Most officer candidates had risen through the ranks and after the German invasion were usually proven combat veterans. Although jumps were made in training, and the fledgling paratroopers learned the quirks of the military transport aircraft they would be jumping from, the emphasis was on building toughness and initiative. The Soviet airborne forces were considered elite assault troops, and their training was tough enough to give them a strong esprit de corps.

Just as it is still a key ingredient in jump schools today, physical training took up a great deal of the Soviet airborne trainee’s time, and forced marches of 50 miles during training were not unheard of. Parachutists received intensive small arms training and learned to use all weapons up to and including heavy artillery and tanks. As the war progressed, Soviet parachutist training incorporated familiarization with German small arms. Since they would often be sent on sabotage missions, much time was spent during training on the use of explosives. Map reading and radio skills were also taught to all trainees. Specialized training was given to those men destined for airborne artillery, engineer, or other specialized formations, and a certain number of parachutists received training as ski troops who could be dropped into mountainous areas.

The extra two months of officer’s training was devoted to airborne tactics, command skills, and other problems of commanding airborne sections, platoons, companies, or battalions. Officers commanding brigades or corps were normally sent to the Zhukovsky (the Red Army War College) in Moscow.

Up to the beginning of World War II, Soviet military parachutists were probably the best trained in the world. The years of Soviet parachute experience had taught them the most effective training methods, and their huge pool of partially trained manpower allowed them to choose the top recruits.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-13947.html

"By the eve of Nazi invasion, Soviets had organized five divisional-sized airborne corps."
World War II Airborne Warfare Tactics (Gordon L. Rottman, Peter Dennis)

Some historians claim that this extensive training and use of parachutists is a telltale sign of a planned offensive war. Seems to make sense for me, but then I hardly have more than a layman's knowledge about actually using airborne troops in a war, so how would you rate this argument? Is training country's best soldiers to be parachutists anywhere near reasonable use of resources when its High Command is primarily concerned with defense?
 
When i was at school, there was always a bunch of guys who wanted to be in the army, they were in the cadets and always talked about the SAS and certain makes of guns ect. They were generally a bunch of nerds.

Do you get a lot of them in the army? can you tell who they are right away? do they make good soldiers? Versus the normal guys, probably rugby players who join because they want a job/education rather than just to wear a uniform.
 
When i was at school, there was always a bunch of guys who wanted to be in the army, they were in the cadets and always talked about the SAS and certain makes of guns ect. They were generally a bunch of nerds.

Do you get a lot of them in the army? can you tell who they are right away? do they make good soldiers? Versus the normal guys, probably rugby players who join because they want a job/education rather than just to wear a uniform.

Aren't we, in a way, a bunch of nerds?:D:mischief:
Sorry for jumping at the question, Flying Pig.
 
Hi flying pigs!

Since you were in the Falklands and I'm from Argentina, I'd like to know why you think the war was genuine...

I'm an open minded person so please don't feel afraid of telling what you really think, it's not that I'll insult you or anything... I'm really interested in knowing your opinion as there's been differentes approaches about the genuinity of the war...

As you may know, there was a military government here during the war (in fact, the goverment "de facto" gave up before losing the war) losing its image since tons of people were being killed (most of the accused of comunists, more that 20.000 young students at university)... Since people in the country started to feel uncomfortable with it, they sort of saw in the war a way to regain some power... you know, they wanted people to focus on other businesses...

When I was in the UK last january, I met some British who thought that the war was a great excuse for Ms. Tatcher, whose government was suffering from economic problems, to make people join forces agains the external enemy and keep em busy with other matters...

I've got also another question: how would you define our soldiers and our army?... It's widely known here that our army was (and still is) poorly prepared for battle and most of the soldiers were just young boys (between 18 and 20) that hadn't experience nor gear... what's your experience about our soldiers? did you directly fight them? were you in contact with them? (maybe when they surrendered... I've seen some video recording on the TV showing the white flag and our soldiers marching in line with their hands on their head while being watched by British soldiers)
 
Tough to follow a question like that but I'll try. When I was in the 2d Armored Cav, border guards whose mission was to slow the WP advance for 24 hours we were told a few things I'd like to understand better about 'up north', the UK zone. I was there in '75 '76 and am interested in any time frame.

1) No matter how well we fought in the Fulda Gap we were going to be outflanked up north by the Russians running hard across the North German plain crushing by weight of numbers everything in their path. Do you consider this to be the case or could you guys stop them up there, how, and where would you have held?

2) Well this should have been #1 but did you serve on the continent? If so where you in one of the border reaction units or one of the heavy divisions? How was the border strategy figured? We were supposed to ambush and delay but we had terrain...

3) What were your best defensive positions like up north? Was it all cities or did you have any hills and forests at all?

4) What was the strategy for training, or, what did they expect?

5) How do you think the Centurion measured up to the MBTs of the Russians?

6) Who was going to reinforce you, French/Benelux or Americans from Reforger?

7) When were you there?
 
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