I was watching Sharpe the other night. If you're unfamiliar with the TV series, it's adapted from the books by Bernard Cornwell and tells the story of a working-class man in the Napoleonic-era British Army who, through dint of his soldering skills, honour and trustworthiness, rises from the ranks to end up at the Battle of Waterloo as a Lieutenant-Colonel.
In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.
Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.
Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.
Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).
One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.
* A few PSs
PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).
PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.
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