Comment: Our troops deserve better

Nov 21 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

YOU would think it would be a fairly simple task. Giving soldiers sent out to fight for Queen and country the tools for the job.

Yet the evidence that has come out of the inquest into the death in Iraq of Royal Marine Corporal Ben Nowak and three of his comrades suggests it is anything but simple.

All four died when their boat was attacked by a makeshift bomb suspended from a bridge over the Shatt-al-Arab waterway in Basra, just over a year ago.

No doubt Corporal Nowak and the others joined the Royal Marines in the full knowledge that they might have to lay down their lives.

There is no point in pretending otherwise, and the professional soldiers, sailors and airmen who make up our Armed Forces will all have made a conscious decision to face that possibility.

But there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the kind of foul-up that led to the deaths of the four Marines a year ago. Basic training ignored, essential kit sitting in a warehouse unissued – it is a catalogue of error over which a proud and elite unit like the Royal Marines must feel deeply ashamed.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Far too many stories have emerged from Iraq and Afghanistan of soldiers left struggling for equipment that works, aircraft past their fly-by date – the list seems to go on and on.

Full marks to the Oxford coroner Andrew Walker for putting his opinion so bluntly. In an earlier era, a death on active service would not have been subject to an inquest, perhaps protecting those responsible from inquiring spotlights.

It probably comes as cold comfort to those out at the battlefront that the chain of responsibility runs all the way back to Whitehall. From staff officers to desk-bound pen-pushers, senior Civil Servants and ministers of the crown, everyone owes it to those in the front line.