LEADERSHIP makes a difference

The needed quality in our nation's success is and always will be LEADERSHIP.  No amount of money or political correctness can match the results of having the best Leader in place.

The United States has had many distinguished Leaders but presently, we are facing a Leadership deficit.  If America is to forge a future worthy of our past, we need to find and elect real leaders.

Presently, our President is the diametric opposite of what Leadership should be.  He promised " hope and change" and only delivered failure and a " Do as I say, not as I do" attitude.  His complete failure to lead has been documented and is the reason why our country is more divisively split now than ever before.

Mitt Romney is in need of a charisma upgrade but offers a more measured approach along with well documented management skill set.  He isn't Jefferson or Washington, but he is a much better manager than the lack-wit who has mucked up our country over the last 3 1/2 years.

NBC and Tom Brokaw will feature a documentary that gives us a lesson in what true leadership was back when the world faced the threat of World War II.  From 1938 - 1941, England stood alone against Nazi Germany.

Sir Winston Churchill was the key leader England needed.  He had failed previously but  learned key lessons from each experience and was able to rally his countrymen to stand against the onslaught of the Battle of Britain.

" Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.." 

Churchill's eloquent and tough-as-nails leadership held his country together.  No American Leader since President John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis has faced such a serious challenge.  The majority of the nation's citizens in 1962 were concerned but didn't really understand how close the world came to annihilation until years later. 

9/11 was a serious crisis and the country rallied behind President Bush, but Kennedy had to stare down the Russians who were threatening Nuclear War. 

Americans got to see 9/11 as it happened and rallied behind our President but were able to count on a standing military who responded to the attacks.  In World War 2, our nation and England had been on a peacetime status with diminished military forces when World War 2 happened.

Watch the special and take a lesson from History - Leadership makes the difference.

Leadership Under Fire
By SOHRAB AHMARI - Wall Street Journal
Their Finest Hour
Saturday, Aug. 11 at 8 p.m. on NBC

The word "hero" is thrown around lightly and frequently during Olympic season. But as Tom Brokaw reminds us in "Their Finest Hour," physical endurance and courage alone do not make heroes.

This remarkable documentary, set to air during NBC's regular Olympic programming, chronicles the heroism of Britain in the first two years of World War II, when, as Mr. Brokaw says, "England stood alone, when England was all that was left between liberty and tyranny." "Their Finest Hour" does not disclose any new historical facts. But by making extensive use of newly unearthed, color archival footage, plus the testimonies of British veterans, nurses and survivors, Mr. Brokaw pays tribute to Britain's "poetry of defiance" in the face of Nazi terror.

We meet a pilot who, at age 19, helped fend off the mighty German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain—the 1940 campaign by the Third Reich to break the Royal Air Force. "I never considered defeat," the pilot, now 93, tells Mr. Brokaw. "I don't think any of us ever did." A nurse recalls "the quiet courage of the men" and how that courage gave heart to the women.

Then came the Luftwaffe's merciless bombing of London and other cities. This was "a deliberate attempt by Hitler to terrorize London into defeat," the historian Andrew Roberts explains. All told the Nazi bombing of London left 40,000 dead, thousands more wounded and some two million homeless. But, Mr. Roberts says, Hitler "misunderstood the nature of the British people." St. Paul's Cathedral remained miraculously intact, and the newspaper headlines—"Is That the Best You Can Do, Adolf?"—testified to Britain's indomitable spirit.

The greatest symbol of that spirit was, of course, Prime Minister Winston Churchill—that "hard-drinking firebrand of vast experience and suspect judgment," as Mr. Brokaw puts it. (Though Mr. Brokaw doesn't pause to elaborate on that terse "suspect judgment" charge.) Churchill's mission was to ensure Britain would survive the Nazi onslaught long enough for the U.S. to enter the fray. "We are fighting by ourselves alone," he famously told his compatriots. "But we are not fighting for ourselves alone."

The wait was long and painful and the sleeping giant slow to awake. Militating against a U.S. entry into the war were isolationists led by the likes of Charles Lindbergh and his America First movement. "Let Europe fight its own battle," we hear one of Lindbergh's followers sneer. "They mean nothing to us." The rhetoric sounds eerily familiar to that deployed by contemporary proponents of isolationism of both the left-wing and right-wing varieties.

Today the athletes gathered in London and most of their spectators around the world take the special relationship between the U.S. and Britain for granted. The discomfiting question raised by Mr. Brokaw's documentary is: Will future generations of Britons and Americans appreciate the high price paid to forge it? There are no easy answers. Either way, this film might just be NBC's finest hour of Olympic programming

New Issue at Olympics in London - SQUIRRELS!!!

The Olympic Volleyball players have to watch out for more than sand in their bikinis....now they have to watch out for the Squirrels !!!

Talk about a battle in Britain....

Squirrels disrupt beach volleyball at Olympics - Orange.uk News

Olympic beach volleyball players have come across an unexpected handicap - squirrels burying their nuts on their courts.

The rodents have been burying beechnuts and acorns on six sandy practice courts at London's St James's Park.

And bikini-clad players have been left grimacing as they land barefoot on the squirrel snacks.

Groundsmen now have to rake the sand before practice sessions, reports The Sun.

Six courts, two warm-up courts and a hospitality lounge have been created in the leafy lakeside park close to Buckingham Palace.

The 15,000-seat main competition arena in nearby Horseguards Parade has not been affected.

A London 2012 source told the newspaper: "It's nuts but true. It seems squirrels have been invading the courts and either hiding or dropping their nuts.

"But it won't affect the competition because the sand is regularly raked."

Sir Winston Churchill is celebrated at the Morgan Library in NYC

A quiet week and it leads into another here at the new workplace overseas.....

A good write up in the NYT about a presentation on the writings of Sir Winston Churchill, one of the key people who kept Democracy alive when it was most threatened in World War 2...I feel that without men like him, our world would have succumbed to horrors unimaginable in the mid-20th century.

I salute our greatest allies, the British and one of their greatest statesmen, Sir Winston Churchill.

Successes in Rhetoric: Language in the Life of Churchill
‘Churchill: The Power of Words,’ at the Morgan Library
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN - NY TIMES

Published: June 8, 2012

The orotund proclamations will be unavoidable at the new exhibition “Churchill: The Power of Words,” at the Morgan Library & Museum, because at the center of the gallery is a semi-enclosed theater. And from it, however muted, will emerge recordings of Winston Churchill’s voice, speaking to Parliament, to British radio listeners and to American audiences, breaking on the ear like waves, rising and falling with every breath, sometimes suspended unexpectedly in midair, other times rushing forward with renewed vigor.

If you enter that small theater to hear excerpts from eight of his landmark speeches more clearly, you will also see the words on screen, laid out in poetic scansion (“The whole fury and might of the enemy/must very soon be turned on us”), just as Churchill wrote them, to match the rhythms of his voice.

But ignore the sound, if you can, and leave it for last. For it is best first to be reminded just how important those speeches by a British prime minister really were, and what difference they made.

This isn’t a history exhibition, so you won’t be able to take their full measure; you won’t fully grasp how washed up Churchill’s political career was in the mid-1930s; how few in England were prepared to recognize what was taking place in Germany; how few were also prepared to think the unthinkable about war, scarcely 20 years after the continent was so stained in blood; and how visionary Churchill was, in knowing what would happen and in understanding what price would be paid.

So you won’t really be able to understand that there was a period — between Germany’s beginning to bomb England in 1940 (killing more than 40,000) and the United States’ entrance to the war at the end of 1941 — when England might well have fallen or made generous accommodation to German demands, had Churchill not been a master of words and ideas, rallying his “great island nation” as prime minister with promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat.

But you will see enough to get a sense of what his wartime leadership meant. And what the rest of this fine exhibition accomplishes is to show how Churchill’s words can seem the expression of a life force, mixing mercurial passions and extraordinary discipline, passionate devotion and exuberant self-promotion, extravagant indulgence and ruthless analysis. The show, which opened on Friday, helps put a life in perspective that even during the years after the Sept. 11 attacks has been energetically celebrated as an ideal and just as energetically derided by critics for its intemperate character.

More than 60 documents and artifacts have been gathered by Allen Packwood, the director of the Churchill Archives Center at the University of Cambridge, England, for this exhibition, also drawing on the holdings of Churchill’s house at Chartwell, Kent. There are few opportunities to see these documents on public display, even in England, though many have been digitized as part of the museum at the Churchill Center and Museum in London.

There are letters from Winston’s difficult childhood, when his wealthy American mother and neglectful, titled father sent him to boarding school at 8. (An early letter home from 1883 or ’84 is scrawled with a child’s “X’s” — kisses rarely returned by any but his beloved nanny.) And there is a report card in which the child, not yet 10, is described as “a constant trouble to everybody.”

But we see the adventurer and historian begin to evolve, courting danger in battle and then writing its history. (“I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage,” he wrote his mother in 1897, “than of anything else in the world.”) There are drafts of speeches that are mapped out like poetry, a sample of Churchill’s amateur landscape painting, his Nobel Prize in Literature from 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory.” (The onetime Prime Minister Arthur Balfour described Churchill’s three-volume history of World War I as a “brilliant autobiography disguised as a history of the universe.”)

Perhaps the most remarkable document here is a New York doctor’s prescription from Jan. 26, 1932. Churchill had been on a lecture tour when he was hit by a car at Fifth Avenue and 76th Street and needed medical assistance.

“This is to certify,” the doctor writes — this in the midst of Prohibition — “that the postaccident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.” The quantity, the doctor continues, is “naturally indefinite,” but the “minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters,” or just over 8 ounces.

That “naturally indefinite” quantity would become one of Churchill’s trademarks, along with his cigars and the rhythms of his voice, which was heavily used in his political career. He was a candidate in 21 parliamentary contests between 1899 and 1955, losing 5 of them. But all of this — even the elaborate touch screens showing every document in the exhibition, along with other documents and transcriptions of handwriting — would inspire purely specialized interest had it not been for Churchill’s speeches and writings from the mid-1930s into the 1950s.

This was a rhetorical achievement, almost a musical one, in which Churchill’s innate optimism provided a kind of elevating promise even as he was trying to map out the scope of cataclysm. It was also a strategic achievement, for in his speeches we can see him demonstrating that there were choices to be made. And it was a political achievement because before the United States was involved in World War II, America had to be addressed as well, made to understand the stakes.

Churchill shaped a notion of the “English-speaking peoples” that proved fundamental because he understood that the English literary and political traditions had defined the very character of liberal democracy that was coming under threat. Churchill’s speeches declared an allegiance of language and of ideology. They also helped shape that allegiance, celebrating a particular heritage and its possibilities, while emphasizing its vulnerabilities and the need for its defense.

The achievement is a little like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, defining the stakes of the Civil War while reshaping the America’s conception of itself. There are a few comparisons between Churchill and Lincoln in these documents, which seem thoroughly appropriate. (President Roosevelt framed some lines by Lincoln as a 70th-birthday gift for Churchill in 1944.)

Churchill was attentive to the long line of historical ideas. And his ability to conjure that tradition for support is another reason individual setbacks were less crucial for him. Something larger was at stake. It wasn’t just a matter of opposition; it was a matter of what was being championed, even if the British Empire was in its twilight and the United States was beginning to bear the standard.

This was a reason Churchill urged the United States to claim European territory in the late days of the war, to prevent Stalin from gaining too much control. It was Churchill, in the wake of the war, who saw what was on the horizon. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” he said in his famous 1946 speech in Fulton, Mo., “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” There would be no respite for the war-weary.

All this is latent in this marvelously compact and suggestive show. It also demonstrates why attempts to displace Churchill from a central position in recent history are misguided. Flaws and failings are plentiful in individual lives, as in cultures and civilizations, but there are more important things deserving recognition: traditions that run deep and wide, that justly inspire advocacy and allegiance and that might even lead, as Churchill promises, to “broad, sunlit uplands.”

Jack the Springer Spaniel saves lives in Afghanistan

When you think of dogs in a war zone, a "Springer Spaniel" would likely not be the first breed that comes to mind but here is proof that the breed can do the job even in the rough terrain of Afghanistan.

Good Show Jack.

Jack the springer spaniel, the bomb-sniffer dog who's saved his master's life... again and again
By David Wilkes - UK Mail
7th December 2011

Amid the myriad dangers of the Afghan conflict, Jack the springer spaniel is so much more than just a man’s best friend.

Thanks to his skill at sniffing out bombs, he has saved his handler Private Andrew Duff’s life ‘more times’ than the soldier ‘cares to think about’.

Jack is one of a number of the Army’s specially trained Arms and Explosives Search dogs, scouring the deadly paths of Helmand Province for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by the Taliban. He has prevented countless servicemen and civilians being killed or maimed.

Blissfully unaware of the danger he faces, six-year-old Jack has been keenly working with Private Duff, 31, for 18 months, proving himself an essential asset with at least nine confirmed ‘finds’.

Now his feats have made him the cover star of this week’s edition of Country Life, out today, where he is featured in a new series about Britain’s ‘top dogs’.

Not for nothing does Private Duff, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, describe himself and Jack as ‘inseparable’.

‘Once, we were searching a compound in North Helmand that we had patrolled past many times previously. Jack told me that he’d found something, right under where I was about to step,’ he said. ‘To this day I am certain that he saved my life and those around me. I trust him implicitly.

Jack underwent 15 weeks of intensive training in Britain, involving sessions on fitness and obedience and tests with distractions such as smoke and heat, before being flown out to Afghanistan, where he spent another three weeks learning how to locate IEDs.

A dog indicates a ‘find’ by sitting. The training is based on rewards, with dogs receiving a treat – often a play with a tennis ball or a cuddle – every time they sniff out an explosive device.

Private Duff said: ‘Jack’s appetite for searching is immeasurable. Whenever he’s out of his kennel, he’s working, whether I’ve asked him to or not. He loves it.’

The extraordinary bond between military dogs and their masters was tragically highlighted earlier this year when Theo, a 22-month-old springer spaniel cross, suffered a seizure and passed away shortly after his handler, Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, 26, was killed in a firefight with the Taliban in Helmand.

The dog, which had broken the record for successful finds with his master, was said to have died of a broken heart.

The Lads from Top Gear Take 10 Downing Street

Well, not exactly "take" 10 Downing Street....they used the residence of the British Prime Minister as a backdrop for filming a Top Gear Challenge. Jeremy Clarkson and British Prime Minister David Cameron are friends and it was all done to highlight British Goods via a road trip to India for the Top Gear Boffins.

The US version of Top Gear was dreadful and the presenters they had could not replicate the chemistry that goes on between Clarkson, Hammond and May.

Can't wait until this episode shows up on BBC America. They are Brilliant.

Don't mind us Prime Minister: Jeremy Clarkson and crew films Top Gear's Christmas special... outside Number 10
By Amy Oliver UK Mail
29th November 2011

Those worried that Jeremy Clarkson has designs on Number 10 and a new career in politics shouldn't panic.

The 51-year-old presenter was only outside the Prime Minister's residence today to shoot scenes for the Top Gear Christmas special.
He was joined by fellow presenters James May, 48, and Richard Hammond, 41.

All were tight-lipped about the reason for their visit and a BBC spokesman refused to confirm or deny whether David Cameron is likely to star in the 90-minute show. They had to stop filming when Mr Cameron emerged from Number 10 to go to hear George Osborne's Autumn Statement.

Clarkson is a friend of the Prime Minister and the pair exchanged a few words before Mr Cameron was driven away.

They had to stop a second time because of a news helicopter hoping to film Mr Cameron's journey, that was hovering overhead.

The Top Gear trio journey to India this year in yet another epic adventure that sees them try to fix Britain's economy through trade promotion.

The show's producer Andy Wilman, today explained on the Top Gear blog that the team were trying to assist Mr Cameron, who a few months ago, said Britain must become a favoured trading partner of India.

'Top Gear, we thought, could help solve this problem with a trade mission, flying the flag for UKPLC,' Wilman wrote.

'Our plan was to drive across India, drumming up interest in British goods, advertising the peerless standards of British skills, British nous, British Britishness.

'We would make the Indians think: “No, we shall not buy mayonnaise from Belgium, but Angel Delight and Kendal Mint Cake from the British."'The three men were given a rather handsome budget of £7,000 each to purchase a car that would not only get them from one end of India to the other, but also represent dear old Blighty.

Clarkson chose a 1995 Celebration edition Jaguar XJS 4.0 litre, while Hammond purchased a classic Mini Cooper.Meanwhile May decided he wanted a Rolls-Royce, but had to make do with a 1976 Rolls-Royce Shadow.

They started in Mumbai before driving North through Delhi and into the Himalayas.

Whether all three motors made it to 14,000 feet is unknown.
'You'll just have to tune in to find out,' the BBC spokesman said.

All three presenters say they are recognised in countries around the world, but Hammond insists they never set out to make such a popular show.

Speaking to the Huffington Post he said: 'All we set out to do ten years ago was make the best car show we possibly could. The minute we start trying to contrive it to be something else, I'm sure it will stop working.'

And of the unique chemistry between the threesome he added: 'It's never changed. From day one, if Jeremy crashes into something, I will laugh, and I expect him to in return. You couldn't fake it, people would soon suss us out.

And the Bride wore a PORSCHE.....

Diamonds maybe a girl's best friend but one savvy lass in England decided that she would rather have a PORSCHE....one she built herself from an old VW....

Where are girls like this stateside??? She sounds like a real catch.

A bride's welded bliss: How she built Porsche from wrecked VW for her big day
By Sadie Whitelocks - UK MAIL
15th September 2011

For Megan Ashton, it was her childhood dream to arrive at her wedding in a classic Porsche.
Now the 26-year-old has done exactly that – not by hiring one, as any bride might, but by building her own from a clapped-out Volkswagen Beetle.

She spent six years painstakingly transforming the 40-year-old VW into a Porsche 356, the company’s first production model.

The Royal Navy engineering officer paid £200 for the wreck before stripping it down to the chassis and meticulously rebuilding it virtually from scratch, donning blue overalls, getting covered in grime and grease, and spending £4,000 in the process.

The stunning vehicle now features a white leather interior with a mahogany finish, has a 356 body shell, and includes an authentic steering wheel and speedometer. It also boasts an impressive top speed of more than 100mph – and is valued at £25,000.

The proud owner was driven in it by her father to her wedding to Rob Ashton, also 26, a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

After the ceremony at Sandhurst military academy in Surrey, her new husband took the wheel to drive them to their reception.

‘I loved every minute of it and it was such a special moment to be able to pull up on my wedding day in it,’ said the new Mrs Ashton, from Amesbury, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. ‘It was a close-run thing getting the car finished in the end, but after six years it was well worth it.

‘There were times when I didn’t think we’d get it done in time as it was such a huge project, but it meant so much. I dreamed of driving the car but got carried away buying my wedding dress, which meant it was quite difficult to fit in.’

The 356 was created by Ferdinand Porsche, son of the company founder who had designed the Volkswagen Beetle.

It was manufactured between 1948 and 1956 and shared many parts with the Beetle to save money – making the two cars easier for Mrs Ashton to fuse together.

She bought the battered 1969 VW when she was a student, then stripped it down to the bare chassis before fitting larger cylinders and pistons to the engine, increasing it from 1285cc to 1776cc.

Only the chassis, which had to be shortened, wheels and engine remain of the original car, which was also given a new registration plate.

Mrs Ashton, whose father Viv Beal, 54, runs a garage in Barnstaple, Devon, said: ‘I know people might think it is quite unusual for a girl to be interested in cars but I have always grown up surrounded by it.

‘My Mum and Dad have been buying various parts for the car for birthday and Christmas presents for the past six years – so I am looking forward to getting some girly treats now.’

Her father added: ‘We’re all into classic cars and it was a very proud day for all of us. Megan’s Porsche replica is her pride and joy.

The Solemn Tribute by the Village of Wooten Bassett to British Military who made the ultimate sacrifice - Soon to be no more.

My affinity for the British people and all that Britain represents is understandable as they are the one true ally we have in the world. I have served alongside Britain's military and they are a good lot. The President has demonstrated he doesn't see it that way but our disagreement is based on his warped view of what is right and my knowledge that he is dead wrong.

The special relationship we share with the British goes beyond politics and all things current. We are a nation borne from the original 13 colonies which were British and our greatest minds were educated in the British tradition. We share military and folklore, we are cut from the same cloth. I feel that the people of Britain will always be there for us as we will always do our part to assist our neighbors "across the pond".

Here is a story that details how the citizens of one small British town decided to do their part to recognize the sacrifice made by their military and how due to changes mainly driven by cost cutting, they will no longer be able to pay their solemn tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Ending Wootton Bassett repatriation procession is a cynical attempt to conceal the price of Britain's misguided wars
By Gerald Seymour- UK MAIL

6th August 2011

Nothing had quite prepared me — certainly not the occasional clips on TV news broadcasts — for the raw emotion and pain on the High Street in Wootton Bassett when a repatriation procession in honour of dead British soldiers goes through the town.

The experience of watching the hearse with the flag-draped coffin come up the hill and then crawl to a stop in front of the bereaved families and friends, and in front of the solemnly lowered standards of the organisations for veteran servicemen, is gut-wrenching.

The civilian population of Wootton Bassett has taken over, reclaimed these young men who are brought into the town on their way to an Oxford mortuary

It is also, for most of us, our only moment when we can touch, feel, experience something of the distant and faraway wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have seen military men being mourned before. During the scorching summer of 1967, I witnessed the soldiers of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders — the battalion commanded by the charismatic Colonel Colin ‘Mad Mitch’ Mitchell — make their farewells to their colleagues killed in Aden and buried in the Silent Valley cemetery.

As a reporter for ITN’s News At Ten, I covered the final withdrawal of British forces from that God-forsaken colony, much of it under sustained attack from local gunmen. A formal ceremony, with pipes and an officer’s address and a padre’s prayers and impeccable parade ground drills, was on show.

It was a demonstration of the military’s respect for their own. Not a wet eye, and not a choke in a voice.

In the Lower Falls of Belfast, in the early days of the Army’s war with the Provisional IRA, after a sniper had killed an infantryman the soldiers would react with a bloody-minded defiance.

With a camera crew, I was there to watch an intensely moving few minutes staged by the Green Jackets in that blood-soaked time at the end of 1971 when Army casualties soared.

Under leaden skies, the main street outside the barracks was blocked off. The traffic of this principal artery into the city of Belfast log-jammed and a coffin was brought and laid on hurdles on the central white line.

There are so many people who have never heard a shot fired in anger but feel obliged to stand in solidarity with the mourners

Prayers were said, a hymn was sung. Only when the hearse had left for nearby Aldergrove airport was the traffic in that vehemently Republican area allowed to flow again.

Many years ago I handed in my Press cards and became a full-time writer: setting myself the goal of trying to be a witness of my country’s sentiments and moods, to feel its pulse and reflect it.

With an idea for a new book about our soldiers who die in Afghanistan jostling in my mind, I was drawn to that small Wiltshire town on a repatriation day.

Compared with those ceremonies I’d seen in Aden and Belfast, Wootton Bassett is so different. The civilian population has taken over, reclaimed these young men who are brought into the town on their way to an Oxford mortuary.

It’s not the soldiers in uniform who stand on the pavements, erect and unblinking as they salute in pressed fatigues and polished boots, who are in the forefront.

Instead, dominant among the silent watchers are the men and women of humble housing estates, of the British Legion clubs, the shop staff and the bank workers who line the High Street four or five deep — or the grey-haired and grizzled bikers in their leather jackets.

There are so many people who have never heard a shot fired in anger but feel obliged to stand in solidarity with the mourners, and so many who know next to nothing of Basra and Al Amarah and the communities of Helmand province, but would feel a sense of shame if they missed a fallen soldier coming through.

The military are there, but are sidelined. Dignitaries are absent, and not missed.

My most poignant memory of Wootton Bassett is the sound of the heart-breaking weeping of a mother beside the hearse, breaking the quiet all around her . . . and so many people that day blinked away tears.

However, not for much longer will the crowds, quiet in respect, be on the High Street.

By next month, the nearby base into which the bodies are flown — RAF Lyneham — will be winding down for closure, and all further fatalities will be taken to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

The hearses, then, will avoid Wootton Bassett and will divert instead from Brize and around the outskirts of the town of Carterton, and have a shorter run to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where post-mortems are performed for local coroners.

Don’t hold your breath and expect ministers and MoD civil servants to facilitate the recreation of the Wootton Bassett mood at Carterton.

Families I’ve spoken to, and the NCOs who escort them, have told me of the comfort the bereaved take from the solidarity of the crowds on the pavements. The support is tangible but not welcome at the top echelon.

Senior officers will be happy to get rid of the Wootton Bassett business.

They believe the stop in the town, not more than one minute, to be ‘mawkish’, ‘sentimental’, no doubt similar to the ‘emotional incontinence’ with which a columnist described the reaction to Diana’s death, and — above all — they fear it is leeching away the nation’s tolerance of these overseas adventures.

Also they don’t like the nation being reminded of what many lining the route call ‘these bloody bombs’, or these ‘bastard things’ that take so many of the lives, and maim so many more.

The roadside explosives that wrought havoc in Iraq, and those buried and hidden beside tracks and in compound walls through Helmand in Afghanistan, are a new weapon in warfare, terrifying to troops and creating nightmarish tensions.

They have stripped away the superiority of the training of Nato troops and their equipment. The bombs have tilted the balance between the resources of western forces and a peasant militia, perhaps to the level where such wars are unwinnable.

Three out of every four repatriations have been the result of deaths from so-called Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

In addition, there are hospital wards and rehabilitation units crammed with the cruelly injured amputees, struck down by IEDs. Alongside them are the hidden time-bomb victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The Help For Heroes campaign is a truly wonderful expression of the public’s generosity — but as valuable and with little of the glamour is a charity called Combat Stress, dedicated to helping the young men who have patrolled in Basra or Helmand and are left devastated by the tensions created by the hidden bombs, nerves stretched to breaking point.

Many of the PTSD symptoms of acute depression, alcohol-dependency and violence will surface when the soldier is back home. The IEDs have left a devastating legacy in our society, and it will be with us for many years.

I’ve been at Wootton Bassett when the bodies of Ammunition Technical Officers — the bomb disposal people — have come through the High Street. Some have been killed when, exhausted from the number of jobs heaped on them, they have made one fatal mistake while defusing a device.

Others have been targeted by Taliban snipers who know that a bomb disposal man will always try to make safe a bomb, and will linger there and expose himself, not simply blow the wretched thing up.

Why? Why do these men take such fearful risks to defuse the devices? Why do so many hazard their lives in dismantling IEDs?

Only by standing in the crowds at Wootton Bassett can you begin to appreciate the extent of their commitment, their sacrifice. They treat these lethal pieces of electronic engineering as if they were potential evidence in a criminal prosecution. They act, almost, like the scenes-of-crime teams in a British city.

They are defusing the bombs so that the working parts can be flown back to laboratories in Britain and the U.S. where state-of-the-art science can examine them. Which bombs are made by which engineers at which work bench is basic to the investigation: every engineer leaves a trace of his work in manufacture and assembly.

They’ll look for the origin of the parts — where the circuits, fuses, wires, computer chips came from and where they were shipped to. And they’ll hunt for the engineer’s DNA: was the air-conditioning not functioning in his workshop, did a bead of sweat drip on to the circuit board’s plastic surround? Did he prick his finger and leave a microscopic speck of blood inside the bomb package?

The Americans alone have spent $20 billion on the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organisation, a U.S. Defence Department body established to help overcome these infernal weapons.

It’s an incredible sum, but it points up the devastating power and influence on the battlefield of the roadside bomb. In this cat-and-mouse game there would be few American or British scientists, or soldiers, confident of supremacy.

Top of the target list are the bomb-makers. If identified by the laboratories and located by intelligence they will suffer ‘interdiction’, the sanitised phrase for extra-judicial assassination.

The difficulty — not inconsiderable — is that the bombs are mostly made in Iran and smuggled into Iraq or Afghanistan.

A British bomb disposal expert, who has defused scores of sophisticated devices, gave me a word picture of his typical enemy.

‘An Iranian engineer in his mid-30s, he would have a family — wife and children — has an electronics degree from a Tehran university, and perhaps another from one in Europe.

'His religion would be a major motivation along with a fervent patriotism. He believes his intellect is a gift from God, is an egotist and a perfectionist, something of a genius.’

A genius intent on carnage and whose bloody handiwork can be seen week by week in the tragic procession of bodies through Wootton Bassett.

An hour or so before a repatriation, the bay at Swindon bus station for the 55 or 55A services to the Wiltshire market town begins to fill. There are men from the last National Service intakes and widows whose late husbands were long in the military. A few have dressed smartly for the occasion, most are in their everyday clothes, but men wear miniature medals and often have a faded beret with a polished cap badge.

They are utterly decent people and I came to feel privileged to know them a little. Friendships will have been formed since Wootton Bassett began, but the greetings are subdued and there’s no laughter.

When dropped off by the bus, they wander down the High Street to find a place to stand — near the book shop or the bakery or the bank or close to the Cross Keys pub. There is a man from the West Midlands who has missed only one — when his road was deep under snow. There is a veteran who flies in from Northern Ireland each time.

They have become a Band of Brothers. But I sense that most find it hard to link this sleepy little town with the precision work done in a workshop in Iran, with the foot- soldiers bringing the crates of ready-to-use bombs towards Basra or Al Qurnah or along desolate mountain trails skirting military outposts in Herat province.

Only when the bell in the tower of St Bartholomew and All Saints in the town tolls is the link forged.

It is so difficult for us who have never seen the combat, first hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but have only stood and watched and been a witness in Wootton Bassett, to comprehend the new warfare of the roadside bombs, and assimilate the cost we have asked our servicemen to pay.

When the hearse and its escort pulls away, the town is left with a great numbed sadness, and a sense of a fogged confusion . . . and soon repatriations will shift to RAF Brize Norton, and the High Street here will see no more of these gatherings.

It is wishful thinking to hope that Government will intervene and offer mourning families more of an occasion on the new route from Brize Norton.

They’ll draw the least possible attention to the price paid for involvement in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Myself, I don’t want politicians or the Ministry anywhere near the cortege once it leaves an RAF base. Wootton Bassett grew from a small and unlikely beginning and developed a unique character.

After the move to Brize Norton, perhaps something new will be forged with its own mood and singular identity — the people dubbed as ‘ordinary’ will surely make it happen. But it will never be able to match the proud dignity of this town where spontaneity, not ceremony, has always ruled.

A man broke the silence at one repatriation. While family and friends loaded the hearse roof with red roses, he shouted, ‘Well done, lad, well done’.

Another man took the cue and called out, ‘Good boy, good boy’. Tears flowed free.

Whatever the future route, however much Government might wish to keep hidden the sorry toll of its foreign adventures, there are — thank God — so many good people who will make sure the families know that the sacrifice of a loved one in that awful dust and dirt of a faraway place will not be forgotten.


Gerald Seymour’s latest novel A Deniable Death is published by Hodder at £12.99.

Leading from the front...

We judge LEADERS by the example they set. By demonstrating that they also have "skin in the game", we see that they too are willing to place themselves out front and at risk. It is the mark of excellence in Leadership.

Look closely at our present Leaders. Senator John McCain set the standard as he is a highly decorated Veteran and paid a high price for the freedoms we enjoy. The present "Empty Suit" who occupies the center seat at the White House, not so much....He likely saw that as beneath his personal status....He has demonstrated that he holds contempt for the military, only expressing feigning support once he got elected, and only because it is one of his duties as President. Slick Mitt Romney also has no military background nor does any of his 4 sons.....it wasn't the work they were prepared to take on as that was something the poor people do...

Now let's look across the pond to our ally the British....Prince Harry will be serving a 2nd tour in Afghanistan. Last time he was on the ground with the British contingent at FOB Dehli. I've been there briefly as I flew around southern Helmand Province and it was not a place I wanted to stay long. FOB Dehli was listed as " RED " by our security which meant it was HOT, and I'm not speaking about the ambient air temperture. It was rated as unsafe and likely to be subject to regular attacks.

Now, Prince Harry will be going back as a Apache Helicopter Pilot. Good Show Sir....show them how it's done. The British have my keen admiration as they are not afraid to put their Leaders out on the front line as that is where they belong. Leading from the front.....Brilliant.

Good show young Prince. Show us how it is done. We are glad to call the British our best friends, regardless of what the feckless idiot in charge in Washington says. The British are leading by example and those who truly understand LEADERSHIP appreciate the efforts of Prince Harry here in Afghanistan. He understands the key principle of " Leadership by example".

Prince Harry’s Apache war on the Taliban
He's cleared to fight in chopper By DUNCAN LARCOMBE Royal Editor, and RICHARD WHITE
16 Jun 2011 - UK SUN

PRINCE Harry is going back to war in Afghanistan as an Apache attack helicopter pilot, The Sun can reveal.

Defence chiefs and the Queen have given the go-ahead for Harry, a qualified Apache flier, to fulfil his dream of returning to battle the Taliban.

The 26-year-old Prince - known as Captain Wales by the military - will unleash Hellfire missiles at the Taliban when he returns.

Once he finishes final battle and weapons training, Harry will be at the controls of the world's most sophisticated attack helicopter.

His main tasks will be to provide air cover for ground troops and to seek and destroy Taliban positions.

Harry, a qualified Apache pilot attached to the Army Air Corps, will have the chopper's awesome armour-piercing cannon at his disposal along with the dreaded Hellfires.

But he could find himself taking on Taliban fighters alone if his £46million craft is shot down or crashes.

As third in line to the throne and a "high value target," insurgents would be desperate to capture him.

On every mission he will be armed with a pistol and SA80 assault rifle as well as field dressings, morphine and emergency rations to give him the best chance of survival.

But an Army Air Corps source said: "Harry will face extreme dangers. Should his Apache malfunction and be forced down the tables are seriously turned.

Female British Apache pilot in Afghanistan, " I've killed more people than ...Jack The Ripper and any other serial killer ...all put together"

Equality of the sexes is the norm for the British Military....Read an excerpt from Dressed To Kill, by Charlotte Madison...a British Apache AH-64 Helicopter Pilot.

Her POV on the battle from the front seat of an awesome machine.

I feel that the fairer sex are capable and up to the job but may like many others, gain a new appreciation and understanding of the emotional toll being underfire extracts from each of us who have lived through the experience of combat.

I’ve killed more than Harold Shipman, Jack The Ripper and Myra Hindley put together Adapted by BEN JACKSON

CHARLOTTE MADISON, 26, beat the odds to be chosen as the first female pilot of a British Apache attack helicopter for the Army Air Corps.

Here, in the serialisation of her book, Dressed To Kill, she tells how she is thrown headfirst into battle after being posted to Afghanistan.

" I'M searching woods near an area dubbed RPG Alley for attackers who have hit one of our helicopters causing two casualties.

It's two weeks into my first tour to Afghanistan and I'm flying near Now Zad.

On the radio I'm listening to a fellow pilot and trying to keep up with all the grids he's sending. For every one there are more than 30 button pushes.

RPG Alley is one of the Taliban's favourite firing points. They set up RPGs - rocket propelled grenades - to land inside the British area then melt away.

I flick between my two screens. The first is better for picking up movement but the second can see through the foliage and trace the heat signatures of people, The radio crackles with our call sign. "Ugly Five One, this is Five Zero, we've got movers!"

I see four figures darting in and out of trees. It is confirmed they are Taliban, and probably the ones firing rockets at our soldiers 30 minutes ago.

I aim. Each time the trigger is pulled four rockets, each spraying 80 six-inch tungsten darts which punch holes in everything they touch, will fly towards the target.

Approaching the target at over 100mph I say into the radio: "Five One firing."

I watch with satisfaction as the rockets hammer the woods.

All eyes search for movement. We see none.

"That was your first real engagement, wasn't it?" my co-pilot "Fog" says. "How do you feel?" On a professional level, I'm happy. I didn't crumble under the pressure of the real thing. "Felt fine," I say.

Unease

As we shut down the engines and walk away back at base a creeping sense of uncertainty starts to bubble through me. I feel slightly nauseous as I look around and see the guys on the ground working.

Everything is just going on as normal but I have this creeping sense of unease about what we're really here for.

Now I am a killer. My heart is hammering. This is my job. I push the feelings away but it's hard.

The Boss comes over. "Good work, Charlie." His smile is honest. "Thanks, Boss."

Charlotte had three tours of duty in Afghanistan over 12 months. In one she was involved in a critical mission to rescue a wounded soldier, Mathew Ford. She continues her story...

He was believed to be lying injured after a ground attack on a compound called Jugroom Fort, in Helmand. One of our top pilots, "Face", has a bold plan to fly in and get him, strap the injured man to the Apache and fly out.

Our Apache is to provide covering fire. But as we go in suddenly Face is really shouting. He must be in a bad way. "I'm a sitting duck, I'm a sitting duck." Face's voice penetrates my skull.

I fire two missiles at point-blank range into the room at the fort where muzzle flashes are spitting. They stop and we reset just as Face says: "They're firing again. I can't get them with my gun." One enemy RPG. That's all it would take.

I struggle to get the missiles off at such close quarters. "Get some f***ing fire down!" my colleague, Darwin, is shouting from the back seat. I'm wildly squeezing the trigger.

After sending another missile through the roof of the building, our final one slams into a window and the firing stops.

We fly underneath the blanket of smog - the scene looks like a macabre cartoon of a war zone, rubble, smoke, tracer, tiny bodies and plumes of angry fire.

What a mess. Only our rockets left now. We set up for a run just to the east of where the two rescue Apaches are still sitting on the ground. I long to look but can't spare the concentration. We fire half our rockets, then repeat the manoeuvre to the north. They come out shooting in pairs, with their ar*es on fire.

Suddenly an enemy RPG shoots past my window. "What the f***? F***, help, f***."

My head spins and I realise we are barely higher than the trees. I can look through the windows of the nearby buildings.

I send the final flechette rockets into the distance. Face's flight lifts off in a huge cloud of dust and grit. As soon as they're away, Darwin pulls max power and climbs away to 2,000ft.

"We're Winchester," I tell him, with a huge exhalation of pent-up breath. It means we're out of ammo. (The saying is from the First World War when biplane pilots had nothing left to fire and reached for their Winchester repeater rifles.) No one had yet gone Winchester in an Apache.

"Hello Five Two, this is Five Three pulling up, Winchester," I tell my flight commander, Nick. "Blimey. Not bad for a six-minute sortie," he replies.

Back on the ground we find out Mathew Ford didn't make it. The knowledge sits heavily with me. It just seems so unfair.

A week later I walk into the squadron rest tent and the TV is on. A few people are crowded around watching. It is a documentary about the lives of some of the Marines out here.

It takes me a while to realise that the lively, funny, healthy-looking man on the screen is the one who died in an instant, before my eyes, behind a dusty outhouse. It is like a punch in the stomach. I long to reach into the TV screen and pull out his smiling, brave, handsome face.

Nausea rushes through me and I want to scratch at my skin. I feel horribly unsteady on my feet.

Horrified

I have to get fresh air. Resting my head in my hands, I tell myself to hold it together.

Something has been playing on my mind, too. Some of the boys keep a "kill count". I don't, but I have an idea of the scale of what I've done. "You know," I say slowly, wanting to gauge her reaction, "I've killed more people than Harold Shipman, Myra Hindley, Jack The Ripper and any other serial killer you can name all put together. If that's not f***ed up, I don't know what is."

I want to see if she looks horrified.

She looks me straight in the eye. "I think of our job as being like an airborne hitman. You get a scrap of paper with a grid on it and get told to kill whoever's there. It's kind of cool. And we're on the side of good." .

"I guess we just have to do what we're trained to do, and do it as well as we can," Jo says reassuringly.

I feel as if I've sorted out the mess in my brain a little. If Jo doesn't think I'm nuts, or a bad person, then there's a good chance that, tomorrow, I won't either. "

Dressed To Kill, by Charlotte Madison is published on March 18, £14.99. To buy it from the Sun bookshop for £13.49 visit thesunbookshop.co.uk

'Zeal Does Not Rest' - HMS Ark Royal is decommissioned with overwhelming appreciation for her service

A sad day for the British Navy.....The crew of the Ark Royal have our thanks and respects for the good service and defense of freedom. The British Navy will hopefully rebuild and once again stand shoulder to shoulder with the US Navy in keeping the seas free.

Best of British: Tears flow as Ark Royal's last 150 sailors say an emotional farewell
By UK Daily Mail Reporter
11th March 2011

Tearful crowds have gathered for an emotional farewell to the HMS Ark Royal as the doomed Royal Navy's flagship was decommissioned.

The last remaining 150 sailors serving on board Britain's most famous warship watched as her white ensign was lowered for the final time.

Principal guest First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope inspected a guard comprising 30 of the ship's company at the aircraft carrier's home port of Portsmouth, Hants.

The Royal Marines Band played ceremonial music during the hour long service conducted by the ship's chaplain and attended by more than 900 family and former commanding officers.

The 689ft long ship was controversially decommissioned three years early due to government cuts.

Captain Jerry Kyd, the last Commanding Officer of HMS Ark Royal, who now commands sister ship HMS Illustrious, said: 'Ark Royal is the best of British and represents everything great about our country.

'She has served all over the world in tough battles and paying farewell to her is a very emotional occasion.

'I'm very proud to have served as her last captain and will cherish her fantastic spirit.

'Ark Royal has played a very important role throughout her history and has had considerable success in delivering carrier strike.

'My very first job after finishing my initial officer training 25 years ago at Dartmouth was in the then brand new HMS Ark Royal.

'It is therefore a great honour for me to have been her last captain.

'I am only too aware that this famous ship and her iconic name mean a great deal to many people.

'Although Ark Royal will be decommissioned, the new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers are vastly more capable and will provide the Royal Navy with an exciting future.'

Ark's operations have included playing a pivotal part in the NATO campaign during the Bosnia conflict and, in early 2003, leading the UK's naval forces during Op Telic - the invasion of Iraq, with a fleet of helicopters embarked.

Last November The Queen visited the ship in Portsmouth as part of Ark Royal's 25th anniversary celebrations.

She clocked up 621,551 nautical miles during her career and made her final entry to Portsmouth on December 3 last year.

One of the final crew members of the Ark Royal was wren Shannon Brown, 20, from Hull, in east Yorks, who took part in the ceremony.

She said: 'I have to admit I had a lump in my throat during the ceremony and at times it was hard to hold it together.

'My time aboard has been fantastic and eventful, I've been here nearly three years and made a lot of friends.

'The Ark Royal is our most famous warship and I will always be proud to say I was part of her final crew.' The ship, which is the fifth to bear the name Ark Royal, was launched in 1981 on the River Tyne by the Queen Mother and commissioned in 1985.

She had intervened in the naming of the ship, requesting she be called Ark Royal following a public outcry over the planned name of HMS Indomitable.

The name Ark Royal has played an important role in the history of the Royal Navy since the first ship earned her battle stripes against the Spanish Armada under Lord Howard in 1588.

The third Ark Royal played an integral part in the Second World War, helping to track down the German battleship Bismarck before herself being torpedoed by a German U-boat and sinking.

The current ship, which can reach a speed of more than 30 knots, received its battle honours on Iraq's Fao peninsula during the 2003 military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The ship has the motto 'Zeal Does Not Rest' and can carry 22 aircraft.
Its future remains unclear. It may be sold, used for spare parts or turned into a museum.

The decision to scrap the ship leaves the UK without the ability to launch fast jets from a British aircraft carrier until the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carrier comes into service at the end of the decade.

The first Ark Royal was to be called Ark, which became Ark Raleigh, following the convention at the time where the ship bore the name of its owner - Sir Walter Raleigh.

In order to reduce his debts to Queen Elizabeth I he sold the ship to her in 1587 for 5,000 pounds and it then became known as Ark Royal.

Last Flight of the Harriers

The Last flight of the UK Harrier....sad to see as they won the day in the Falklands. Not sure what to think as the Brits have had to cut back on thier Navy and for an Island nation, that can't be a good thing.....Good Luck Brits....I feel that the vestiges that made Britain a force to be reckoned with are slowly being surrendered to progress....or regress....or worse.

Last hurrah for the Harrier: Jump jets take to the skies for their final farewell

By Ian Drury - UK Daily Mail
Last updated at 12:52 PM on 16th December 2010

Flying in a spectacular diamond formation so tight it ­appears they are ­almost ­touching, 16 of Britain’s legendary jump jets soar through the wintry skies.

The occasion was billed as a celebration but, for many, the mood was as sombre as the gloomy weather.

On a freezing day heavy with ­emotion, the ­Harrier — the ­revolutionary aircraft that helped Britain defeat Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982 — took to the air for the last time.

The sense of loss — of both the iconic fighter planes, and of a cherished piece of British military and aviation history — was symbolised in a moving tradition called the ‘walk of honour’.

After landing the jets following their last flight, the pilots walked away from their craft without a single backward glance.

The Harrier jets have been axed after falling victim to a savage round of defence cuts. Their next stop, after being decommissioned next year, will be the scrapyard.

To mark their retirement after 41 years’ ­service, 16 Harriers were scheduled to take off from their base at RAF Cottesmore, Rutland, and perform a spectacular flypast of seven other RAF bases, the nearby towns of Stamford and Oakham, as well as Lincoln Cathedral.
Unfortunately, the weather spoiled the occasion. Conditions were so poor that the pilots, after forming a ­diamond formation, could not safely fly below the cloud cover.
Nevertheless, more than 2,000 people turned out at the airfield to bid farewell, while the Red Arrows performed a flypast in tribute.

Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell, the Air Officer Commanding No. 1 Group, said: ‘The Harrier is a true icon and stands testament to the innovation and excellence of British design and engineering and the skill and courage of our airmen.

‘It has had a truly distinguished service with the RAF and the Royal Navy, from the South Atlantic to the skies over Afghanistan. It takes its place in history as one of ­aviation’s greats.’

Group Captain Gary Waterfall, the Joint ­Harrier Force commander, said: ‘This is an emotional day for all those who have been fortunate to be involved with one of the true icons of aviation, alongside Concorde and Spitfire.’

Considered one of the country’s greatest technological achievements, the British-built military jets were the first in the world to be able to take off and land vertically.

Introduced by the RAF in 1969, they were famed for their ability to hover above the ground, a distinctive ­feature which enabled them to fly in and out of areas close to a battlefield that conventional aircraft could not reach.

An RAF Harrier puts on a display at RAF Cottesmore, after a flypast passing over seven military bases, the town centres of Stamford and Oakham and Lincoln Cathedral before landing back at RAF Cottesmore

The 700mph Harriers played a crucial role in defending the nation’s interests, seeing action in every conflict from the Falklands — where they were known as the ‘Black Death’ by Argentine pilots, after shooting down 25 enemy aircraft without a single combat loss — to the two Gulf Wars and five years in Afghanistan.

The aircraft also flew combat ­missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, providing close air support to troops on the ground.

But the 79-strong Harrier fleet was axed in the coalition Government’s strategic defence and security review, saving less than £1 billion. The decision sparked controversy, because scrapping the 130 RAF Tornados — which were retained — would have saved £7.4billion.

Commander Nigel ‘Sharkey’ Ward — dubbed Mr Sea Harrier after being decorated for ­flying the jets in the Falklands — said: ‘The ­connived withdrawal of the Harrier from ­service is an appalling miscarriage of justice, and of ­operational wisdom.

'The reprehensible actions of those who contrived this as “a logical ­operational decision” must be condemned as disloyal and against the direct interests of our national defence capability.’

Meanwhile, the Government announced yesterday that it is to scrap HMS Illustrious, its final aircraft carrier. She will be decommissioned in 2014 — joining her sister ship, HMS Ark Royal, which will be scrapped next year.

The helicopter and troop carrier HMS Ocean will be retained following a review, revealed Defence Secretary Liam Fox.