British Military Current Events

[OldSolduer]

Goodbye Griffon

As a deployment Cyprus was a good gig. Six months in the Med and all the OP duty you can handle.

And some good tales of daring do...

 

[Spencer100]

As a deployment Cyprus was a good gig. Six months in the Med and all the OP duty you can handle.

And some good tales of daring do...

Deal to be had?

 

[Kirkhill]

An Irish Peace and an Open Border - Bandit Country 25 years on.

Nary a Prod to be seen. So it's Catholic on Catholic and Mum's the word.

‘People are still ruled by fear of the IRA’: 25 years of life after the Good Friday Agreement​

Crossmaglen, a notorious border town in Northern Ireland, is trying to lay the past to rest – even when that comes at the expense of justice

ByMartin Fletcher7 April 2023 • 4:00pm


Breege Quinn has not given up on finding justice after the murder of her son in 2007 CREDIT: Nick St.Oegger
Breege Quinn cries as she recounts what happened to her son Paul in 2007. The 21-year-old had an argument in a bar with the son of a local IRA chief, she tells me as we drink tea in the kitchen of her bungalow in the pretty rolling countryside outside Crossmaglen, South Armagh. Later that evening, the man’s mother followed Paul into a chip shop in the nearby village of Cullyhanna. ‘She told Paul he’d be found along the side of a road in a black bag,’ Quinn says.
She points across the fields to a house on a nearby hillside. She says the owner telephoned Paul three weeks later and asked him to help clean out a farm shed just across the Irish border in County Monaghan. When Paul arrived, he was seized by 10 men wearing balaclavas and boiler suits. They beat him with nail-studded clubs and iron bars. They broke every major bone in his body, then poured disinfectant on him to destroy DNA evidence. Paul died in hospital that evening. ‘I’m sorry. They left nothing to fix,’ a doctor told his parents.
The Quinns live in a small, tight-knit community. Everyone knows who the local IRA men are. Breege Quinn knows exactly who killed her son. She sees them when she goes shopping, in church even. ‘They wouldn’t look me straight in the eye… they look away,’ she says.
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But knowledge is not proof. Sixteen years after Paul’s murder, no one has been charged. Despite numerous appeals for information and widespread outrage, nobody has come forward. ‘They’re all told not to open their mouths,’ Quinn says. ‘The people are still ruled by fear of the IRA.’
She and her supporters even put up posters in Crossmaglen asking: ‘Is Paul Quinn’s murder on your conscience?’ Most were torn down.

One of the signs about Paul’s murder that has yet to be torn down CREDIT: Nick St.Oegger
Quinn says her family was ‘devastated’ by Paul’s murder, and calls her husband a ‘broken man’. Most days she visits Paul’s grave, whose headstone says he was ‘savagely beaten to death’. But she vows to ‘fight to the bitter end’ to bring those who killed her son to court.
As for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which was supposed to end paramilitary violence, she says, ‘It brought peace, but where do we go in it to get justice? I maintain Tony Blair let Sinn Féin and the IRA off. Once they didn’t kill policemen or soldiers, they could do what they liked.’
I’ve come to Crossmaglen because 25 years ago I was one of hundreds of journalists camped outside Stormont’s Castle Buildings to cover the climax of 22 months of tortuous peace negotiations. I well remember those final 33 hours of non-stop talks: the swirling rumours of breakthroughs and setbacks, the arm-twisting and cajoling, the extended deadlines and, finally, late on Good Friday afternoon, the announcement of a deal to end 30 years of bitter bloodshed that cost 3,600 lives.
As the exhausted politicians departed, we journalists were left to digest an agreement whereby unionists undertook to share power at Stormont, while nationalists and republicans conceded that Ireland could be reunited only with majority consent.
Has it worked? Where better to find out than South Armagh, the heart of militant republicanism during the Troubles? In 1975, this protrusion on Northern Ireland’s southern border, roughly 20 miles across and home to an overwhelmingly Catholic population of about 30,000, was dubbed ‘bandit country’ by Merlyn Rees, then Northern Ireland Secretary, and the label stuck.
There were 1,255 bomb attacks and 1,158 shooting incidents in South Armagh during the Troubles. More than 160 members of the security forces were killed, plus 80-odd civilians and about 30 members of the Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army. The Provisional IRA’s South Armagh Brigade imported weapons from Libya, conducted some of the organisation’s deadliest attacks and built the bombs that caused such destruction in London and Manchester.
South Armagh became the most militarised spot in Western Europe. Police and Army were flown in and out of fortified bases by helicopter, and regarded by the local population as an occupying force. It was so lawless that two British governments seriously considered offering it to the Republic.

1983: An explosion in Crossmaglen that injured two soldiers CREDIT: Pacemaker
Thus I found myself driving down to Crossmaglen, its de facto capital, from Belfast’s international airport one recent afternoon. Soon after my trip, Northern Ireland’s terror threat level would be raised from substantial to severe in response to dissident republican activity targeting police. But what I saw was an astonishing transformation. The gorse-flecked countryside, dominated by Slieve Gullion mountain, is as beautiful as ever, but gone are the ‘IRA’ and ‘Sniper at work’ signs once nailed defiantly to telegraph poles. There are no longer checkpoints, unsightly military watchtowers on hills, convoys of heavily armoured police and Army vehicles, or helicopters clattering overhead.
Crossmaglen itself has likewise changed dramatically for the better. I enter the town past a memorial to IRA hunger strikers and a hoarding commemorating 24 members of the South Armagh Brigade, but they feel more like historical markers than a threat. Gone is the hideous, caged Army sanger – a fortified observation post – which dominated the central square during the Troubles, though an ugly police station ringed by high protective walls remains. Named after a soldier killed in the square, the ‘Borucki sanger’ enabled the Army to keep track of movements in and out of Crossmaglen, and was several times attacked with mortars or doused with petrol and set on fire. The soldiers called themselves ‘bullet catchers’.
Once-derelict buildings now house coffee bars, bakeries, beauty shops; a pizza restaurant, gym and nursery. There is a fine new school, a new housing estate and a big new supermarket. A brown sign points to a non-existent tourist information office. ‘We put that up a bit too soon,’ Joe Kernan, a local Gaelic football legend, chuckles.
An ordinary, unarmoured police car drives past. Officers now patrol on foot, give crime-prevention talks and man stalls at community events. That would have been unthinkable 25 years ago, though the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), successor to the reviled Royal Ulster Constabulary, remains unable to recruit local youths.
The mood is palpably different too. There is no sectarian tension, not least because practically no Protestants still live in the area. The people no longer regard strangers with suspicion. Tourists have started arriving on ‘Troubles tours’, or to climb Slieve Gullion. Eastern Europeans have moved in. ‘The town is buzzing,’ says Linda McConville, a dentist who began practising in Crossmaglen two months before the GFA. Back then it was ‘dark and dull and grey’.

British soldiers patrolling Crossmaglen – accompanied by an armoured vehicle – during The Troubles CREDIT: Bryn Colton/Getty Images
There are only two visible relics of the Troubles. One is the police station, an eyesore that encroaches on the Crossmaglen Rangers’ Gaelic football ground. It is slated for closure, and the club wants to be given the land for a community centre to compensate for decades of what Eddie Hughes, a former chairman, calls ‘occupation’.
He tells me the Army treated the club, a symbol of Irish culture, as the enemy. Its helicopters landed on the pitch during matches. Its aviation fuel burned the grass. It banned floodlights and harassed supporters. Balls accidentally kicked into the base were returned punctured, or not at all. Vehicles carrying players to away games were searched ‘boot and bonnet’. Despite or because of that the team excelled, winning numerous titles and lifting the spirits of a place that felt besieged. ‘There was an element of defiance that knitted the community together,’ says Hughes.
The other relic is a hole in the wall of Murtagh’s Bar made by the sniper’s bullet that killed Daniel Blinco, a Grenadier Guardsman, in 1993. He was the last British soldier killed in Crossmaglen. Four years later, Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick was shot in nearby Bessbrook, making him the last soldier killed in Northern Ireland. Since 1997, the South Armagh Brigade has kept the peace, at least as far as ‘politically motivated’ killings go.
The next day I explore the border created by Ireland’s bitter 1921 partition – across which IRA men would flee to escape the security forces or dump informers’ corpses. During the Troubles the smaller lanes leading south from Crossmaglen were blown up or spiked by the Army to prevent their use; larger roads had irksome customs posts and menacing checkpoints. Today it is all but impossible to discern where the UK and Northern Ireland end, and the Republic and European Union start.
Gingerly, I drive past the border-straddling farm in Ballybinaby of Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, the fearsome former IRA chief of staff who made a fortune smuggling oil and livestock. Gone are the observation posts the Army erected to monitor his activities. Gone, too, are the corrugated-iron screens he installed to thwart them. In 2015 Irish authorities managed to convict him of tax evasion, and he was sentenced to 18 months. Nowadays he is seldom seen in Crossmaglen, locals say. A sign by his property advertises, without apparent irony, the Crossmaglen and District Community Safety Group.
The ‘hard’ border’s disappearance, and the end of the violence, have contributed hugely to Crossmaglen’s resurgence. Hundreds of its residents work in the Republic, where wages are far higher. Supermarket manager Thomas Magennis tells me 40 per cent of his trade is now in euros, with thousands of customers from the Republic attracted by cheaper wine and beer. Aaron Kernan, an estate agent, says he has rented about 50 properties to southerners in the past few years because rates are much lower.
The greatest recent threat to peace was the possible reimposition of a hard border post-Brexit. ‘Any attempt to put in any sort of infrastructure would be ripped out by the people. We’re not going back to being divided,’ says Pete Byrne, a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor.
Indeed the talk now is of Irish reunification, an idea propelled up the political agenda by Brexit, Stormont’s frequent suspensions and demographic changes. ‘I’d like to think within a decade we’ll have a border poll,’ says Declan Murphy, a former IRA prisoner who was released under the GFA and is now a Sinn Féin councillor.

Crossmaglen already feels more Irish than British. The tricolour, not the Union flag, flies in the square. A statue commemorates not the eight British soldiers killed there, but those who died for ‘Irish freedom’. People have Irish mobiles and watch Irish television.
Over dinner at nearby Killeavy Castle Estate – once derelict, now a fancy hotel – members of the recently formed South Armagh Business Improvement Group tell me they’re determined to change the area’s image and encourage investment. They explain that it’s an hour’s drive from both Dublin and Belfast and a beautiful place to live with hard-working people. They hate the outdated ‘bandit country’ tag. On cue, we meet Shona McNeela, 24, a racehorse trainer from Cambridge, who is bringing 80 English guests to her August wedding in Killeavy. A destination wedding in South Armagh? That, too, would have been unthinkable not so long ago.
Has Crossmaglen truly achieved ‘normality’? Has the notorious South Armagh Brigade really melted away? Yes, say most ordinary townsfolk. ‘It’s history,’ says Thomas Magennis. ‘I don’t see any trace of them,’ says Linda McConville. Declan Murphy says most of the brigade’s former members have gone into politics or gone home, their job done. But the truth may be a little more complicated.

A hoarding that commemorates 24 members of the South Armagh Brigade CREDIT: Nick St.Oegger
Well-placed local sources, demanding anonymity, say that the peace process split the brigade, with a number of dissidents leaving to form the so-called Real IRA. It later split again, with many traditional republicans leaving in disgust as it morphed into a criminal organisation heavily engaged in smuggling subsidised agricultural diesel across the border and selling it at a hefty mark-up. The sources further contend that the authorities have ignored its smuggling provided it keeps the peace.
Pete Byrne, the SDLP councillor, largely concurs. ‘I’ve challenged the South Armagh PSNI and chief constable about the level of smuggling and other illegal activities that go on here as if a blind eye is being turned on it,’ he says.
So does Kenny Donaldson, a Protestant whose family have lived in South Armagh for 13 generations, and who now runs a victim-support group in neighbouring Fermanagh. ‘It’s true to say that some who were involved in the terror campaign have now become involved in criminal-based racketeering in this area, with almost a mafia-style operation,’ he says when we meet at the Protestant church in Creggan, just north of Crossmaglen.
Though it has diminished, diesel smuggling in Northern Ireland still cost the Exchequer an estimated £30 million in 2020-21. Some undoubtedly still occurs in South Armagh. On back lanes around Crossmaglen many farms have high steel gates to thwart prying eyes. They’re called ‘f—k off gates’.
The same well-placed sources say there was also an ‘unspoken agreement’ at the time of the GFA that the IRA could continue to run its own ‘quasi police force’ and ‘do its own housekeeping’. Beatings and other punishments have certainly been meted out to those who have crossed local hard men, Paul Quinn being one of them.

The Provisional IRA’s South Armagh Brigade imported weapons from Libya, conducted some of the organisation’s deadliest attacks and built the bombs that caused such destruction in London and Manchester CREDIT: Colman Doyle
Again, Byrne broadly concurs. Even after the GFA ‘you had a group of people who felt they controlled the area… It was like a boot on the throat of people in this community,’ he says. ‘People were told there would be punishment beatings. They were warned if they didn’t do X, Y and Z they’d be meeting a group of masked men down an alleyway.’
That situation persists, he says. ‘Why are people who know what happened to Paul Quinn not speaking out? Because there’s still this fear… I find it appalling that 25 years after the political violence ended people still don’t feel comfortable giving information about a really brutal murder.’
I hear one more harrowing story before leaving South Armagh. At her Creggan home, Anna McShane tells me how her father, Charlie Armstrong, vanished while taking an old woman to Mass in Crossmaglen in 1981. His car was found across the border in Dundalk. He had nothing to do with the IRA, but she reckons he saw something he shouldn’t have.
For weeks his family hoped he would return. For years they searched for his body – putting up posters, scouring ditches, even hiring divers to search lakes. For decades, McShane passed her father’s abductors on the streets of Crossmaglen, but could say nothing. The family was warned to keep quiet. Friends and neighbours kept their distance. There was a conspiracy of fearful silence.

Anne McShane accepts her father’s killers will never be held to account CREDIT: Nick St.Oegger
Nothing changed until after the GFA. In 1999, the British and Irish governments established a commission to receive confidential information about the burial places of 16 people abducted and killed by republican paramilitaries in the 1970s and ’80s, while guaranteeing that it could not be used in criminal prosecutions. The following year, Armstrong’s family was sent a hand-drawn map of a bog across the border in County Monaghan with an ‘X’ marked on it. After 10 more anguished years, three digs and two more anonymous letters, his remains Were found there – his hands and feet had been bound with bailing twine and his skull was badly damaged. He was buried in the graveyard of the church he never reached 29 years earlier.
McShane says she is now ‘at peace’. She accepts her father’s killers will never be held to account. ‘We felt if we went down the justice route none of the bodies would have been found,’ she says of the families of the Disappeared.
She adds, ‘I’d love to know exactly what happened, but what difference would it make? Crossmaglen is such a close community. We’re all married to each other. We know everyone. It would open a can of worms… If you’ve been fighting a case for the best part of 20 years and get to the other end, you put it to bed the best way you can.’
That is the price of peace in Northern Ireland. The GFA was a fantastic achievement, and ended three decades of conflict, but only by dispensing with justice; only by granting an impunity unthinkable anywhere else in the UK.
Breege Quinn hopes her son’s killers will at least be tortured by guilt. ‘When they go to bed at night they can’t control their dreams,’ she says. ‘They have to think about what they did to Paul in that shed. They have to hear his screeching and begging them to stop.’

 

[daftandbarmy]

New radios that don't weigh 40lbs... it's only taken a few decades

Airborne Signallers Tackle Jungle | Exercise Mercury Canopy | British Army​

216 (Parachute) Signal Squadron, Royal Corps of Signals have deployed to the jungles of Belize on Exercise Mercury Canopy. The troops lived in the jungle and learnt how to tailor their communications and soldiering skills to the demands of the jungle’s weather, vegetation and wildlife.

 

[dimsum]

New radios that don't weigh 40lbs... it's only taken a few decades

Airborne Signallers Tackle Jungle | Exercise Mercury Canopy | British Army​

216 (Parachute) Signal Squadron, Royal Corps of Signals have deployed to the jungles of Belize on Exercise Mercury Canopy. The troops lived in the jungle and learnt how to tailor their communications and soldiering skills to the demands of the jungle’s weather, vegetation and wildlife.

I'm sure they'll make up the difference with other gear.

 

[medicineman]

New radios that don't weigh 40lbs... it's only taken a few decades

Airborne Signallers Tackle Jungle | Exercise Mercury Canopy | British Army​

216 (Parachute) Signal Squadron, Royal Corps of Signals have deployed to the jungles of Belize on Exercise Mercury Canopy. The troops lived in the jungle and learnt how to tailor their communications and soldiering skills to the demands of the jungle’s weather, vegetation and wildlife.

Wildlife - chewing their wires, falling out of trees and trying to bite or choke them to death, and those are just the paratroopers getting bored

 

[daftandbarmy]

I'm sure they'll make up the difference with other gear.

"I used to carry 100lbs of heavy gear. Now I carry 100lbs of light gear."

 

[medicineman]

"I used to carry 100lbs of heavy gear. Now I carry 100lbs of light gear."

Yeah - make it lighter so you can get bigger bang for the buck - lighter radios = more ammo, mortar bombs, claymores, AT weapons, and maybe a day/two of extra rations and water

 

[daftandbarmy]

Yeah - make it lighter so you can get bigger bang for the buck - lighter radios = more ammo, mortar bombs, claymores, AT weapons, and maybe a day/two of extra rations and water

I was always keen on extra medical kit.

For some reason the usual '12 x field dressings per platoon' never gave me alot of comfort

 

[medicineman]

I was always keen on extra medical kit.

For some reason the usual '12 x field dressings per platoon' never gave me alot of comfort

Given there are usually more than 12 dudes/ettes in a rifle platoon, yeah...and may or may not have intrinsic/intimate medical support...that was usually what we had in the section level kits IIRC. I used to make sure that we had a medical ambush bag in a vehicle other than mine when on ops, much like the infantry guys had with loaded spare magazines, spread out through the group.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Given there are usually more than 12 dudes/ettes in a rifle platoon, yeah...and may or may not have intrinsic/intimate medical support...that was usually what we had in the section level kits IIRC. I used to make sure that we had a medical ambush bag in a vehicle other than mine when on ops, much like the infantry guys had with loaded spare magazines, spread out through the group.

Enough gear spread around the platoon to treat and immobilize at least 2 x trauma cases was a good rule of thumb, I thought, whether or not they were caused by road accidents, falling off of something, or a bullet/blast wound.

Having a qualified patrol medic attached to Pl HQ was the gold standard though.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Chocks away, Biggles!

Should the Chief of the Air Staff always be a pilot?​

On the last day in March, Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace finally announced what had become the worst kept secret in NATO. For the first time in its 105-year history, the RAF will be led by a ground branch officer, rather than a pilot. His Majesty has approved the appointment of Air Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, an aerosystems engineer, to be the thirty-first Chief of the Air Staff. Knighton is currently Deputy Commander Capability and People at Air Command and will succeed the current incumbent, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, in June.

Air Marshal Sir Richard Knighton​

Air Marshal Knighton joined the RAF in 1988 as a university cadet and studied engineering at Clare College Cambridge. He spent his early career in frontline roles working on Nimrod Maritime Patrol Aircraft, Tornado and in several roles within the Harrier force. In 2009, he became station commander at Royal Air Force Wittering. Since then, his appointments have been predominantly capability focused in Whitehall, although he also served as the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff from 2015 to 2017.

Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor at Sky News, broke the news of Knighton’s appointment two days before the official announcement. In her article, Haynes wrote that ‘A number of former RAF officers questioned whether Air Marshal Knighton was the right person for the job at a time of war in Europe given his limited operational experience’. She also quoted a former senior commander who said that it was ‘extraordinary’ that someone who had not fought in Afghanistan or Iraq would be appointed head of the air force.

But is it?

Previous Chiefs of the Air Staff​

The previous thirty Chiefs of the Air Staff were all pilots. Until the 1950s, they had all been former army officers who had served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and joined the RAF on its formation in 1918. In 1953, a former Royal Naval Air Service pilot, Sir William Dixon, became the tenth Chief of the Air Staff. He was succeeded three years later by Sir Dermot Boyle, the first chief to have been commissioned into the Royal Air Force. Since then, the role has been filled by, among others, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, a Catalina flying boat pilot, two Falklands War veterans, and a Gulf War Tornado pilot. While not all previous chiefs have served on operations, they’ve all had considerable experience of command in the air.

Duties of the Chief of the Air Staff​

The MoD’s current operating model is based on the 2011 Defence Reforms recommended by Lord Levene. In it, the First Sea Lord, Chief of the General Staff, and Chief of the Air Staff have responsibility, authority, and accountability for the development and generation of the Royal Navy, British Army, and RAF respectively, to ensure they can deliver defence outputs now and in the future. The service chiefs are the professional head of their service, accountable to the Secretary of State for Defence for its fighting effectiveness, efficiency, and morale.
Of all these duties, the only one that could arguably depend on time in a cockpit is the maintenance of fighting effectiveness. The men and women that operate the RAF’s fleet of crewed and uncrewed aircraft might reasonably question whether an aerosystems engineer truly understands the demands of their profession. In response, I would direct the reader to the RUSI 2019 Lord Trenchard Memorial Lecture, or, more recently, last month’s RUSI Combat Air Conference. Both provide clear evidence that a ground branch officer can possess a deep knowledge of air and space power and the roles demanded by both in operations of the future.

Should the Chief of the Air Staff always be a pilot>

For the first time in its 105 year history, the RAF will appoint a ground branch officer as the next Chief of the Air Staff

onukdefence.co.uk

 

[dimsum]

Why not? It's not like they parachuted (heh) in some random person.

This guy was Assistant CAS so he has previous experience at that level, and likely filled in as Acting CAS when CAS Actual was on leave.

And for the record, the RCAF has had two non-pilots has Comd RCAF - LGens Watt and Hood (both ACSOs). Sure, they were also operational aircrew but still, not pilots.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Why not? It's not like they parachuted (heh) in some random person.

This guy was Assistant CAS so he has previous experience at that level, and likely filled in as Acting CAS when CAS Actual was on leave.

And for the record, the RCAF has had two non-pilots has Comd RCAF - LGens Watt and Hood (both ACSOs). Sure, they were also operational aircrew but still, not pilots.

Anything but anything but the RAF Regiment

 

[daftandbarmy]

Marching out = stressing out ...

 

[daftandbarmy]

But don't mention the 'Black' mountains, which are right next door

https://twitter.com/x/status/1647842071087022080

 

[daftandbarmy]

Me too… the threat of instant nuclear destruction made nightclubbing in Europe a bit more interesting

I miss the Cold War​

Simpler times​

Berliner Luft is a popular peppermint-flavoured shot downed in the city’s bars. It also means Berlin Air and is a colloquialism for the city’s spirit of unfettered freedom and rebellious abandon. Given what this city went through, reduced to rubble by the furious Russians at the end of world war two, and then rent in two for more than 40 years during the Cold War, it’s not surprising that after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the populace needed to let off steam.

As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children The city became Germany’s pressure release valve, famed for its annual techno Love Parade, weekend-long raves – starting at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning is a particularly popular slot, apparently – relaxed alcohol laws and open drinking on the streets, kinky parties, and more. A unified Berlin in party mode became the template.
During my most recent visit, though, I’ve been struck by how the city remains divided. Not between West and East, clearly, but between gentrified global Berlin and traditional Germanic Berlin. I got a taste of this as soon as I got off my flight with RyanAir (one of the unsung heroes of getting us free of lockdown culture). Gone are the three cosy old airports – where you could get a nice pilsner beer and currywurst mit pommes straight outside the terminal door – replaced by a huge soulless monstrosity of an airport. You feel like you could be anywhere in the world (and hence nowhere).

Deep in the city, you encounter a similar thing. Innumerable burger joints, Asian restaurants, card-only-payment Portuguese cafés, wine bars – then more wine bars. You can have to work hard to find a bar selling German beer and traditional fare. But when you do, you are rewarded. It’s like going right back to the 1990s (I spent much of my childhood in Germany, when the British Army of the Rhine, or BAOR, was here, crashing out of barracks on massive mobilisation exercises; a time when, somewhat ironically given the threat of Russian invasion, the world was generally all right and men and women flirted).

People are smoking inside. Bar staff tally each of your beers on a piece of paper. You don’t have to pay after each is served as if you are going to do a runner (nor are you expected to tip with each drink, as in the US and which still drives me nuts after years of trying to get used to and justify it). The pad and pen is a small detail but feels more convivial. You can still spot a mullet. There are even phones mounted on walls! The heart warms.

In one such bar, over our glasses of Schultheiss Pilsner, I got talking to a guy who had grown up in East Berlin around the same time I was growing up in West Germany. His family’s apartment was close enough to the wall that he could see over it and watch West Berlin life go by and the customers entering the shops that didn’t exist where he lived. But when the wall came down and he scampered over for a look, his first reaction was that beyond the abundance of merchandise, West Berlin didn’t seem that different or much better. ‘West Berlin was marooned in East German remember,’ he told me. ‘So everything was more difficult to get and harder to do.’

Amid today’s gentrification and smart shops, it’s easy to forget the extraordinary history this city and what its stoic people have been through, which engraved itself into the hearts of innumerable Brits through 75 years of BAOR presence. I wouldn’t be writing this were it not for the date nights my parents – a British Army dentist and nurse – took in East Berlin after they met. Set against a potential third world war, an agreement between the allies and Russians cordially put aside the nuclear standoff to permit officers to cross the divided city.

At the sight of a mess-kit-clad British officer with his beau in what was basically a ball gown, Russian and East German soldiers threw up smart salutes. In restaurants, the resident band struck up the British national anthem as my future parents came through the door. The absurd romance of it all had to end before midnight, when Cinderella-like they scampered back through Checkpoint Charlie to avoid causing a diplomatic crisis (as befell a military chaplain, my father once told me; let’s hope it was just too much Schultheiss in East Berlin that made him miss the curfew).

BAOR became the UK’s largest overseas presence, a home away from home for hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women and their families over several generations. Eventually, there were 120 British bases in the two main German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia.

Germany was a popular posting. It offered a quality of life and opportunities that many Brits – especially if you were a soldier from a working-class background – had never encountered: sailing in the Baltic, skiing in the mountains, summer holidays beside Bavarian lakes. Life in the garrison towns offered sporting competitions, fairs and military music shows, alongside the rich panoply of German culture to explore. Friendships and marriages were made with locals and many Brits chose to make Germany a permanent home.

As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children. Those trying to make their own families face spiralling costs, an absurd property market and what I think it’s fair to say is a less-than-child-friendly culture these days.

After the wall came down – with the more benign cousin of today’s callous capitalism the victor – we took a summer trip to Berlin in the ever-dependable family BMW (it looked like an East German Trabbi compared to modern cars today). I remember sitting in the back listening to Madonna’s latest album on my Walkman as the bright energetic Berlin streets slipped by the car window. Besides the Brandenburg Gate, we bought giant furry Russian winter hats and military cap badges and chunks of the wall being sold on lines of tables.

Happy days. The global standoff was over, with us coming out on top. How did we let that slip through our fingers?

I miss the Cold War

Those planning a holiday in Berlin will be faced with two cities: the globalised, gentrified Berlin and the Germanic Berlin.

www.spectator.co.uk

 

[Spencer100]

Me too… the threat of instant nuclear destruction made nightclubbing in Europe a bit more interesting

I miss the Cold War​

Simpler times​

Berliner Luft is a popular peppermint-flavoured shot downed in the city’s bars. It also means Berlin Air and is a colloquialism for the city’s spirit of unfettered freedom and rebellious abandon. Given what this city went through, reduced to rubble by the furious Russians at the end of world war two, and then rent in two for more than 40 years during the Cold War, it’s not surprising that after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the populace needed to let off steam.

As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children The city became Germany’s pressure release valve, famed for its annual techno Love Parade, weekend-long raves – starting at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning is a particularly popular slot, apparently – relaxed alcohol laws and open drinking on the streets, kinky parties, and more. A unified Berlin in party mode became the template.
During my most recent visit, though, I’ve been struck by how the city remains divided. Not between West and East, clearly, but between gentrified global Berlin and traditional Germanic Berlin. I got a taste of this as soon as I got off my flight with RyanAir (one of the unsung heroes of getting us free of lockdown culture). Gone are the three cosy old airports – where you could get a nice pilsner beer and currywurst mit pommes straight outside the terminal door – replaced by a huge soulless monstrosity of an airport. You feel like you could be anywhere in the world (and hence nowhere).

Deep in the city, you encounter a similar thing. Innumerable burger joints, Asian restaurants, card-only-payment Portuguese cafés, wine bars – then more wine bars. You can have to work hard to find a bar selling German beer and traditional fare. But when you do, you are rewarded. It’s like going right back to the 1990s (I spent much of my childhood in Germany, when the British Army of the Rhine, or BAOR, was here, crashing out of barracks on massive mobilisation exercises; a time when, somewhat ironically given the threat of Russian invasion, the world was generally all right and men and women flirted).

People are smoking inside. Bar staff tally each of your beers on a piece of paper. You don’t have to pay after each is served as if you are going to do a runner (nor are you expected to tip with each drink, as in the US and which still drives me nuts after years of trying to get used to and justify it). The pad and pen is a small detail but feels more convivial. You can still spot a mullet. There are even phones mounted on walls! The heart warms.

In one such bar, over our glasses of Schultheiss Pilsner, I got talking to a guy who had grown up in East Berlin around the same time I was growing up in West Germany. His family’s apartment was close enough to the wall that he could see over it and watch West Berlin life go by and the customers entering the shops that didn’t exist where he lived. But when the wall came down and he scampered over for a look, his first reaction was that beyond the abundance of merchandise, West Berlin didn’t seem that different or much better. ‘West Berlin was marooned in East German remember,’ he told me. ‘So everything was more difficult to get and harder to do.’

Amid today’s gentrification and smart shops, it’s easy to forget the extraordinary history this city and what its stoic people have been through, which engraved itself into the hearts of innumerable Brits through 75 years of BAOR presence. I wouldn’t be writing this were it not for the date nights my parents – a British Army dentist and nurse – took in East Berlin after they met. Set against a potential third world war, an agreement between the allies and Russians cordially put aside the nuclear standoff to permit officers to cross the divided city.

At the sight of a mess-kit-clad British officer with his beau in what was basically a ball gown, Russian and East German soldiers threw up smart salutes. In restaurants, the resident band struck up the British national anthem as my future parents came through the door. The absurd romance of it all had to end before midnight, when Cinderella-like they scampered back through Checkpoint Charlie to avoid causing a diplomatic crisis (as befell a military chaplain, my father once told me; let’s hope it was just too much Schultheiss in East Berlin that made him miss the curfew).

BAOR became the UK’s largest overseas presence, a home away from home for hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women and their families over several generations. Eventually, there were 120 British bases in the two main German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia.

Germany was a popular posting. It offered a quality of life and opportunities that many Brits – especially if you were a soldier from a working-class background – had never encountered: sailing in the Baltic, skiing in the mountains, summer holidays beside Bavarian lakes. Life in the garrison towns offered sporting competitions, fairs and military music shows, alongside the rich panoply of German culture to explore. Friendships and marriages were made with locals and many Brits chose to make Germany a permanent home.

As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children. Those trying to make their own families face spiralling costs, an absurd property market and what I think it’s fair to say is a less-than-child-friendly culture these days.

After the wall came down – with the more benign cousin of today’s callous capitalism the victor – we took a summer trip to Berlin in the ever-dependable family BMW (it looked like an East German Trabbi compared to modern cars today). I remember sitting in the back listening to Madonna’s latest album on my Walkman as the bright energetic Berlin streets slipped by the car window. Besides the Brandenburg Gate, we bought giant furry Russian winter hats and military cap badges and chunks of the wall being sold on lines of tables.

Happy days. The global standoff was over, with us coming out on top. How did we let that slip through our fingers?

I miss the Cold War

Those planning a holiday in Berlin will be faced with two cities: the globalised, gentrified Berlin and the Germanic Berlin.

www.spectator.co.uk

One of my big regrets in life not going to Berlin in the late 80's in my late teens/twenties. I was studying in London one summer too. I would loved the nightlife.

I love the movie Atomic Blonde for the "feel" of the divided Berlin just before the wall comes down. The sound track is great too. Like all period pieces (I can't believe something I was a live for is a period piece) it magnifies (maybe too much) some of the cultural touch points. But it really gives a sense of the vibe.

 

[FJAG]

Stricken £3.2BN HMS Prince of Wales reduced to acting as scrap yard

Essential pieces of equipment are being ripped out of the stricken warship, a move that raises questions over its long-term future.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[MilEME09]

Can we buy it?


In other news, the king is apparently furious at push back over the coronation medal

Row over bid to limit Coronation medals: King Charles is 'furious'

King Charles is said to be furious that some members of the Armed Forces and the police may miss out on special commemorative Coronation medals.

www.dailymail.co.uk