Still waiting for armour, said soldier two weeks before death
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Independent Minds
A Territorial Army soldier was shot dead two weeks after arriving in Afghanistan and telling friends that troops were "still waiting" for promised new body armour and helmets.
Rifleman Andrew Fentiman, 23, of Cambridge, died after coming under fire while on foot patrol near Sangin in Helmand Province on Sunday, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
On 2 November he wrote an internet blog to let friends know that he had arrived in Afghanistan.
"We are still waiting on these new body armour and helmets that were promised to us," he wrote in the blog, entitled "Hello From Afghan".
"You would have seen the story splashed all over the news, they said they would be ready for us but we hope they will arrive soon..."
The MoD announced in September that 5,000 sets of new helmets and body armour were about to be shipped to Afghanistan for use by frontline troops.
Officials said the new Osprey assault armour was less bulky and easier to move in than existing armour and the updated Mark 7 helmet was more stable when fitted with night vision equipment and made it easier to fire a weapon.
The first 5,000 sets were due to go to infantry soldiers, engineers, drivers, medics, dog handlers and other troops who regularly went "outside the wire".
Another 5,000 sets of the new helmets and armour are due to be sent to Afghanistan in spring 2010.
Rifleman Fentiman was serving with the 7th Battalion The Rifles and had put his career as a sales manager at software firm Team Studio, based in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on hold so he could deploy to Afghanistan as part of the 3 Rifles Battle Group, said the MoD.
In the blog, which appeared on his company's website, Rifleman Fentiman said he had arrived at camp after a 24-hour flight from Edinburgh.
He told how the atmosphere was "reasonably calm" and cigarettes were cheap.
"I'm now waiting to go to my FOB (forward operating base) which should be in the next 4 days," he wrote.
"We have been doing the training package which consists of IED clearance drills, zeroing, defensive shoots, patrolling skills, use of night vision goggles and some mandatory briefs, we need to complete this before we can move outside the wire.
"We are quite fortunate as the day before we were due to be on the ranges, one person was killed and 2 others injured as someone stepped on an IED which didn't make for a pleasant arrival for us.
"Looking at the positives, my commander was there at the time and proved himself by helping to save one of the guys' (sic) lives.
"Apart from that incident it's reasonable (sic) calm; helicopters fly overhead throughout the days and nights as well as MRLS launchers firing away.
"I have to admit, it makes this whole experience feel slightly surreal."
He added: "One of the best things out here is that cigarettes are 5 dollars for 200! There is the odd brand I recognise but we will only have access to the local ones when we are in the FOB.
"That's about it for the moment; I will try and send a post every now and then when things are a little more interesting.
"PS they made me shave my head and the run through loads of dust with full kit on in the middle of the day.
"Regards, Rfn Fentiman."
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Comments
The brave boys get a taken to foreign climes for a life full of thrills and adventure.
If by chance their lives get snuffed out in the process, they are called heroes and their coffins get a parade through a respectful town. This is a big improvement on working at a burger bar.
The civil servants deserve praise for having the intelligence and rationality not to go murdering people who have never caused us any threat. See?
This story or one like it comes up every time comes up every time British soldiers are getting killed, because it's being used as some kind of an excuse for not winning. And to make you think you need to spend more of your taxpayers money on the military war machine.
Remember this government spends billions upon billions upon billions of taxpayer money feeding the war machine. Do you really think they don't have enough money to supply your soldiers? Do you really think that's the reason Britons are getting killed?
Remember the Taliban do not have the billions upon billions of taxpayer money to supply them kits, or armor. In fact they wear tennis shoes, and rags on their heads, and no uniforms. so why are they wining?
Time for britain's to find another excuse as to why they're getting killed in america's war.
The ratio of Taliban fighters killed, to British soldiers killed, is as high as 100 to 1 in some cases. This claim was made by Colonel Richard Kemp in August. He had been commander of British forces going into Helmand. The average in any case is certainly not less than about 50 to 1.
So the Taliban are not winning at all in any conventional sense. The problem is that modern British public opinion simply cannot put up with the deaths of several hundred British soldiers spread over eight years, whereas that number of armed forces personnel could be lost in a single day during World War II. Of course, if you go back to WWI, we lost 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded on the first day of the battle of the Somme. And this was when we had a population of 43 million, compared to 63 million now.
Of course, all casualty figures are unacceptable, in the sense that every life is precious and irreplaceable. Ultimately, however, nations have to have armed forces, and we have to decide whether the conflicts which ours are involved in are justified. If the British people decide that the war in Afghanistan is not justified, they should include in their assessment the fact that our casualty figures are light in real historical terms, however terrible they are in terms of the individual tragedy for each member of the armed forces killed or wounded, and for each of their families.
The armaments business is all about money rather than providing the material needed to ensure that the British Army is correctly equipped to do a decent job.
The recently released Grey report made clear with great detail and numerous examples that the procurement procedure was totally inadequate and pathetic. This is not a party political comment, simply a statement of fact, the recent report on the Nimrod deaths will support this assertion.
Time for the citizens of the UK and the US to grow up and acknowledge that war is part of their economic model, nothing more and nothing less, so drop the debate about 'values' and combat and just look at the money involved.