Fix bayonets!!
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Mean mudderxxxxing hombres
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
Here's a story no American news organization thought worth covering last week, so you'll just have to take it from me. In the southern Iraqi town of Amara, 20 men from Scotland's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders came under attack from 100 or so of Muqtada al-Sadr's ''insurgents.'' So they fixed bayonets and charged.
It was the first British bayonet charge since the Falklands War 20 years ago. And at the end of it some 35 of the enemy were dead in return for three minor wounds on the Argylls' side.
If you're used to smart bombs, unmanned drones and doing it all by computer back at HQ, you're probably wondering why a modern Western army is still running around with bayonets at the end of their rifles. The answer is that it's a very basic form of psychological warfare.
''If you're defending a position and you see someone advancing with a bayonet, you may be more inclined to surrender,'' Col. Ed Brown told the British newspaper the Guardian. ''I've never been bayoneted, but I can imagine it's pretty gruesome.'' Or as Cpl. Jones, veteran of the Sudan, used to say every week on the ancient BBC sitcom ''Dad's Army'': ''They don't like it up 'em.''
By comparison, a Cruise missile, an unmanned drone, even a bullet are all antiseptic forms of warfare. When a chap's charging at you with a bayonet, he's telling you he's personally willing to run you through with cold steel. The bullet may get you first, but, if it doesn't, he'll do it himself. To the average British squaddie in the 21st century, the bayonet's main practical purpose is for opening tinned food. But when you need it on the battlefield, it's still a powerful signal of your resolve, your will.
When coalition forces engage the foe in Amara, in Najaf or Fallujah, that's always going to be the rough ratio: three light wounds to 10 times as many enemy dead. It's in the broader political engagement in Iraq that the coalition needs to metaphorically fix bayonets and go hand-to-hand with its opponents. The Sunni big shots and Sadr militias, the Baathist dead-enders and foreign terrorists, the freaks and losers have made a bet: that the infidels could handle the long-range antiseptic bombing but don't have the stomach for the messy mano-a-mano stuff that follows.
And they have a point. From Baghdad press conferences to Colin Powell, too much of the tone is half-hearted and implicitly apologetic: On bad days, the president himself is beginning to sound like an unmanned drone. The coalition needs to regain the offensive, to demonstrate not just weary stoicism but fierce will -- the same will those Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders showed. Bush has to be bold and imaginative, and to end the impression that he, his administration and America itself are mere hostages to events.
How do you do it? Many commentators are now calling for faster elections in Iraq. I'd prefer to go for ''asymmetrical federalism,'' which is a Canadian term, but don't let that put you off. What it means is that the province of Quebec has certain powers -- its own immigration policy, for example -- that the province of Ontario doesn't.
Obviously, any self-respecting American would regard it as an abomination if the state of Vermont had a completely different level of sovereignty from the state of New Hampshire. But not all nations are as harmoniously constituted as the USA. I'm not just talking your average banana-republic basket case. Take America's closest ally: the four parts of the United Kingdom -- England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales -- are governed completely differently, three of the four having ''national'' parliaments with widely varying degrees of power, and the fourth (England) having no parliament at all. Scotland has revenue-raising powers, Wales doesn't. There's no constitutional logic to it: It's merely the central government's utilitarian response to different local conditions.
Something of the sort is already happening on the ground in Iraq. There are some 8,000 towns and villages in the country. How many do you hear about on the news? For a week, it's all Fallujah all the time. Then it's Najaf, and nada for anywhere else. Currently, 90 percent of Iraqi coverage is about one lousy building: Abu Ghraib. So what's going on in the other 7,997 dots on the map? In the Shia province of Dhi Qar, a couple hundred miles southeast of Baghdad, 16 of the biggest 20 cities plus many smaller towns will have elected councils by June. These were the first free elections in Dhi Qar's history and ''in almost every case, secular independents and representatives of nonreligious parties did better than the Islamists.'' That assessment is from the anti-war anti-Bush anti-Blair Euro-lefties at the Guardian, by the way.
That policy of ad hoc, incremental, rolling devolution needs to be accelerated. Towns and provinces should have as much sovereignty as they can handle, on the obvious principle that the constituent parts of ramshackle federations rarely progress at the same pace. In the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia is now an advanced Western economy, Kosovo is a U.N. slum housing project. If one were to cast the situation in rough British terms, the Kurdish areas are broadly analogous to Scotland, Dhi Qar and other Shia provinces are Wales, and the Sunni Triangle is Northern Ireland.
Even in the Sunni Triangle, remove Fallujah and the remaining 95 percent is relatively calm. And, while Fallujah hasn't been removed, it has been more or less quarantined. There have been fewer lethal attacks in Baghdad in recent weeks in part because many of the perpetrators were Fallujah residents who used to drive up to the capital for a little light RPG work in the evening. Now they're pinned down in their hometown.
We need more of that. The best bulwark against tyranny is a population that knows the benefits of freedom, as the Iraqi Kurds do. Don't make the mistake of turning Iraq into a dysfunctional American public school, where the smart guys get held down to the low standards of the misfits and in the end they all get the same social promotion anyway. Let's get on with giving the Kurdish and Shia areas elected governors and practical sovereignty, province by province.
And then fix bayonets and stick it to the holdouts. -
Wow.
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As a side note, these same Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders fought to the death defending Singapore back in World War II. They suffered an atrociously high casualty rate, but they were also among the best, if not the best of the troops fighting to protect our nation all the way down the Malayan peninsula to the doorstep to Singapore city. On top of that, they were supreme jungle fighters, in stark contrast of the majority of the commonwealth troops.
The main reason cited for their ferocity in combat was a strong esprit-de-corps spirit.
Ok, so that's all abit off topic la, but I really admire them after reading Moon Over Malaya, which is a book based on them. Go borrow from library, very interesting read.
Hehe.. wonder if SAF will ever produce such garang, gung-ho soldiers.. I hope so.
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1. never underestimate how testing times can bring out the best (and worst) of mankindOriginally posted by Merkava MK4:Hehe.. wonder if SAF will ever produce such garang, gung-ho soldiers.. I hope so.
2. never underestimate the power of camaraderie. the organisation may not even haf played a direct part in building this. -
SAF cannot lar. SAR-21 got no bayonet wad
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heh.. true true.. wonder if they will make a variant for it.Originally posted by sgFish:SAF cannot lar. SAR-21 got no bayonet wad -
Originally posted by Merkava MK4:
yes, i do recall seeing the name of that particular unit engraved on not a few of the tablets at kranji war memorial..May the fallen rest in sweet everlasting peace
As a side note, these same Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders fought to the death defending Singapore back in World War II. They suffered an atrociously high casualty rate, but they were also among the best, if not the [b]best of the troops fighting to protect our nation all the way down the Malayan peninsula to the doorstep to Singapore city. On top of that, they were supreme jungle fighters, in stark contrast of the majority of the commonwealth troops.
The main reason cited for their ferocity in combat was a strong esprit-de-corps spirit. [/b] -
I utmostly agree with the above paragraph. During my Evaluation Ex in Cresendo, the Bn Ops Centre encountered enemy ground attack. I lead my men (up to 2 sections) to fight the enemy. During the last phase of the fighting (when we are supposed to charge and overrun the enemy), a gush of adrenaline "kicked in" and I signalled my men to fix on their bayonets (just like "We Were Soldiers"). We then charged towards them and subsequently overran them. The feeling was really good and we felt a sense of accomplishment despite it is just a small part of the ex.Originally posted by IAF:Mean mudderxxxxing hombres
By comparison, a Cruise missile, an unmanned drone, even a bullet are all antiseptic forms of warfare. When a chap's charging at you with a bayonet, he's telling you he's personally willing to run you through with cold steel. The bullet may get you first, but, if it doesn't, he'll do it himself. To the average British squaddie in the 21st century, the bayonet's main practical purpose is for opening tinned food. But when you need it on the battlefield, it's still a powerful signal of your resolve, your will.
Well, I was subsequently being ticked off by the evaluators as it is a breach of safety. I still feel that it is worth it as long as everyone knows what they are supposed to do and what they are doing. -
That's why I still honestly think that ST should have designed the SAR-21 to come equipped with a plug bayonet much like the SA-80. Have a multi-purpose bayonet/wire-cutter...I know it sounds ridiculous like what the author wrote, about having bayonents in this day and age of military tehnology....but the fact remains that it's soldiers that do the ugly work of fighting up-close and personal...when the push comes to shove, it'd be good to have a bayonet handy....
Also as a side note, Japanese Imperial Army soldiers were famously known for their banzai charges against enemy positions. The funny thing is that the Japanese-American units (442nd regiment and the 100th Combat Team), comprised of Nisei (2nd generation Japanese who have been acculturated into Western way of life) soldiers also did fanatical bayonet charges during their time in Italy and W. Europe...they even shouted "Banzai!" when they did it. Of cos' they took horrendous casualties, but they were well-known for their bravery among American units...
Sometimes I often wonder if this is in the military culture of a certain society. I'm currently doing that as a side project on combat effectiveness... -
During the Malaya Campaign British bayonet charges were so successful that in some cases the Japanese had to resort to using CW shells to repel them. Surprisingly though the Japanese were generally afraid of getting on the wrong side of a bayonet charge. Usually the sight of ugly, bearded seven foot tall Sikhs or Australians were enought to send them squealing into confusion.
Bayonet charges are a last ditch option for trapped units up against another unit supported by heavy weapons. In that situation, it's effectiveness is compounded if the opposing unit is concentrated or amassing. If you overrun an enemy, their artillery and mortars and even machine gun fire cannot be employed without hitting their own troops. The NVA and VC used it to great effectiveness during the Vietnam War. -
This is the kind of videos that should be in the media rather than the prison humiliation ones then.Originally posted by IAF:Mean mudderxxxxing hombres
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
Here's a story no American news organization thought worth covering last week, so you'll just have to take it from me. In the southern Iraqi town of Amara, 20 men from Scotland's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders came under attack from 100 or so of Muqtada al-Sadr's ''insurgents.'' So they fixed bayonets and charged.
It was the first British bayonet charge since the Falklands War 20 years ago. And at the end of it some 35 of the enemy were dead in return for three minor wounds on the Argylls' side.
If you're used to smart bombs, unmanned drones and doing it all by computer back at HQ, you're probably wondering why a modern Western army is still running around with bayonets at the end of their rifles. The answer is that it's a very basic form of psychological warfare.
''If you're defending a position and you see someone advancing with a bayonet, you may be more inclined to surrender,'' Col. Ed Brown told the British newspaper the Guardian. ''I've never been bayoneted, but I can imagine it's pretty gruesome.'' Or as Cpl. Jones, veteran of the Sudan, used to say every week on the ancient BBC sitcom ''Dad's Army'': ''They don't like it up 'em.''
By comparison, a Cruise missile, an unmanned drone, even a bullet are all antiseptic forms of warfare. When a chap's charging at you with a bayonet, he's telling you he's personally willing to run you through with cold steel. The bullet may get you first, but, if it doesn't, he'll do it himself. To the average British squaddie in the 21st century, the bayonet's main practical purpose is for opening tinned food. But when you need it on the battlefield, it's still a powerful signal of your resolve, your will.
When coalition forces engage the foe in Amara, in Najaf or Fallujah, that's always going to be the rough ratio: three light wounds to 10 times as many enemy dead. It's in the broader political engagement in Iraq that the coalition needs to metaphorically fix bayonets and go hand-to-hand with its opponents. The Sunni big shots and Sadr militias, the Baathist dead-enders and foreign terrorists, the freaks and losers have made a bet: that the infidels could handle the long-range antiseptic bombing but don't have the stomach for the messy mano-a-mano stuff that follows.
And they have a point. From Baghdad press conferences to Colin Powell, too much of the tone is half-hearted and implicitly apologetic: On bad days, the president himself is beginning to sound like an unmanned drone. The coalition needs to regain the offensive, to demonstrate not just weary stoicism but fierce will -- the same will those Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders showed. Bush has to be bold and imaginative, and to end the impression that he, his administration and America itself are mere hostages to events.
How do you do it? Many commentators are now calling for faster elections in Iraq. I'd prefer to go for ''asymmetrical federalism,'' which is a Canadian term, but don't let that put you off. What it means is that the province of Quebec has certain powers -- its own immigration policy, for example -- that the province of Ontario doesn't.
Obviously, any self-respecting American would regard it as an abomination if the state of Vermont had a completely different level of sovereignty from the state of New Hampshire. But not all nations are as harmoniously constituted as the USA. I'm not just talking your average banana-republic basket case. Take America's closest ally: the four parts of the United Kingdom -- England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales -- are governed completely differently, three of the four having ''national'' parliaments with widely varying degrees of power, and the fourth (England) having no parliament at all. Scotland has revenue-raising powers, Wales doesn't. There's no constitutional logic to it: It's merely the central government's utilitarian response to different local conditions.
Something of the sort is already happening on the ground in Iraq. There are some 8,000 towns and villages in the country. How many do you hear about on the news? For a week, it's all Fallujah all the time. Then it's Najaf, and nada for anywhere else. Currently, 90 percent of Iraqi coverage is about one lousy building: Abu Ghraib. So what's going on in the other 7,997 dots on the map? In the Shia province of Dhi Qar, a couple hundred miles southeast of Baghdad, 16 of the biggest 20 cities plus many smaller towns will have elected councils by June. These were the first free elections in Dhi Qar's history and ''in almost every case, secular independents and representatives of nonreligious parties did better than the Islamists.'' That assessment is from the anti-war anti-Bush anti-Blair Euro-lefties at the Guardian, by the way.
That policy of ad hoc, incremental, rolling devolution needs to be accelerated. Towns and provinces should have as much sovereignty as they can handle, on the obvious principle that the constituent parts of ramshackle federations rarely progress at the same pace. In the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia is now an advanced Western economy, Kosovo is a U.N. slum housing project. If one were to cast the situation in rough British terms, the Kurdish areas are broadly analogous to Scotland, Dhi Qar and other Shia provinces are Wales, and the Sunni Triangle is Northern Ireland.
Even in the Sunni Triangle, remove Fallujah and the remaining 95 percent is relatively calm. And, while Fallujah hasn't been removed, it has been more or less quarantined. There have been fewer lethal attacks in Baghdad in recent weeks in part because many of the perpetrators were Fallujah residents who used to drive up to the capital for a little light RPG work in the evening. Now they're pinned down in their hometown.
We need more of that. The best bulwark against tyranny is a population that knows the benefits of freedom, as the Iraqi Kurds do. Don't make the mistake of turning Iraq into a dysfunctional American public school, where the smart guys get held down to the low standards of the misfits and in the end they all get the same social promotion anyway. Let's get on with giving the Kurdish and Shia areas elected governors and practical sovereignty, province by province.
And then fix bayonets and stick it to the holdouts.
Have vidcams mounted on soldier's helmets showing their point of view of the final assault of bayonet charging and having high definition views of the fear in enemy's faces before they are mutilated themselves, then post them to the enemies' media and see whether they want to continue to fight or not - saying this not particularly for Iraq case but all conflicts in general - bring out the cowardice in enemies' minds
Can still use prison humiliations especially for those types of enemy who will give up because they rather get killed than humiliated, so might as well humiliated them to death if not to give up fighting, that's the best weapon. Then, when they are on their
knees begging, get rid of them the conventional take-no-prisoners
way, and send the videos to their comrades. See whether they still have the stomach to fight or not -
Yes that is one fault of the SAF and designer of SAR-21, they are totally wrong in not having SAR-21 to be able to fix bayonet. That will be a major fault of SAR-21 that will come back to haunt them if ever SAR-21 is used in war. This is because, with the type of fighting, jungle and urban, there be a lot of super close quarter fighting which sometime the best is a bayonet charge.Originally posted by sgFish:SAF cannot lar. SAR-21 got no bayonet wad
Well look at it this way, till SAR-21 get its bayonet, I guess the next best choice is to use it like a baseball bat ! when the time comes, it still can do a lot of damages. -
cannot leh....after firing the barrel to hot...and to use it as a bat will sap ur energy becuz of it's weight distribution.I guess until u can attach a bayonet,you should use duct tape to tape a knife to it or something....or bring a swordOriginally posted by storywolf:Yes that is one fault of the SAF and designer of SAR-21, they are totally wrong in not having SAR-21 to be able to fix bayonet. That will be a major fault of SAR-21 that will come back to haunt them if ever SAR-21 is used in war. This is because, with the type of fighting, jungle and urban, there be a lot of super close quarter fighting which sometime the best is a bayonet charge.
Well look at it this way, till SAR-21 get its bayonet, I guess the next best choice is to use it like a baseball bat ! when the time comes, it still can do a lot of damages. -
Hehe yah.. charge Gurkha style using khukris.Originally posted by |-|05|:....or bring a sword -
Well,for urban ops,think M-16 even fit with bayonet will be too long.So difficult to use in confines.But if open terrain like trench fighting different story...Anyway,SAF also remove bayonet fighting from syallabus from BMT if I'm not mistaken...So...lets hope that the weight of the SAR-21 is sufficient to knock any of the baddies flat down.
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Is it!!??I thought i will be learning bayonet fighting for my coming BMT because the recurit's handbooks states that it is included.Originally posted by SpecOps87:Well,for urban ops,think M-16 even fit with bayonet will be too long.So difficult to use in confines.But if open terrain like trench fighting different story...Anyway,SAF also remove bayonet fighting from syallabus from BMT if I'm not mistaken...So...lets hope that the weight of the SAR-21 is sufficient to knock any of the baddies flat down. -
The new variant of the SAR-21 displayed during the AA2004 can be fitted with bayonet.Originally posted by sgFish:SAF cannot lar. SAR-21 got no bayonet wad -
Right now you will be learning unarmed combat.Originally posted by BMEngineer:Is it!!??I thought i will be learning bayonet fighting for my coming BMT because the recurit's handbooks states that it is included. -
Who ask you to grab the barrel, grab down the plastic part, may not swing that well, but enough to kick someone out. A duct tape will not be strong enough to hold the bayonet in place. Anyway in time of emergency ! if barrel that hot , us it to poke the eyes !Originally posted by |-|05|:cannot leh....after firing the barrel to hot...and to use it as a bat will sap ur energy becuz of it's weight distribution.I guess until u can attach a bayonet,you should use duct tape to tape a knife to it or something....or bring a sword -
if grab plastic part then abit short lehOriginally posted by storywolf:Who ask you to grab the barrel, grab down the plastic part, may not swing that well, but enough to kick someone out. A duct tape will not be strong enough to hold the bayonet in place. Anyway in time of emergency ! if barrel that hot , us it to poke the eyes !