Re: CHINOOK DOWN & OPERATION NIGHTMARE

>and learning from mistakes is something that ought to be written  on
the
>back of every soldier's hands!

Tatoo it on the foreheads. 

>the thing about no entrenching tool really struck me-ESPECIALLY FROM AN
>ELITE!

Now the only contact I've had with the SAS was when one major gave me an
over-enthusiastic
handshake after a briefing and burst my thumb (this particular urban
legend
is true, I was the victim*), but here's the situation AFAIK.

These guys regularly go out for days, sometimes weeks at a time with no
re-supply.
In rugged terrain. They must carry everything they need and can't
scrounge,
and are loaded down with lots of comms and specialist observation gear.
In many
ops, each bloke in a 3 or occasionally 4-man stick might have 45 lbs of
this
gear, in addition to a "combat load" of rations, water, sleeping gear,
cammo
gear, perhaps bad weather gear, certainly at least one Claymore per
stick for
breaking contact, then of course there's less important items like ammo
and
personal weaponry. (Note that only one of the two actually carried a
bayonet/combat
knife. The other didn't even have a bone-dome to dig with.)

In certain terrain, there might be a choice between carrying a personal
weapon
and ammo, or carrying additional survival gear.
Or a spare battery for the radar observation system, elint sniffer or
satlink
instead of either. A mistake in what to carry could mean the difference
between
success and failure.

As I said, these guys are trained in both doing recon while remaining
unseen,
and/or bringing down the Wrath of God(tm), up to and including (in
theory, anyway)
Nukes. 

Something has to give. The question is what, and under what
circumstances.

Entrenching tools - UNLIKE for the rest of the army - have not been as
high
on the priority list as they should have been, under these circumstances
- where
they *weren't* operating alone, where re-supply was guaranteed etc.
Probably
sheer force-of-habit, otherwise knows as a grade A No 1 Goof. *DOH!*

* But like all NSTR Happened stories, the tale grew in the telling. I'd
been
doing carpentry the day before, and had hit my thumb with a hammer. It
had a
large blood blister on it. I gave a briefing on computer-aids to
training in
both TEWTs and mixed sims (exercise Water Buffalo 84 IIRC - where the
terrain's
so inhospitable 99% of the problem's simulating the logistics). The
handshake
was firm, not a bone-crusher, it just raised the local blood pressure
enough
to spectacularly burst the blister. I gained extra points with the guy
by not
batting an eyelid, just wrapping a handkerchief around it to mop up the
gore.
He was only a little bloke, about 5'2", with a Rhodesian accent.
(Amazing what
you remember even after 20 years)

So the next time you hear the story about the SAS guy squeezing the
Defence
Contractor's hand so hard his thumb burst, you'll know what really
happened.