Asking for the Moon: Ogden on Common (Military) Sense
OPED
A terrible tragedy occurred this week when two Georgian soldiers undertaking Special Forces training were lost at sea during a diving exercise. An investigation has been launched into exactly what happened while the bereaved families accuse the Ministry of Defense of negligence.
Every year, a few soldiers across the world die in training (a British soldier from the Royal Regiment of Scotland was killed during a night-time live firing exercise earlier this week) and as terrible as it is, in many regards it is to be expected. Training must be realistic to prepare the individual soldier for the rigours and dangers of warfare and combat, and with exercises involving live rounds and explosives being fired and thrown around, a certain number of accidents are inevitable.
Equally inevitably, civilians who have never done a day in uniform then become involved, and wag their heads over the brutal and harsh nature of military training, apparently blind to the very obvious truth that war is a brutal and harsh business and if a soldier is expected to survive it then their training must prepare them adequately. A few years ago, a soldier attempting the selection course for Britain's Special Air Service died from exposure on a 40 mile march, alone in the wilderness, and when the public became aware of the incident the media had a field day. How could the Ministry of Defense let this man die in such a way when the modern world has safety nets such as rescue helicopters and search-and-rescue teams?
The answer is as brutal as the exercise itself. The SAS is the world's foremost Special Forces unit on which all others have been based (including the USA's Delta Force), and the selection course alone takes two years. The unit believes in men being utterly independent and takes only those troops who are capable of pushing themselves beyond their limits; small wonder that the 40 mile march all candidates must undertake is simply called 'Endurance'. The near-impossibility of SAS Selection has caused some courses to finish with no candidates found to have made the grade (out of hundreds of men), but it has also given rise to the finest soldiers on the planet. The examples of their expertise are endless, but most notably Argentine troops of the Falklands War dubbed them 'superhuman', and years later during the Gulf War, Chris Ryan, an SAS trooper whose unit had been captured, was able to evade Iraqi soldiers and travel alone in the desert for over 290 km with few supplies to eventually reach Syria.
The point is, despite the savage nature of military training (especially the Special Forces variety), there is always a point to it. Chris Ryan would never have been able to (or ever believed he could) execute the longest behind-enemy-lines escape in the history of warfare had his training not been so insufferably tough, and soldiers who calmly face combat would crack under the pressure of their first baptism of fire without the right preparation.
Yet the death of the two Georgian soldiers this week was utterly pointless on a number of levels.
The lacklustre showing of the Georgian Army in the 2008 war against Russia caused both the Georgians themselves and the Americans to set about reforming the military with the urgency of Frederick the Great with a wasp in his pants, but some fundamental issues still clearly remain. The two soldiers who died were undertaking diving training at the time of their death, but in my opinion they had no business being in the water to begin with.
It was apparently their first time diving, and they were sent into the sea in very choppy waters that any sensible officer would prevent any inexperienced troops from going into. That, surely, is common sense. However, I also see absolutely no need for military divers for Georgia in the first place. While the Georgian Army seems intent on copying everything American (including those awful uniforms, hats, and the style of marching; come on, chaps, thumbs pressed down, elbows locked, and sloped rifles if you please), I can't for the life of me see the need for US Navy SEAL-style soldiers here, simply because Georgia has no navy to begin with. Besides which, the handful of ships it retains now belongs to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and so if Georgia must have divers then they shouldn't be anything to do with the Army anyway.
That, then, is really about it; two pointless deaths in a training exercise for a pointless capability that the country can never use effectively. As a Georgian citizen, I'll happily vote for any party in October's elections that irons out the stupid and introduces some common sense. However, I do rather feel like I'm asking for the moon.
Tim Ogden