Examination of Witnesses (Questions 960-979)
LIEUTENANT GENERAL
JOHN REITH
CB CBE, MR IAN
LEE AND
REAR ADMIRAL
CHARLES STYLE
CBE
9 JULY 2003
Q960 Mr Hancock: A moral component;
there is more than a moral component?
Lieutenant General Reith: No,
please, let me finish. Therefore, morale within those units was
affected, and I accept that, but the reality was slightly different
from the perception they had, that was all. But I accept that
we have got to do something about that.
Q961 Mr Cran: Mr Rapson, we have
to move on, but just one question before we do. I was astonished
when I talked to, and my colleagues did too, some of the units
which were in Iraq, to find, and you have referred to it already,
I think, this question of traceability. It seems to me quite criminal
that if the equipment was there and it was all ready for distribution,
what we discovered was that they could not trace some elements
of the equipment. What went wrong there because that should not
go wrong?
Rear Admiral Style: It is a major
lesson, and I am not going to pretend that that was a good story.
We did procure an element of an American system to help us with
this but it was not a complete solution and we have to put this
right. It is probably not much reassurance to you to know that
we had identified that as a priority within the equipment programme
area, so-called Logistic C4I, but, in any event, we must do better.
I hope I will not sound offensive about this but the only point
I would make is that it was an enormous logistic effort, to an
extremely tight timescale, that, yes, there were failures but
there was a much, much greater percentage of remarkable successes.
Someone told me that if you put all the logistics that went to
Iraq in a bunch of containers, end to end, it went from Southampton
to London, it was a remarkable quantity of material that was shifted,
and the vast majority of it got where it was meant to go.
Q962 Mr Hancock: Including lots of
stuff they did not need, like blank ammunition?
Rear Admiral Style: We attempted
to provide what was asked for, and, no doubt, as always in these
events when people are doing a remarkably busy thing very quickly,
there will be mistakes. I accept entirely that, the tracking point,
that is a major lesson and we will attend to it.
Mr Jones: We are concentrating on clothing,
which is very important, but also we have been told that in certain
circumstances there was a shortage of ammunition and that people
were sent into hostile situations with limited amounts of ammunition,
including, I understand, when we were at Odiham, Chinook helicopters,
which I know are not attack helicopters, which had a limited number
of rounds, I think it was 400.
Mr Hancock: Instead of 3,000.
Q963 Mr Jones: Are you aware of this?
Lieutenant General Reith: I can
tell you that we had in theatre 30 days' worth of ammunition,
with ten of them at intense rates.
Q964 Mr Hancock: From day one?
Lieutenant General Reith: From
day one; before we kicked off, that was in theatre.
Q965 Mr Hancock: Are they telling
us not the truth then, General?
Lieutenant General Reith: I do
not know.
Q966 Mr Hancock: When you get not
one, all of these people, that is why personally I found your
comments offensive, General, because we listened to these men
and women who had been there, and to a man and a woman they were
immensely proud of what they had achieved. Then they went on to
catalogue the problems as they saw them, as they affected them,
and many of them, including people who were working day and night
to get aircraft serviced, did not have proper equipment even to
clean themselves so they could eat, let alone sleep or go to the
toilet properly, for weeks on end. They had no boots. The new
equipment arrived, the well-tested trousers. The story was that
the guy took them back, they said "What's wrong?" and
he said "They ripped." "They're not supposed to,"
he was told, but they did. "What shall I do with them?"
"Put them in this pile here," and there was an enormous
pile of recently returned, new trousers, which supposedly has
passed all of the stringent tests. So these people were not lying
or exaggerating, they knew what was asked of them, and, you are
right, Admiral, they did what was expected of them and probably
far more than that. Now they are complaining, rightfully, about
how they feel they were let down. We were told they did not have
ammunition, General, they did not have ammunition. They told us,
quite clearly, "People were guarding our helicopters, very
close to the front line, and they didn't even have ceramics in
their flak jackets." You had a duty of care for these people
and these people were on the front line, very close to the enemy,
and some of them had as little as five rounds of ammunition. Helicopters
were sent with only a 40-second burst, 400 instead of 3,000, and
you tell us you had 30 days' supply of ammunition in theatre from
day one, then why did not these people have it?
Lieutenant General Reith: The
answer is, I cannot tell you.
Q967 Mr Hancock: I think we are entitled
to know, in Parliament, why that happened, General?
Lieutenant General Reith: You
are giving me anecdotes now of which I was not aware.
Mr Hancock: These are not anecdotes,
General. Some of these are very experienced service personnel
who have done 20 years in the Services, some of them had been
in four different theatres in the last three years. These were
experienced combat soldiers, men and women. They do not have to
tell tales, they were telling the truth, because there were too
many of them all to be lying.
Syd Rapson: I am sure it is going to
be taken on board, and it has been refuted fairly strongly from
the evidence we have received, so there is a difference of opinion.
If you can give us anything positive at this moment, if not, we
would prefer a follow-up afterwards?
Mr Cran: Mr Rapson, may I suggest, the
Committee really is very concerned and exercised about this, and,
I do not know about my colleagues, but I, for one, would like
to see a note from the MoD on this whole question of equipment
shortages but particularly ammunition and the ones we have mentioned,
because this is concerning.
Q968 Mr Hancock: Air Marshal Burridge
had exactly the same opinion as you did, General, and I find that
even more of a—
Lieutenant General Reith: Could
I make one comment. I am a soldier with 35 years' and considerable
combat experience. I find it inconceivable that a commander at
any level will give a soldier just five rounds of ammunition.
We have a chain of command, we have experienced people in that
chain of command who have a duty of care, you are absolutely right,
as I do, and I am surprised by what you have said, and clearly
we will follow it up and give you a note.
Q969 Mr Roy: I hear what you are
saying, General, on the duty of care. One anecdote, if you like,
which worried me, for example, was when I spoke to an officer
in Germany a fortnight ago, and he told me he was in a Manned
Vehicle and, as an officer, he took off his body armour and gave
it to the man who was going to be first out of the door. I accept
that is a duty of care but it is totally and absolutely unnecessary
and just not acceptable, whereby an officer in a Manned Vehicle
has got to take off his plates because the poor guy who goes out
of the door first, he does not know what he is going out to, he
does not have any plates. That is coming straight from the horse's
mouth, from people in the front line. Can I ask you, specifically
on equipment shortages, what shortages were reported to you during
the campaign itself from your subordinate commanders?
Lieutenant General Reith: We were
aware of the problem over the plates for the body armour. We knew
they were in theatre but it was this asset tracking problem that
we had, and there was a conscious decision by commanders on the
ground to redistribute to ensure that those that were going to
be going out of the armoured vehicles, who clearly were those
who were going to be most vulnerable to small arms fire, would
be issued with the body armour with the plates. I would be surprised
if that changeover occurred while they were going into battle,
because, by my understanding, the decision was made some days
before to do that redistribution by the commanders on the ground.
That I was aware of, and the commanders on the ground were satisfied
that, by the redistribution, they had sufficient for the task,
working on the principle that those who did not have the plates
actually were inside armoured vehicles and were either drivers
or gunners.
Q970 Syd Rapson: We were told by
Bill Neely, the ITN embedded journalist with 42 Commando in Basra,
that 60,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, Belgian ammunition, which
the Royal Marines had, failed at a crucial time. It was in a public
session, so it quite surprised us. I do not know if you knew about
that, or whether it is something else you can look at, and that
is quite a serious problem?
Lieutenant General Reith: I am
not aware of that particular incident.
Rear Admiral Style: Can I add
just one thing. Our perception on this ammunition issue, from
the Ministry of Defence end, and I did check this this morning,
is exactly as General Reith said. The ammunition we expected to
have to deliver, or the DLO expected to have to get out there,
got out there, to the very best of our knowledge and information;
36,000 body armour elements definitely got out there, and you
can repeat this story in one or two other places. To use your
word, there are anecdotes, there are reports, around the bazaars,
where those bits and pieces, it seems, did not end up exactly
where they were required, and obviously that is a distribution
issue, it is a fog of war question. I do not excuse it, but I
do say that when operating at high tempo, moving fast, with very
complicated and unexpected situations, such difficulties sometimes
will arise. I think it is difficult for us to respond to specific
reports of specific issues; what I can tell you though is that
all these reports are being gathered at the moment and we will
analyse them. Sometimes there will be an answer that this was
a local breakdown of a truck or a delivery, or something that
you would never be able to eradicate entirely, and sometimes I
expect we will discover that there was a distribution lesson we
really need to learn. All I can assure you is that we are taking
that aspect of the `lesson identified' process very seriously.
Mr Hancock: I would ask you not to treat
these as hearsay stories. We were in a room where a young lady,
a 19- or 20-year-old RAF regiment airwoman, told us she was wearing
a flak jacket which did not have the plates, but what was even
more worrying was she did not realise that there had to be plates
in there. It was only when she was given another flak jacket that
she realised that, for several days, she had been wearing it.
She stood up in front of seven Members of Parliament and 40 other
members of that establishment and told us that story. That was
not a hearsay incident, this was a young lady who had the courage
to get up and tell us her own personal situation, and, to be honest
with you, I think she was thoroughly cheesed off that she had
been let down, she could have been killed.
Q971 Syd Rapson: That is a genuine
story and I witnessed it as well, but you cannot be expected to
answer that particular one.
Lieutenant General Reith: We have
taken that point very clearly and we are as concerned as you.
Mr Hancock: She was not alone.
Syd Rapson: We are taking this particular
issue very seriously. It is the sort of thing that, as a Committee,
we need to try to hammer into the MoD and planners for next time,
if there is a next time.
Q972 Mr Crausby: Can I ask some questions
about the robustness of the plan. First of all, how much redundancy
did you build into your planning, and could you say something
about your satisfaction with the training and readiness of the
forces that you were allocating?
Lieutenant General Reith: I can
give you a good story on this one. There is no doubt that the
quality of the people and the equipment when we were using it
was outstanding. Most of the people, particularly in 7 Brigade,
had been through BATUS[1]
this last year, they were all at collective level five, which
means that they were at the highest standard of training, and
that was why they were selected to go on the operation. Similarly,
with the Commando Brigade and 16 Air Assault Brigade, because
they are lead elements of the JRRF, they were also at that very
high level of training all the time. They were extremely effective
on the ground, and when the honours and awards come out eventually
I think you will see that there was some very, very meritorious
action which took place. The equipment states were outstanding,
most of the equipment was 90 per cent all of the time, and that
is much higher than normally we would expect from that heavy equipment.
On the planning side, I would say that I had every confidence
in Robin Brimms and his tactical handling. As any good commander,
he always maintained an uncommitted reserve and that was available
to deal with anything that was unexpected that could have happened.
As it was, his plan went extremely well and he made the absolutely
perfect, balanced judgment on the moment to enter Basra, so that
we had almost no casualties on the civilian side and we were able
to take the city without any great damage, and so forth.
Q973 Mr Crausby: What about reserves.
What was your role in the deployment and did it work well?
Lieutenant General Reith: The
reserves are obviously an important part of our order of battle.
I think about ten per cent of the force were reserves, the mobilisation
went very well and they were fully integrated when they went into
battle. They are particularly important, of course, in the medical
areas and some of the logistic areas, where they do provide a
large part of the force. We have got some lessons now, on demobilisation,
where we need to streamline it and make it more effective, and
we are working on that already.
Q974 Mr Crausby: Reinforcements;
did PJHQ prepare in case more troops were needed, and on what
scale?
Lieutenant General Reith: We were
still holding the spearhead lead element available throughout
which could have been sent out to reinforce.
Q975 Mr Crausby: If you had been
asked to join the United States on a drive to Baghdad, could the
UK deployment have shifted its axis and done that?
Lieutenant General Reith: It was
never in our planning to go to Baghdad, and I had tailored the
logistics according to the plan and I had told the Americans we
would not be going to Baghdad with them.
Q976 Mr Crausby: That was not in
the plan at all, so it would not have been possible?
Lieutenant General Reith: It might
have been possible we could have stretched things, but it was
never in our plan.
Q977 Mr Hancock: Did they ask you?
Lieutenant General Reith: They
did not ask us, because we said that we had a specific area we
would go within.
Mr Hancock: I was wondering whether you
were asked, and that was your response.
Q978 Mr Jones: Just about the campaign
itself, General, once the campaign started, how closely involved
were you yourself, and contact in terms of individual components
of the campaign, how did it work day to day, in practice?
Lieutenant General Reith: I was
involved very closely, and personally I was doing probably a 16-hour,
17-hour day for the whole period. We had the ability in my Headquarters,
through the connectivity, to see where the forces were on the
ground, using a thing called Blue Force Tracker, so I could see
the deployment of our sub-units on the ground. Which meant I was
able to keep a lot of pressure off Robin Brimms, in particular,
because we could give the briefing, and everything, in to the
MoD direct without having to ask him to give us the information.
So this was very much a step forward, in terms of management of
information. I had the operational command, and therefore we had
agreed a plan with limited tasks; to do anything more or take
it further, it had to be referred back to me. I had certain delegated
authority from the Secretary of State to do further things, but
any things beyond those I would have had to refer, as I did on
one occasion, to the Secretary of State to get authority to do
more. So it worked in that way. Brian Burridge was my man, alongside
Centcom, who was doing obviously the media piece but the local
linkage in the Centcom to ensure that what was happening was what
we had agreed, and he was holding what is called the famous `red
card', so that if something was happening with which we did not
agree he could say, "No, we don't accept this."
Q979 Syd Rapson: Thank you very much.
Can I thank you for a very spirited performance this afternoon.
Whatever we ask questions on, we are immensely proud of what the
troops did and all the back-up staff, the planners, the civilian
staff as well, and our intention is to raise questions where we
think there can be lessons learned to make things better for the
future. Thank you very much for your evidence.
Lieutenant General Reith: Mr Rapson,
I am most grateful for that, thank you, and I promise we are not
complacent and that we are learning the lessons.
Syd Rapson: Thank you.
1 Note from Witness: British Army Training Unit, Suffield,
Canada Back
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