Category: Military

Dropping Standards

Military

It’s about time somebody took a stand — and it happened in Britishland, too:

Woman who failed frontline infantry fitness test given a ‘pass’ by the Army until furious male soldiers who HAD completed course staged rebellion

Corporal Daisy Dougherty was hoping to become one of the Army’s first female infantry instructors following the landmark decision last year to let women join combat units and Special Forces.
The first stage in the selection process required her to prove her fitness by completing an eight-mile march in under two hours over arduous terrain while carrying a heavy pack and a rifle.
Despite being a qualified personal fitness trainer and a member of the Army’s athletics squad, the 29-year-old took too long to finish the challenge. Under course rules, she should have been immediately ejected and sent back to her unit.
But Cpl Dougherty – the only woman on the course – and 14 others who also failed were told they could carry on, sparking a furious backlash among the 75 soldiers who passed the test.
The soldiers rounded on commanders at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon, Mid-Wales, accusing them of lowering standards to suit women. When top brass refused to back down, troops contacted The Mail on Sunday to expose what they claimed was ‘positive discrimination’.
Fearing a public backlash if they allowed her result to stand, commanders backed down and asked Cpl Dougherty and the other soldiers who failed the march to leave.

Read the whole article, because there’s some equally-good news about the Paras towards the end of it.  (Ex-Para Mr. Free Market, for one, is chortling into his morning gin even as we speak.)

I repeat, for the umpteenth time:  women have no place in combat units.  Period, end of statement, end of story.

One Hundred Years On

History, Military, Patriotism

At 11.00am on this day in 1918, the guns at last fell silent.

Of course, the armistice came too late for millions upon millions.

For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Fixing The Civil Service

Military, The Gun Thing

The title isn’t what you think.

The “civil service” is the nickname British Army soldiers gave to the hapless SA-80 bullpup rifle — it doesn’t work and you can’t fire it — during Gulf War One.  So bad was the thing that a booming black market for captured Iraqi AK-47s was created because so many of the SA-80s were “lost” during that campaign.

However, after many failed attempts to fix the poxy rifle, it appears that the Brits have finally got the thing right (other than the fact that they had to get the Germans to do the job for them, of course:  that whirring sound you hear is of British WWI and WWII field marshals spinning in their graves).

Apparently the SA (now called the SA-80A3) really has been fixed this time, and the Brits plan on fielding it for at least a half-dozen more years.  Of course, it still shoots the silly poodleshooter 5.56mm NATO (.223 Rem) cartridge, which the U.S. Army will soon be phasing out because it’s ineffective in any scenario outside an urban one [links to about 5,000 earlier Kim Rants on the topic omitted for reasons of brevity].

Which means the Brits will have to play catch-up, again.

Exclusive

Men & Women, Military

I wonder if women ever stopped to think why stuff like this used to happen (before such signwriters started getting carted off to feminist-think reeducation camps, that is):

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because we boys had a great time together.  We got up to mischief, fought each other (physically and verbally), played dangerous games and (at the early puberty stage) talked about sex.

Let a damn girl into that idyllic scenario, and all that cool stuff ended, because the girls didn’t want to do any of it — and worse, if we went ahead and did it all anyway, they’d run and tattle to the grownups.

So rough boys’ games turned into gentler, girl-oriented games (which no boy wanted to play), fights weren’t allowed and mischief or dangerous games were prevented by the dreaded words, “I’ll TELL!”

Girls were (and are) a royal pain in the ass.  Hence the signs.

Now take childhood exclusion and apply it to adult life — oh, say, to the Army.  What could possibly go wrong?

What red blooded American male would want to serve in a US military of drag queens, cadets in red high heels, Mommy Rangers, lactating chicks in the field and waddling battalion commanders?
There’s a known fact that the feminist crowd would like to keep buried, like those Green Cards for those Ranger tabbed ladies that Benning hides so well – any industry women take over, men leave… in droves.
The future of the US military is a broken force, a devastated force, if anything is left at all on some distant battlefield.

But hey… who cares, as long as Teh Womyns feel better about themselves?

I used to be fairly agnostic about women who served in the military, provided that they were kept away from combat.  Well, they were allowed to join the armed forces, and because being non-combatants (cooks, drivers, clerks etc.) was demeaning, and patriarchal, and all that proto-feminist twaddle, of course they had to be allowed to do things like try to graduate from Ranger School — and because they always failed, the natural outcome was to lower the standards so that women could eventually pass and feel better about themselves.  Never mind that guys would look at this, say, “That’s not a challenge,” and leave.

Now I have a simple solution:  toss them all out.  Everywhere.  From the combat units, air force squadrons, clerical jobs and most especially, the Navy.  Make the armed forces a man’s world again.  Morale will skyrocket, G.I. pregnancies (and the concomitant costs) will become a thing of the past, fitness and duty standards can be raised to the skies, and our armed forces will become the envy of the world, just like they were during WWII.  My prediction:  men will flock to enlist in the armed forces for the same reason that “No Girls Allowed!” clubs always had a long waiting list of boys from the neighborhood.

And gawd forbid that I breathe these forbidden words:  the United States will then field a ferocious bunch of kick-ass fire-breathers who will cause would-be enemies to shelve their plans of aggression and run back to their Momma.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.  And admittedly, while men often screw up the pacem business, nobody can fuck up a good bellum like a woman.  ‘Twas ever thus.

Equal Treatment

Military

I have this opinion that if women are to be treated exactly the same as men, then when they fuck up bigly, their names should be reported in the news rather than covered up.

Or else, in the above case, we’d all think that the Navy is afraid that the ongoing feminization of their force may be compromised.  But perhaps I’m being too cynical.