They locked him up as a madman, of course.
APPENDIX 1: British Defence Policy
Reorganizations of the British contribution to the land forces of Allied Command Europe — of which, over the years, there had been several — had always been represented by the British government of the day as improvements to BAOR’s effectiveness, even when their actual result could only be a reduction in combat capability. The 1974 reshuffle was no exception. The Northern Army Group (under British command, it should be remembered, and containing almost all the British ground troops assigned to NATO) had never at any time been fully adequate to its task — to repel a Warsaw Pact incursion into northern Germany. No one really believed that NORTHAG, even given time for its four constituent corps (Belgian, British, Dutch and German) to be brought up to war strength and moved forward to battle locations from barracks far in rear, would be able to hold up indefinitely a conventional attack on the scale to be expected, and there were virtually no reserves in depth to deal with a breakthrough. The 1974 reorganization of the British Army made a weak position weaker.
It was this lack of forces in depth which had led to the stationing of two US brigades in northern Germany — most valuable but still far from sufficient to restore tactical control once the NORTHAG front was pierced. The main significance of this move on the part of the Americans, though its purpose was essentially military, can be seen apolitical rather than tactical. It showed simply that the US did not accept the clear implication of British defence dispositions in Germany: that a failure to hold an invasion on the Demarcation Line must very soon be followed by nuclear action, which could lead to a strategic nuclear exchange; that provision for a land battle in depth was unnecessary. The Americans, in rather pointedly providing two combat brigades for the very purpose of defence in depth, in an area of mainly British responsibility, demonstrated that in a matter directly affecting the security of the United States under threat of strategic nuclear attack, they were not prepared to allow their choice of options to be dictated by British defence policy.
This did not pass unnoticed in Britain. The suggestion, given a generous airing in the British press, that Britain was continuing to rely on the US to do what Britain should really be doing for itself, was not particularly pleasing to the British public in a time of reviving national confidence. It was to play a small but not unimportant part in securing public approval for the increase in Britain’s contribution to the NATO ground forces, which will now be explored.
The principal features of the restructuring programme for the British Army carried out under the Defence Review for 1974, to which reference has already been made, were as follows: divisions would be made smaller and one level of command, the brigade, would be eliminated. The span of divisional and unit command would be increased, with the result that there would be fewer HQ and fewer but larger combat units. The fighting capacity of the British Army of the Rhine, it was claimed, would be maintained and in some respects enhanced — though if anyone believed this to begin with no one did for long, not even the politicians who made the claim. Certain specialist functions (such as the flying of army aircraft, the manning of the larger anti-tank missiles and the driving of supply vehicles) would be concentrated in the hands of a single branch of the army.
For the army as a whole, the aim was said to be to reduce manpower while maintaining combat effectiveness. It was true that the numbers of equipments in service were kept at about the same level, which was dangerously low. What was described as ‘cutting the tail and keeping the teeth’, however, only meant that even in the inadequate numbers to which these equipments had been reduced, there were insufficient men to man, maintain and move them. The real purpose, of course, was economy at almost any price. Within three years of the 1974 Defence Review BAOR was at its lowest level of operational efficiency ever.
Not everything that was done was wholly bad, however. The regular army logistic reinforcement which the army at home (United Kingdom Land Forces — UKLF) was to provide for BAOR was drastically reduced, but to help fill this gap units of the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve (TAVR) were integrated into newly created regular combat formations. These, though brigades in all but name, could not be called brigades without contravening one of the declared principles of the exercise. They were therefore given the imprecise but otherwise inoffensive title of ‘field forces’ instead. This was at least one step towards a much needed improvement, the better use of reserves.
The effect of the restructuring plan on NATO reinforcement plans was one of nomenclature and source rather than of numbers. Before it, UKLF had undertaken to despatch to BAOR in support of NATO a total of some 60,000 to 70,000 troops, consisting of complete formations — 3 Division and 16 Parachute Brigade, for example — and a whole series of unit and individual reinforcements of great variety. Sortie were TAVR Signal Groups to activate the NATO and BAOR communications systems; some were so-called Yeomanry Regiments, fully equipped with armoured reconnaissance vehicles, to thicken the covering force troops available to I British Corps; others were units or individuals to strengthen either the structure or total numbers of BAOR formations, regiments, companies and squadrons. Leaving aside those who might be sent to the so-called flanks of NATO (Scandinavia, Italy, Greece, Turkey), the operation was designed to bring BAOR on to a war footing, which involved more than doubling its peacetime establishment. It was essentially a reinforcement which combined regular units, regular reservists and units of the TAVR.
After the army’s restructuring programme had been completed in 1978, the plans for reinforcement were substantially the same, but it was of course a reinforcement of a BAOR which had itself been restructured. By then I British Corps contained four armoured divisions (which were little more than large brigades) and one light infantry formation, called 5 Field Force. Two other field forces, 6 Field Force from Aldershot and 7 Field Force from Colchester, were part of UKLF reinforcements for BAOR and were themselves composed partly of regular units and partly of TAVR, the latter providing the bulk of the logistic support. Otherwise the reinforcement plan conformed to the previous pattern. As far as equipment was concerned BAOR remained as poorly provided as ever, though some new ATGW were promised soon.
Public dissatisfaction in Britain with its contribution to NATO, as Soviet military preparations still showed no sign of slowing down while pressure within the Alliance upon its members to do better steadily increased, caused the British government to introduce in 1979 a new Army Reserve Act, whose main purpose was to tap unused sources of trained military manpower. This Act laid down the means by which a liability for annual training and for embodiment in a national emergency would be given to those officers and men leaving the army each year (some 20,000 in number) who had hitherto not had any such liability. There were two main categories: first, those who served on short regular engagements, that is, officers who had completed a three-year Short Service commission and soldiers who had served for three, six or nine years with the colours. The second category (for it was decided to disregard Long Service men who retired at the age of fifty-five) comprised officers who had served on Special Regular commissions of up to sixteen years and soldiers who had completed twenty-two years. Although this second group already had certain reserve liabilities in an emergency, they were not required to do annual refresher training. The new law would therefore enable the government to call on both junior officers and soldiers and also on more senior ones, such as majors and warrant officers. All those in these various groups would for three further years have a training liability for two months’ annual embodiment, including overseas training, and their reserve liability in times of national emergency would continue until their forty-fifth birthday. The necessary safeguards of employment and so on were included in the legislation. Thus some 20,000 officers and men, well trained in existing equipment and techniques, from all corps of the army, became available each year from 1980 onwards.