So, Charles, thank you very much for joining me in Studio 2 for a discussion about the military. This is going to be fairly loose, I think, but over quite a few months, you and I have had a number of discussions where we've said we've really ought to get together to talk about the military. And today's the day. I think there's so much to cover that we'll just do as as much as we can in today's conversation. And then we'll we'll look to do another episode or maybe or
maybe some more episodes. So what counts here? I think I'm going to pull, I'm going to pull the rank by virtue of my age. And I, I think I'll start off by just saying, tell me a little bit about your career because I, I know, I know quite a few things about you, but it would be great to hear you tell us a little bit more about yourself. And I'm sure the, I'm sure the audience would like to know
that. And once you've done that all, I will reply with a bit about my ancient heritage in the Royal Navy. Not, not, not that ancient. Well, in the grand scheme, if. Well, maybe. But yeah, I think, I think this will be part of a, an evolving conversation. I mean, not least because of the speed with which not just the armed forces are evolving, but the way that they're being treated, dealt with by their political masters, but also by the society that's puts them
forward. And I think there's a huge amount to talk. I always like to say we, we, we've spoken a lot leading up to this discussion about the sorts of things that we do need to talk about. Whether or not we'll get to into much of that today, I can't be quite certain. But I think what I'd like to do is, is sort of talk, of course we, we will, I'm sure, talk about things that might not make that much sense to people that perhaps haven't been in the armed forces.
So what I'd like to do is, is try to make a particular point about speaking as though somebody listening has no idea what it might be like to be in the armed forces either then or now. And the reason I say that is that I think one of the things that has changed in actually fun enough in both directions in the period of time that I've been sort of within the military orbit is, is how people are conditioned via various propaganda exercises to either regard the military as friend or foe.
And I, I, I've seen this sort of ebb and flow over the years. Now for myself, my first sort of engagement with the armed forces was back in the mid 90s whilst still at school. And that was a period of quite high turbulence after the Options for Change programme. That had been a lot, I'm sorry, I should qualify that I'm specifically talking about the Army, whereas you're going to be primarily talking about the Navy. And I think that's a distinction
worth making. But at that point the with, with the collapse with the Soviet Union and all the fallout from that, the, the army specifically was put in a position where things were being made to change. Definitely not in a way that people were universally happy
with. There were a lot of very uneasy regimental amalgamations which to put that in the sort of silly speak is I suppose a form of a merger or or indeed could be perceived as an acquisition between two different entities and therefore personnel inevitably have to disappear. There's a sort of rebranding exercise and if it's not managed correctly, there are a lot of upside down smiles because people are left in some way bereft of what they regard as
their identity. And I think this is a, a thing that's really worth talking about. We, we joked before recording that we're both wearing checked shirts. So I said, well, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a conversation about uniform.
And I don't, and I mean that partially glibly, but actually there is a serious point because I think again, to look at it from the outside in, for a lot of people, looking at the armed forces creates a sort of sense of revulsion at the idea of being told what to do, being a tiny cog in a machine, of not having any control over your own destiny and all this, all this sort of thing with which I I sympathize and understand why people say that. That's not my perspective at
all. My view of it is that you go into one of these systems in order to hone your skills in a particular job. That means you are going to be used, OK, fair enough, use to the very best of your ability. And you actually do exert a huge amount of control over the way in which you do do that. And the uniform part is really significant in that by making everybody look the same, you're
creating a sense of compassion. You're, you're creating a sort of family situation in which people are subconsciously at least, if not consciously feeling like they're all part of 1 body and therefore they will go above and beyond to look after and protect those people around them. And, and a uniform is absolutely critical to that as our standards of behaviour and all the rest of it. And that's something that I think has has slipped
dramatically. So I don't, I don't want to be a too far off point, but but, but yes, in my, my sort of first engagement was, was mid 90s and with, you know, sort of school and university and whatnot. It wasn't actually until the 2000s that I then went to the wrong Military Academy, Sandhurst, which is where the officer training has happened for many years. It's now the only place that officer training happens for, for the Army. It's a year long course. It is.
It is very, very physically demanding. It's also supposed to be intellectually demanding and it's supposed to put you at the other side where you're in a position to be able to manage for the responsibility of looking after, if you're an infanteer, like I was around 30 soldiers. And, and that's it's, it's largely a welfare job, but specifically as a, as a, as an officer, as a commander, you're supposed to have the capability to plan and plan in such a way that you're going to achieve
success on the battlefield. And that again is ultimately a welfare consideration because you're talking about not losing life now, talking about the mid 90s and all change there in the
mid 2000s. And Mike and Patrick have just had an amazing discussion on the 20 years since the 77 events in London in 2005. Now that I would say my perspective both at the time and now is how that was yet another manipulation in the narrative in order to change what it was that the country, the politicians were going to do with the armed forces. And it was very, very
interesting. If you go back and you look at what was being said by the Ministry of Defence, because of course we were already four years into an operational, an active operational theatre in Afghanistan, which had supposedly started, you know, John Reed's words, without a shot being fired, which of course was never realistic.
And then Iraq starting in 2003. So we had we had two medium sized operations going on and the suggestion was never anything other than, you know, K the goal posts always move or whether it was regime change or stability to the region or any
of those sorts of things. And then in 2005 it changed and up for me the touchdown that what it was that triggered that was comments both made by Richard Dannison, Mike Jackson, who were who were successive heads of the Army and Cronty is not quite right there because then it was later. But there there was this suggestion that the armed forces weren't sort of getting to do what they wanted to do. They weren't they were underemployed.
And there was, there was reported to have been a conversation with Tony Blair, then Prime Minister who, who, who but basically didn't take to this idea very well.
And, and the result of that combined with the, the sort of this spectre of terrorism and then it being good sort of going live in London, was the idea that somehow operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had a bearing on our security in the UK. And it was this idea that that we would then have to protect the UK and to keep our streets safe, which had just come from nowhere. There was, that was never, ever part of the, the sort of the operational plan or, or indeed the messaging around it.
So it's a very, very interesting transition. And I think if you look at what's happening the, the, the sort of succeeding 20 years, then it, it does explain an awful lot about how we've got to, to where we've got now.
But, but, but to, to return to the point, I mean, I, I therefore, because of those operations, it meant that the pace of life, the tempo in the Army was different from what it had been say, for, for the 20 years prior where there was a lot of time in sort of Garrison context where there'd be a lot of training activity, but but nothing then perhaps after that. So people were by and large in the same place doing sort of similar, perhaps slightly repetitive things.
I, however, spent a period of time where that wasn't the case at all. There was massive uncertainty. There was a huge, well, mismanagement, let's say, of resources. So there was a lot of areas in which funding was cut to to, you know, access to training, training areas and all sorts of things that should make an Army career sort of interesting, exciting and rewarding for everybody was was being threatened to. And then that led inevitably and sort of later towards and yet
another panic, which is right. Well, these, these operations aren't going to last forever. What are we going to do next? And that's, that's both thrown without and within because you know, as much as one might think that the military does to a large extent control what it does, the reality is actually very different. That's, that's not at all what I saw happening. And to, to, to try to engineer the system so that you are going to be doing something is
different. I mean, I, I personally ended up in East Africa. Well, I suppose I should say Eastern Africa based in Kenya. And it was fascinating then to see how there was a sort of, there was really a scramble for jobs and, and, you know, people being called off to, to hold this idea of Somali piracy and, and, and all sorts of other things. So, you know, it was a real period of flux, but also it was the beginning.
I don't want to jump ahead and, and I'll absolutely hand over in a second, but it was also the beginning of the period of time where the, this idea that veterans were a sort of protected species started to come in. And I think we'll go on perhaps later or at another time to talk about how that's been hugely manipulated.
But, but that was what I saw. And, and I think, you know, during that period, for all the reasons that I've given, there was there was an enormous transition which has absolutely
not corrected itself. And, and, and the trend, you know, as reported many, many times on, on UK column If funds to if, if, if you're to strip away all the, the control elements and the, the appalling situations in which the armed forces do get put, let's say, politically or strategically in terms of messing up other people's countries.
If you just take the organization itself and the, the way in which there has been a deterioration and A and a loss of of sort of quality and numbers that was absolutely already happening then. And it, and it looked, you know, to, to use your sort of language, it looked very deliberate the way in which it was being done. But I can go on to prevent more of that later. But anyway, now that let's say that's a little bit of. Well, Charles, that was not there.
And yeah, I was thinking as you're going through, you know, there's so many points and where do I start from that? I think I just want to ask you one more question before I respond. And that's that's you joined. You did join the army. Why did you do that? Yeah, that's a very good question. And actually in the first instance, it was almost by accident, which a lot of people have said over the years very specifically, and this is, this is an initiative of somebody
who's sort of good at their job. When I was at school, there was a that's sadly defunct. Well, I would say sad because I thought it did actually it worked well. They ran a program called an Army Scholarship, which meant that you could, as a 16 year old, you could go forward to the regimental selection board and go basically go through the officer's selection as a schoolboy and get a, get a place at Sandhurst for whenever it was you wanted to take it up.
And I had been informed of this, so I went along to speak to the visiting careers officer or whatever he was called. And my idea was that I was getting along just for him to explain a little bit about it, which is how I came away from the conversation only to get a letter in the post about two days later saying how, you know, delighted to meet you, so glad you've decided to go forward for this thing. And he had entered me into the process.
So, so that that was how it sort of took over that that's, that's a sort of slightly silly detail. I, my my family have a have a strong military background, which is not absolutely not been a defining factor, but it did mean and, and as I said, going back to the beginning about trying to civilianize this talk, it gave me an idea of the sorts of things that military life, army life in particular entailed.
And it wasn't the idea of sort of rigid discipline and being told what to do. It was actually totally the obverse, which was being able to be fit and do exciting adventurous stuff and be paid for it and, and use your brain at the same time. And I, I couldn't really at that age or stage imagine anything better.
It was, it was a huge appeal. I, I, I didn't really consider that there was any other professional out there that was offering in any way that kind of thing, as well as the enormous responsibility and privilege of helping other people run their lives in, in a command sentence. And that, that was absolutely borne out by getting to my first platoon and having a, a bunch of in the main, absolutely unbelievable individuals to, to look after if they want to a better term.
And, and I think it's a huge shame that that that I'm talking about the perspective of an officer, but this is not exclusively the preserve of an officer because everybody has this sort of welfare responsibility. And for people not to understand that that is such a huge part of it. I think it's really regrettable.
And I think it's also deliberate because it does sort of desensitize the whole issue and it, and it enables when expedient for people in the armed forces to be sort of othered to, you know, they're not high casts. They're, they're, they're different. And I think again, that's a, that's a, that's a great shame. But that, but that was, that was a huge, huge part of it.
And I, the reason I make that point is that I, what I would like to say is it as a really distinct issue is that I was not at all drawn to the idea of guns and ammo. I just, that was, that's going to be part of it. But I was not one of those people who just wanted to, you know, get on the ranges and fire off loads of ammunition or, or indeed go into a theatre of conflict in order to kill people. That was never ever any of my
motivation at all. But that was because naively Queen and country even then still to me meant something. And and and this is the problem. But we can come back to that. But say, yeah, that was that was the motivation.
But. Charles, I'm glad I asked you the question because I also got a scholarship and at the age of 16, and this came about because my father had had done wartime service in the Navy. He'd originally worked in the dockyard here in Devonport and in a particular year, I think it was the very beginning of 42, a small number of people from protected industries in the dockyard was one of them were actually called up. And I can't remember how many went from Devonport Dockyard. Several, 100.
Not on the scale of the thousands that worked there. It wasn't very many, but anyway, it resulted in my father spending the Second World War in, in the Navy. And he he, he ended up chief shipwright, chief Petty Officer and he saw some things which, you know, deeply upset him, but it was clear that, that he enjoyed a lot of his service time. But at the end of the war, he'd met my mum, which is probably a good thing.
And he, he decided that he was going to come out, even though the Navy offered him the opportunity to stay on a full time career. And they didn't do that with many people. So that was a, a feather in his cap. But when sort of I, I was a teenager and you, you start thinking about what your career is, I was pretty uncertain. And then 11 week, my father announced that on the Wednesday he was going to be taking me into, it was called HMS Flying Fox.
It was a little ship that was alongside in Bristol. And this was just to have a chat. It's a parallel just to have a chat. And so one very misty cold morning I was my dad and I drove down into Bristol and I go on board HMS Flying Fox and I meet her. Well, he seemed quite old to me, but I suspect he was, he was quite a young Lieutenant. And the next minute I was asked a whole load of questions about this and that which I quite enjoyed and I didn't find it
particularly difficult. And the next thing was a letter in the post inviting me for a full week assessment which was in Portsmouth. And as a result of doing that, I, I got a scholarship, which meant all I had to do was get 2A levels and then I would be able to go to Dartmouth, which is still the Royal Navy's officer training location.
So that's what happened. I got my got my A levels and the next minute I was just 18. Only a couple of weeks into being 18I arrived at Dartmouth. I'm not going to say a lot of it for me was was absolute fascination and curiosity because immediately you were exposed to a very different sort of lifestyle. But also very quickly it was to do with boats. You were on the river Darts and you you were learning about boats and warships and being able to sail and mess around in boats.
And much as you're saying, I found this very enjoyable and I'll add. I was fascinated at that time by the number of people that bailed out the training and I found this astonishing because some people decided after two weeks that they'd had enough and I couldn't understand why they would leave at that point because I thought you haven't seen enough. But they did on subsequent as the calls progressed and faces got blacked out on the
photographs. And until, you know, we passed out and that's the terminology we qualified. And it was about that time that the Navy suddenly announced that it was looking for people to go to university. And I'd made a specific decision in my head that I wanted to join the military. I didn't want to go to university. And suddenly here was the Navy pushing and pushing and pushing for these newly qualified
midshipmen to go to university. And I ended up sort of asking some advice from, from some of the staff and they all said, well, you know, it's an incredible opportunity because you're going to be in, in London, you're going to be paid and you get a degree and this can't be bad.
So in the end, I, I took it. And that meant that I went from from the traditional training route through to university, got the degree, had a lot of fun, got the degree, just came back into the Navy then to start the training properly and eventually, you know, you join the fleet at sea.
So even my training periods, there were these big changes happening because prior to that you'd had the system of young boys, 12 through till 12 through to probably 17, doing a sort of cadet ship with, with the Navy, and then they would become midshipmen. And then at that stage they go to Dartmouth. And so that was a very, a very long introduction to a career in the military.
And many of those young men that did it, you know, we were going to the, let's say, up, up and into the 1930s came from military families where their parents been in the military for a long time. So you had this inherent understanding of what the military was about. And when I got to Dartmouth, I'd come to a grammar school. But when I got to Dartmouth, that was a very different system
of training. But previously you had youngsters had gone through a system and they were very knowledgeable by the time they got to Dartmouth. So what am I trying to describe? I'm trying to describe that looking back, I can see that I already joined the system where the strength of families being involved with the military and people getting engaged with the military at a young age, that
was being pushed aside. And to me, I couldn't, I could easily see that this was depriving the military of a lot of inherent strength from, from the amount of time that people had spent training. It was ingrained in them. And this is very powerful thing. This is what makes good troops. When it's not, They're just there for a career. It's something they really want to do. They're very knowledgeable on the subject. So I find that very interesting that you also did a scholarship
like that. Yeah, I mean, well, this is it. I think. You know, you're right, the way which these things have changed and and you know, the view. Therefore from the outside, I mean, I think you know, going back to the the type of people that that are drawn towards this or do do this. I'm actually very interested to hear about the number of people that dropped out that that was
not maybe exceptions. That certainly wasn't the case in my era at Santos. There were, there were there were very small number of people who decided not to. Some people physically weren't up to it and therefore left. But by and large people stayed. And and actually just to just to again further qualify the the situation with the sort of the people element, which I think is so important.
I, I well, remember the opening address that we had from what Well, Sant has this split up on what would I suppose be a regimental basis, but they're, they're colleges say, well, you start off in old college and therefore you have a commander who is a sort of seasoned Lieutenant Colonel. So it's kind of chief executive role, I guess. And I, I remember David Hill, he was who spoke to us and said the first thing he said was, was welcome.
You have joined that group of society that picks up other people's rubbish. And it was, it was very good. And I know the word integrity has, has, has difficult connotations for, for UK column because of the integrity initiative. But, but if we forget that for one minute, it wasn't him that said it. But it was always said that because, because you know, this old idea of ethos and all that kind of thing, but integrity was
always the big one. And to, to put out that theme a little further, integrity is, was always described as being, picking up other people's rubbish when no one's watching. And, and, and I think it is a point worth making because there are two elements to it. 1 Is this idea that the the military shapes the person as opposed to the person having the aptitude, all that system and therefore fitting into it well, adapting to it and getting the most out of it.
There will always be debate on that, but my view is that predominantly people of a certain bent, of a certain character will be drawn towards a particular organization and I think the military expressly because ultimately it might lead to your death. So you have to be quite sure about whether or not you want to do it.
So that's one side of it. The other side of it is that there is AI can totally understand why, but but there is a regard that people once they've joined the armed forces, they are in effect trained killers. That's really all they're about which yes, OK, that is true because you're not really going to be of much use in an armed force if you're not doing that bit or able to do that bit.
That is part and parcel of it. But that absolutely goes alongside the, the litter picking bit in that the, the system simply doesn't work if people don't behave with terrific respect for one another. And, and any, any breach in that, any failure of that is, is
catastrophic. And, and you know, it's always the, the, the service test was always the, the, the determining factor in, in how the situation was looked at, which was does it, does the, the situation, if there's been a breakdown in communications or discipline or whatever, does it fail the service test, which is, does it, does it compromise your
operational effectiveness? And, and I, I think there are two don't get dragged too much down the kind of military ball thing, but there are so many really, really positive sort of universal elements from the way those systems were managed between people that could, I think could and should be transposed in a, in a completely non military sense, but into the
civilian environment. And you know, this goes back to what you're talking about where, where that there is this sort of intentional breakdown and that the idea of the sort of the service family thing being stopped and, and all that. And I totally agree. And I think I think the consequence for society as a whole has been terrific. And and actually, if I may just use one anecdote, I can remember about 15 years ago, there was a very, very cold winter.
It was the winter 2010 eleven. Climate change obviously hasn't started by that stage. So there was terrific, terrific guys at the time, I was living in a village that had a Ford in the road that went out of the village. So, so you went down a relatively steep descend through the Ford, not the other side, but because nobody had bothered, there was a huge amount of ice high side of it. Basically people couldn't get in and out.
And, and I, I, you know, OK, it wasn't something that I'd actually need to do for those reasons. But when it did become necessary to be able to clear that ice, I went down, you know, it was, it was -10 outside. And I started sorting the, the tracks and smashing it away with a, with a shovel and whatnot. Was one other bloke who arrived more or less at exactly the same time. And he was a private soldier from the Parachute Regiment. He'd just been shot in the leg and was recovering.
He'd been through heading court. There was some rehabilitation thing and there we were, stripped down T-shirts, pouring this sweat and -10 clearing the path for this village. I don't say that. So why? You know how amazing? But the point is that it was that it was two people who were, who were both active servicemen who just decided to do something that a village of, I don't know, 300 people hadn't, hadn't thought to do. And neither of us. Sorry.
The point is that we were both sort of visitors. Neither of us was actually living there full time. So I mean, it just. Yeah. And if you if you stop the system from working properly, then society doesn't have that sort of dividend as it were returned to it. Yeah, it's a very interesting area and for me, very well. You saw this very quickly on board a ship because the ship does not function if people are not working together and you have all sorts of risks around
you. So that, you know, that could be fire or it could be flood or it could be the explosion Ship is, is a, is a pretty dangerous mix of things because you've got people in a steel box with fuel and explosive in large quantities. And so there's an inherent need for people to be professional and reliable and trustworthy in order to survive in that environment.
And you add to it, you know, if a ship goes to sea in very rough weather, it requires that ship to work properly and to be sufficiently robust that you're going to come out the other side of, of the storm. And so you've got this, this wonderful environment of people who have been, who were very well trained. And also they were, they'd built up a camaraderie together where people could rely on each other.
They'd looked out for each other and on top of that, the thing I remember of of the Navy was a very quiet working environment. Most people were asked if they would do something. Occasionally they were told, but generally it was put across in a very soft way. And I always laughed when I started to see some of the BBC documentaries about the Navy and certainly if I saw BBC documentaries about the holding, because people were always shouting at each other.
And this was something I'd never, I'd never encountered, you know, maybe once or twice in a serious situation where somebody needed to shout because we're in the open air and you needed to get water across. The rest of the time it happened
in a very quiet, measured way. And the interesting thing is, is and I, I think it is still the same today, but if you, if you then went to the submarine service where the danger was even greater because you're in a steel box with fuel and explosive nuclear radiation and you're under the water, everybody has to know what they're doing. And yet the working environment is even quieter and the relationship much softer between offices and and the normal ranks. And why was it like that?
Because everything was running very smoothly. And, and the other bit so bad to it is, is conversations that I remember and usually the best conversations in the Navy always do during the night watches. Because if you were officer of the watch, you're up on the bridge and you, you had two or three the ship's company with you as lookouts or steering.
And you would have conversations, very normal conversations about families and holidays and cars and whatever it was always with a sense of humour. And and so this idea that, as you say, that the military is just this way of ingraining in people that they're, they're going to become trained killers, that was absolutely not what I saw. Were you expected to do your
job? Which ultimately, you know, if we were at war that does involve killing people, But the but the actual day-to-day Society of the military was, was very relaxed and personable and it was based on people skills. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I totally agree. I, I, I agree with you, in fact, trying to find a documentary about the army in which anyone actually speaks rather than
shouts, It's it's difficult. And, and having been specifically having been a Guardsman where you spent quite a lot of your time shouting on a parade. Yeah, it's, it's extraordinary. And of course, again, being infantry, most of what you're doing outside in an active sense involves shouting because of the the notes. But, but clearly there is another element to that.
No, I mean my, my, my memory of, you know, all services behave differently for, for different reasons, but no, my memory was exactly the same that think things were conducted in in a, in a calm and rational manner. And, and actually this is this, this I think is such an interesting.
It's not exactly a paradox, but but it these these two things that are very closely related, that we have this system in which people know their job absolutely inside out and can depend with their life upon the persons on either side of them. That's the only way in which it works. And we were talking recently about how different this can be
in the civilian environment. And I and my own experience is subsequent to leaving the Army in terms of having spent any time either working within or in close proximity to large corporations. I have seen the exact opposite. I have seen the vast majority of people with no real idea of where the job begins and ends and what indeed they are supposed to do in that role. And actually, if the pressure increased, they would collapse because they don't get it.
And there are lots of reasons why that might be the case. But ultimately, they're not going to die or get injured if they don't get it right. And yet we talk about the humanity, the, the human side of, of the armed forces. But we cannot get away from the fact that ultimately, if they are exercised in the way that that they are currently and have been for hundreds of years, lives are lost.
And what I'd be very interested in, in your perspective, is that in retrospect, obviously I, I don't believe there was any merit in any of the foreign interventions that were being conducted during the period of time that I spent in the Army. Quite the opposite. I think they were really disgraceful engagement. But but the difficulty is that people like me are still getting to want to belong to those sorts of organisations because of all the sorts of things that we're
talking about. Do you remember how you felt about the sorts of operational theatres that were either being entered into or that were likely or, or you know, your point of view on whatever one calls it sort of foreign intervention? Because I because I find it's it's a very difficult thing to to be absolute about because of all the other it won't be positive attributes. It's, it's very interesting. This is a very interesting subject.
I think I would have to say that for the first instance during my career, the the overwhelming thing was this was Cold War time. And so if everything was focused around the Cold War scenario, we still have the British Army of the Rhine. There was still major exercises taking place in in Germany, and that was all on the basis, of course, of the Soviet Union in invading the West and at sea.
All of the exercises effectively were based on scenarios around for me locating and and tracking and ultimately destroying Russian submarines, Soviet submarines and the major exercises at sea used to be called the teamwork series.
And they were based on first of all the American carrier groups moving across from from the United States principally into the North Atlantic and also up into the Norwegian Sea to project so projects US air power across Norway and protecting the northern flank and deterring the Soviet Air Force from moving down into the Norwegian Sea. the US carrier groups were the first role for the Royal Navy because we were to be part of the anti submarine screen for those units.
And I think we did a pretty good job. But of course, the carriers were the full front of the supply ships coming across because nothing has changed from the Second World War. In order for a major war to be fought in Europe, the American industrial complex had to produce the munitions and the food and fuel and everything else. And that had to be transported in convoy across the North Atlantic. So for me, during the bulk of my time, it was it was clearly the
Cold War and. I didn't really pay attention to specific deployments overseas, although I did, I did do one particularly boring patrol out in the Gulf when it, it, it's, it was getting a little bit serious out there. But none of that was a sort of major deployment for the, for the Royal Navy. The big thing for me was the Falklands and that was particularly of great significance to me because I just started my warfare
training. The career in the, in my career in the Navy was that initially you work to train in basic navigation skills and then you work to get your bridge watch keeping ticket, which means you can, you are capable of holding a watch on the bridge on your own day and night. And then when you've got those skills then they start to move you forward to the warfare training. And so I went to HMS Dryad in Portsmouth to start that warfare training. And we were only a few weeks in
when the Falklands started. And what came to the surface very quickly was that there was not enough warfare people at sea. And so I was, I can't remember how many of us there were, but they were, there was a relatively small number of us that were pulled off the course early, put on a ship and then sent down to the Falklands.
So I didn't even go through the full warfare training course because the Falklands started and rapidly there was this major escalation and they were desperately short of certain people, including the warfare ones. So I was on board a frigate and sent off to the Falklands and I have to say I was very lucky because we got down there two days after the Armistice was signed and I then did a very well. Some of it was interesting.
I was going to say very boring patrol down there and of course you were there having missed all the glory. So anybody you encountered had, who had been there was very keen to say what they've been doing, etcetera, etcetera. But we got down there after the fighting had stopped. So I have to be very thankful that I, I wasn't put in harm's way. Some of the people that I joined the Navy with died in the, in the Falklands.
And a couple of them I only discovered recently when I was doing a bit of research and I was looking through the names of the, the deceased across the armed forces and I suddenly thought, Oh my goodness, I didn't realize he, he died. So, but the preparations for the full Falklands obviously were taken very seriously. And yes, I, I got the experience
of gearing up for war. And then of course, you know, we, we started here, the reports of the, of the hits on the other ships, HMS Sheffield and Coventry and, and the Type 21 frigates that were hit. And so as we were on our way down, we, we knew that if, you know, it was serious stuff and people were dying and, and being killed. So that, that was a pretty unique experience for me.
And then after that I, I specialized in anti submarine warfare and that was, that was tracking the, the Russian nuclear submarines and bombers as they came out into the Atlantic. That was very good because it it was real. It wasn't that we were on a training exercise. We were, we were finding the real, the real deal, the Russian submarines. And that was a very enjoyable time because I got a lot of
satisfaction about that work. And I would also add, we had huge respect for the Russian submariners because they were
very capable people. And to answer your point, it was after that that I eventually ended up in the Fishery Protection Squadron where I had command one of the fishery protection vessels, HMS Orkney. And that is when I really started to think about what we were doing, because it quickly became apparent to me that though the role of the Fishery Protection Squadron had been to protect, at least with a very small P, British fishing boats at sea, what we were actually
doing was imposing the European fisheries policy on those fishing. And the story that I've told in a lot of life talks over the years is that one very dark winter's night we boarded a Scottish fisherman of more or less the entrance to the Firth of 4th. And he he was breaking the rules for the size of his net. We weren't able to make a decision on the spot. We always had to refer to Ministry of Agricultural
Fisheries as it was then. So there was a dedicated team and they told us very clearly that we were to come to confiscate his net. And the Scottish captain of that boat talked to me in some pretty colourful language that I was destroying his effing livelihood. And I knew that that was exactly true.
And I also knew that when I was travelling around the the North Sea or up around the Shetlands and Falkland Islands doing the fishery patrols, we were seeing EU funded fishing boats for the French and the Spanish and the Germans in particular. Brand new boats paid for with European money that was simply wiping the oceans of fish and destroying the livelihoods of the British fishermen. And I started to feel deeply
uncomfortable about that. And it was actually that experience that made me get to a point where I thought this is not for me. And and so I left. So, you know, ironically, it wasn't a military style requirement to the armed forces that that brought that home to me. I never experienced A deployment, you know, where we were operating in the waters of some foreign country where I thought, are we doing the right
thing? It for me it was the fishery protection where I knew it was not the right thing. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's fascinating and, and again to the, well actually both military and civilian audience, I think, I think it's, you know, one of the things is that, that I prefer to quite a number of times on the news. And I think it's, it's safe worth bringing out, which is that all, all, all activities are governed by rules of
engagement. You know, any, any, any operational deployment whatever that there are, there are set conditions under which you may or may not use force or you know, you return far or far upon. And, and I think it's, it is certainly understood and it's certainly not it, it was fairly confident. It was never expressly said in any of the laws of our conflict
training that I undertook. But when you look at when you look at how it's written down, which is in joint services publication JSP 398 and you and you read what it says about rules of engagement, that the rules of engagement are the use of force as a political expression. It, it, it does just make you think about everything in a
completely different way. Because in within that environment, whether it doesn't matter where you are, whether you know that there are for every situation, there are rules of engagement. They do, they do get changed, but you're always led to believe that that has come from within your command structure. And as they there is an appraisal of the situation and appraisal of what would be regarded as, you know, risk or threats or or whatever. But but actually that's not where it comes from.
All of this is, is a political expression, a political fact. And this, this is, you know, where the, the difficulty lies. And that's why I thought, you know, find it so interesting to listen to you talk about these periods.
But the only thing I was going to ask as a follow up is do you remember either at the time or afterwards, anybody ever questioning either what happened in the lead up to or in the Falklands or indeed in the activities concerning, you know, the the sort of monitoring of the great Soviet bear? Was there the sense that, you know, it was not quite as it was being? Sold, I'd say, I'd say not in
this in the Soviet time. But then I'm going to say my perception of what was going on was, you know, I was very young and you're doing a particular job, doing a particular job. And just, you know, something that comes into my mind during the Cold War, one of the things that the the Soviets did, you know, the Soviet military exercises, they always talked
with real place names. Whereas if NATO, when it's a size usually, well usually inevitably we, we would be running to some exercise scenario. And if there was a country defined or a power block, the breadth power block, you were talking about targets that were always given code names, no great code names.
But when the Soviets were doing their exercises, they would be talking about advancing, you know, 30 miles further into West Germany and they will be talking about the the names of the places that they were going to be taking. Now, was that a bit of propaganda to put, put the West under pressure? Absolutely. But of course that that did make you think that their intent was
real. So. So I'm going to say that Cold War period people were very heavily focused and there was there was a lot of deep concern about Soviet capability and of course strength in numbers because they had very big military and certainly very big submarine fleet. And so there was an inherent, I'll say fear with a small F about the bear. But no, I didn't, I didn't get any pushback. Don't see any better pushback about that period.
The Falklands was mainly the push back actually was against, you know, UK because people knew very early on that we'd run into major problems in the Falklands because we hadn't got the ships or equipment. And very often it was clear that within the war Navy people had been warning and complaining about this for a long time. I mean, one of the key things is that ships started to appear, new design ships started to appear during the Cold War that had very few weapon systems on
them. And, and the moment the Falcons blew up, everybody said, well, you're going to be facing fighter ground attack aircraft close to coastal areas. We need traditional weapons, we need 20 millimetre, 30 millimetre guns and the ships didn't have them. So what then transpired was this rapid retrofitting of ships with anything they could find. And the frigate that I was on board HMS Sirius, which had four Exocet missiles.
It had sea cap surface to air missiles which although old, proved that that missile system proved pretty capable. In the Falklands we had a couple of single 20 millimetres and they ended up fitting a twin 20 millimetre on the bridge. But that 2020 millimetre was not a modern weapon.
It was it was a relic from the Second World War and so so ships went down there many of them I'll equipped for the battle that the Argentinians could bring you know again against the British and and we paid the price for that. And when, when you look back at good military analysis of the Falklands, we were very, very lucky.
And the bombs not exploding in Borne Alley, when the Argentinian, the pilots dropped bombs and they, they didn't own properly, that was that was just unbelievable luck for the fleet. So I quickly saw from my my, my Falklands experience that the military power that was was looking after, sorry, the political power that was looking after the military was absolutely failing to provide what the military needed.
And every year that I served, we were being, we were being told there were going to be further cuts in manpower and ships and training. That was one of the things that happened. And the other thing that happened with increasing frequency was some form of reorganization. And this might be the renaming of, of, of professional tasks within the military. It could be to do with absolutely stupid changes to the uniforms, it changes to the badges.
So in in an organization, which I would say when it's working properly, there's inherent stability and people know not only the organizational structure, they they know what the systems and they know the training everyone's had that that became ever more turbulent and you could see the effects. So initially you just put it down to the people who who kick started these changes lacked common sense. That's what you mind told, told you.
But later I started to come to the conclusion that these, these damaging changes were not a lack of common sense, they were orchestrated. And that's when, OK, that was before my time with the with the Fishery Protection Squadron. But that's why I started to think there's something malevolent at work. Yeah, and Ian, I think that's totally fascinating. And Julian Assange's words spring to mind with The Forever War.
You know, the, the, the goal is not to have a successful war, but a but an endless 1. And it's fascinating and I, you know, although a sort of a different period, but this is exactly what I saw. You know, I was my point. Naomi coincided with two in terms of tech 2 significant changes. One was the digitization of all radio comms from the Klansman system, which was absolutely brilliant because it worked absolutely everywhere.
It didn't matter how many bogs and puddles and whatever you dropped it in, it still worked to Boatman, which was, I don't know whether people consider that it works now, but it was absolutely hopeless at the start. And would the the all comms would drop all the time and it took forever to to reinitialize. And you can imagine in a yeah, battlefield context that is that is just not workable. So that so those two things were changed.
Oh, sorry, that one thing was changed and that had a, you know, I would say a very detrimental effect, not least because in actual fact, the other thing was that it required considerable skill to understand how to use that technology. So it wasn't that was there was not a universality in that in the way there was. And just just to explain to people that it's sort of the difference between a push button
and a smartphone. The push button thing, you kind of know what what it's going to do in the way that the log radio thing just was a radio with dials and you just clicked a battery onto it. There were lots of different types as opposed to it all being digital and having to have complicated process attached. And the other thing was supposed
personnel management system. All personnel stuff was running from Glasgow and they went on to a system JPA, it was called joint personnel administration, I think. And again, it just didn't work and and and going back to Assange's thing and and exactly what we're describing in the Falklands. If the armed forces capability and I and I say this with all the we don't even NATO summit, recent NATO summit in mind, defence review and all this kind
of stuff. But if it if it can absolutely do what it is supposed to do. And we are to to imagine that there is a sort of justifiable conflict and we really were able to deliver the effects that we promise it would be over within. By hampering the capability, it means that it can be extended to the enormous benefit of the war industry.
And we need look at the security, sorry, the strategic defensive review and the national security strategy to see that that is nothing more than a business plan for these industries. And when you do start to think about it like that, so much more of it makes sense, you know, to, to sort of keep the system going, but continually hamstring it in order that you get your forever wars.
I know that might seem like a terribly cynical way to look at it, but I think when you've gone through the system, it's very hard to consider it in another way. Because I saw exactly the same thing with, let's say with Iraq, but Afghanistan in particular, the the the advent of what we're called urgent operational requirements, which was the sort of the ven process of, you know, just fixing the 30 mil cannon to
to the front. It wasn't, but it was just buying off the shelf kit that wasn't in the budget that no one had training on. I mean, it was, it was chaos. It was absolutely chaos. And and therefore it meant that the effect on the ground was not what it should have been because of it. And, you know, don't tell me that no one could have seen that coming. And then, you know, we go back to well, things. Yeah, my experience was people did see these.
Things coming and they were constantly talking about it. And we, we could go a strategic scale, we could go very small scale. But for a strategic thing, there was the announcement, whatever year it was that they're going to get rid of Royal Navy's aircraft carriers. And everybody said, you know what, what are you talking
about? Because those aircraft carriers, apart from anything else, invariably formed the task group that that the Royal Navy. Produced in order to integrate with the American carrier battle groups we, we were part of the outer screen and and our carriers carrying anti submarine helicopters or ASW planes were part of that outer screen.
So, so people started to, you know, question this decision and of course it trickled down through the the Navy structure and there was a sufficient backlash that they were known as the through deck cruisers. This was a new proposal design and people worked hard enough to say, well, actually the through deck cruiser should be trying to changed to make it aircraft
carrier life. And I think we were, we were grateful that we did get these new small aircraft carriers, but of course they didn't have an angled flight deck, they didn't have a catapult system and therefore they were very limited in the aircraft they could carry.
They could carry the Harrier. The Harrier did very well during the Falklands. But if we had had carrier launched airborne early warning aircraft, which of course the Americans had, and we had previously with the old carriers, a lot of the damage in the Falklands wouldn't have happened. But somebody made a decision that we were going to get rid of carriers. Then when the new carriers came in, there was a gap. And that means you're losing the training, of course.
And this was something you you saw happening time and time again. And the other one I'll just mention was that that at one stage when I got a lot of experience in the particular sonar systems that we were using to track the Russians, this is a long toad array. So it's like a hose pipe full of microphones and you're listening to sounds in the water and you can detect the sounds of vessels
and submarines. But we had a particular sonar, it was produced by by Marconi. They were very excited when they produced it was taken to sea for tests and it's performance was outstanding. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. And so eventually this particular signal set was fitted in the frigate squadron that that I was part of. And then we very quickly started to go to sea on on these real life detection trips to find the
Russian nuclear submarines. Well, eventually we were told that the Admiralty Research Department was going to create an update of this sonar system. And because computer technology had moved on the cabinets for it instead of being the size I'll say if you if you know the size of a double door fridge, an American double door fridge. The cabinet to drive my sonar system was three of those side by side.
And the Admiralty Research Organization said they could produce computer that would do the same job about the size of your average domestic fridge, big domestic fridge. When the new sonar system was fitted, it very quickly became apparent it it wasn't as good or it wasn't as performing well. And eventually I was sent to sea with two ships, one with one system, one with the other system where we did a controlled trial to, you know, see what was going on.
Was was it the equipment of fault or was it the training of the operators? And it quickly became apparent that the old system was better than the new one. So what did they do? They took out all the old systems and replaced it with a with a new signal. And it was at that point that I realized that whoever was controlling the operation was not interested in in you doing the the job or in your lives. Because if they're giving you deaf equipment, they don't care what happens to you.
And so that was my one of my key examples of realising that the machinery driving the military wasn't everything we thought it was. And I and I, I think anyone. Anyone. Listening to who has any military experience will, I'm sure, have have an example of exactly that just brings to mind, yeah. As to completely commonplace, I think we might be nearly out of
time. But what I would say is that there's so much more to talk about that I think we should definitely do this again because I think we need to sort of bring ourselves into the the more recent present day. Yeah, I think so. So we should drop the. Agenda for It's been an interesting experiment because. You know, there is a big difference in our time frames for serving in the military because I left in 93 so well
before you joined. But it hasn't been difficult to have a a conversation where we know what we're talking about, even though you're from an Army background and I'm from a Navy background. And I find that I find that very interesting. Yeah, I said, well, and I think and I think that's that. Absolutely. It's a generational thing. I mean, always think, you know, to, for again, for, for the sort of civilian audience I've always taken enormous pleasure in talking to, to the old and bold
as we fondly refer to them. But you know, regimental gathering, speaking to people of previous generations by some margin. And, and finally, you absolutely speak the same language in that case across services as well. And I think that's, I think that is absolutely fantastic. But it but it is, you know, it's, it's not a surprise, but to find that there is that much common ground between our
experiences. It's still sort of amazing until you start to consider that that absolutely these things are all done with intent and and those people making these decisions are are by and large doing doing that for the same set of reasons. Just just a final comment from me. And perhaps this shouldn't come up from, but there was no planned structure to this, so so. Very, very unmilitary.
Several so I think I think. It's much better because we've weaved around we wouldn't have done that exactly structure. But I just wanted to say that we're having a conversation where we are starting to get a bit critical about matters to do with the difference in the military. And I think it's important to say that I and I know for you, we still have great respect for the people who are are serving.
And I think it's such a huge shame that many of the people serving today are doing so within the system, which is rapidly being exposed as a lie. I think that's the best way I can get it. And I won't add to that. I think that's a very good. Note to the bottom which to end and we will go back and revisit exactly that theme. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much, Charles.