Walter Scott_Behind the Wire (formatted) 1.3

Behind the Wire
Defence feature articles, 2003-05
Walter Scott

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Walter Scott works for the UK Government as a senior
communications specialist. His internal, external and strategic
communications experience includes two years writing for
Defence Focus, the house magazine of the Ministry of Defence
(2003-04).

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Contents
5 … Reflection from over the Park: Geoff Hoon discusses six
years as Defence Secretary
10 …CJO: Piloting the Forces together: Air Marshal Glenn Torpy
on the changing face of Permanent Joint Headquarters
15 …Truth or Consequence: The Second Permanent Under
Secretary and the Information Commissioner discuss the Freedom
of Information Act
20 …This is Kate Adie: The former BBC journalist on her
frontline experiences
24 …Face of tomorrow's Army: The first interview with General
Sir Mike Jackson on his Army restructuring plans
28 …Rock’s role in Defence: Conversations in Gibraltar with the
Chief Minister, the Commander British Forces, and the Royal
Gibraltar Regiment
35 …Rock of ages: Snapshots of military Gibraltar
38 …Back from Brussels: Lord Robertson of Port Ellen looks
back at Defence and 9/11
44 Aftermath of terror: Disaster recovery at MOD
headquarters is put to the test
48 …Man for all Forces: An interview with incoming Defence
minister Ivor Caplin
53 …Heat and eat: 24-hour ration packs put to the test
59 …Smooth operators: Inside the MOD telephone exchange

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64 …Typhoon Season: Touring the Royal International Air
Tattoo at RAF Fairford
69 …Computer shooter: Launching a new virtual reality firearms
training system
73 …Burden of battle: Veterans minister Dr Lewis Moonie
discusses post-traumatic stress disorder
77 …AG: seeking the balance: A conversation with the new
Adjutant General
81 …Training for war and peace: With the Royal Engineers in
Kenya
84 …Planning for a peaceful future: Britain coaches African
Union leaders in peacekeeping
90 …Mapping the past: The Hydrographic Office goes
commercial with its legacy maps

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Reflection from over the Park (May 2005)
Geoff Hoon has become the Leader of the House of Commons. He
spoke to Walter Scott about his time at MOD
The Leader of the Commons gets an office in St James’s that is
quiet, stately, spacious and very unlike the Ministry of
Defence. But if Mr Hoon thought it would put the military clean
behind him, he may have been disappointed on arrival in Carlton
Gardens.
The town house belonged to Asquith’s war secretary, Lord
Kitchener, and in the waiting area, at the foot of the grand
staircase, hangs the 1919 design for the Cenotaph, where Mr
Hoon attended many a wreath-laying during his 67 months as
Defence Secretary.
He inherited the job from George Robertson almost two years
before 9/11. On crossing the road from the Foreign Office, where
had been minister of state, he remembers "a very steep learning
curve".
"Then there came a point at which I felt I understood enough to
be able to take proper decisions about the department and to work
closely with the Chiefs. There probably came a point as well
where they accepted that I was a serious Defence Secretary who
wanted to make changes."
The need for change became, horrifically, that much clearer in
September 2001. When the first plane hit the World Trade Center,
Mr Hoon was leaving the ExCel Centre in Docklands, having
attended the Defence Systems and Equipment International
conference.
"I had given the opening speech and toured the equipment
stands. Then I came out of the centre and my driver said that a
plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Everyone
assumed some terrible accident had occurred. But as we were
driving back from Docklands, the second plane hit. That
demonstrated something much more sinister."

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As the ministerial car headed to Main Building, his initial
thoughts were for members of his family who live in America and
in particular a young cousin working for a law firm in New York.
"Lots of people in the Ministry of Defence also had close
colleagues, friends and relatives out there, and I remember an
enormous personal feeling within the department, which was of
course reflected throughout the United Kingdom.
"Months later I was clearing out some stuff at home and found a
poster of the World Trade Center that I had bought as a tourist. It
seemed inconceivable that this amazing building that dominated
the skyline of New York should be destroyed, together with
thousands of people − and it is still hard to credit that it
happened."
The strategic significance, said Mr Hoon with typical
understatement, was "quite quickly appreciated". He and other
senior figures began looking at who was responsible, who had
supported them, and where they were based. "Those answers
came in reasonably quickly", he said.
Less straightforward was what came next. "In terms of this kind
of atrocity, Afghanistan wasn’t prominent on anyone’s radar. And
it was not an easy country to deal with militarily. It is landlocked.
It didn’t have much infrastructure, and it didn’t have much to
attack."
War in Afghanistan and Iraq brought challenging times for
many, not least Geoff Hoon. The lowest points of his tenure were,
he says, were the war casualties. He remembers being woken in
the night on successive occasions during the early period of
Operation Telic, to be told of a Chinook crash, two helicopters
colliding at sea, and the downing of a Tornado by friendly fire −
none of them the result of enemy action.
"It is the hardest part of being Defence Secretary, not
particularly faced by any of my political colleagues, knowing that
the decisions that you are involved in may well lead to death and
serious injury."

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It was in July of that same year, following a BBC report about
the government’s dossier on Saddam’s weapons programme, that
Dr David Kelly took his own life. "I felt then and I feel now that it
was a terrible waste," said the new Commons leader.
During the drawn-out Hutton Inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, he
faced hostile journalists. "Had Lord Hutton’s report been probably
even mildly critical then the media would have insisted on my
resignation," he reflected. "I certainly thought about it, and would
have done so if I felt that the pressure on my family was
becoming intolerable − but I was fortunate in that they have
always been extraordinarily supportive."
In the run-up to publication, he felt confident that he had told
the truth. "It was huge relief, in a sense, when I first saw the
report to realise that Lord Hutton’s findings on the facts, as far
they concerned me, were absolutely wholly consistent with what I
had told him right from the beginning."
Exonerated, yes, but the public criticism had been intense. "Part
of the problem," he reflected, "was that too many parts of the
media wrote about the inquiry not on the basis of the evidence,
but on the basis of their own speculation and supposition. They
were criticising me for things that frankly had not happened.
“The media wanted a result and weren’t prepared to wait for
Lord Hutton’s findings. That seems to me very wrong. When a
senior judge is appointed to conduct an inquiry, we should all wait
for his findings."
While riding out the storm, Geoff Hoon led the Ministry and the
Armed Forces into the current programme of reform, including
two white papers, ‘Delivering Security in a Changing World’
(December 2003) and ‘Future Capabilities’ (July 2004). He
describes these and policy changes to reflect future strategic
challenges, as "some of the things I am most proud of."
"I am not underestimating the dangers we faced from the Soviet
Union, but those dangers were predictable, and policy was based
on confronting a single large enemy that would have taken time to
launch an attack. The world now is much less predictable, which

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is why we put so much emphasis on flexibility, and having people
and equipment that can react more rapidly, probably on a smaller
scale, with a different mentality."
Mr Hoon acknowledges that the ensuing decisions were, in
some quarters, unpopular and that it could be many years to
determine whether they were the right decisions. But he also says
that criticism is often misdirected.
"In the MOD senior members of the military, and sometimes
not so senior members, are involved at all levels of the policy-
making. The one thing that above all else irritates me is when
civil servants in the department − or politicians, for that matter −
are blamed for a policy that is just as much the policy of the
military as it is of the Civil Service and politicians. I wish there
were a more mature understanding of how it works."
Did he, a left-wing politician, ever find it difficult running an
institution traditionally associated with the right? Geoff Hoon
maintains that political ideology doesn’t have much of a role in
the job of Defence Secretary: "The real difference is not about left
and right; it is between conservatism and change.
"What I have thoroughly appreciated is that senior members of
the military have entirely recognised not only the need for change,
but the imperative for change. Often they have given me credit for
being prepared to see through those changes in the face of some
pretty hostile criticism."
Regimental restructuring was an obvious example. "There is a
desire in the media to maintain the regiments, whereas senior
members of the military know how important it is to have the
changes, and were as determined as me to see them through."
His office, still hung with the garish modernist paintings
selected by his predecessor, though soon to be replaced,
commands a fine view over St James’s Park. Peace makes the tick
of a large mantelpiece clock seem more a thud. Is this new job not
something of a relief? He laughs.
"I’m well aware of not having to manage a staff of 300,000
people, so there is very little in the way of administration. There is

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much more contact with my political colleagues, and with MPs on
both sides of the House, so this is much more back into the
political mainstream. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of MOD,
but there are new and different challenges which I have to say I
am equally enjoying."
Outside, the Queen’s Life Guards come clip-clopping up the
Mall. There is distant military band music. For the Leader of the
Commons, there will be no shortage of reminders.

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CJO: Piloting the Forces together
(December 2004)
Air Marshal Glenn Torpy has been Chief of Joint Operations
(CJO) for six months. He spoke to Walter Scott about the
changing face of PJHQ
TEN years ago, when Malcolm Rifkind was defence secretary, it
was decided to create a better method of conducting UK
operations abroad. Recent experience in the Gulf War had shown
that more co-ordination between government and the British
Forces was required.
The result was Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), which
became operational in 1996. Based at Northwood, where
northwest London borders with Middlesex countryside, it is
housed in a large building that would sit comfortably on the
campus of a new university.
Put simply, PJHQ converts the government’s wishes into
military action. The "joint" implies both operations involving two
or more of the British Forces, such as the toppling of the ‘West
Side Boys’ in Sierra Leone, but more commonly UK
contributions to multinational operations. Afghanistan and Iraq
are obvious recent examples.
Few are better qualified to comment on how time has touched
PJHQ since its creation than Air Marshal Glenn Torpy. He
became Chief of Joint Operations in July, but also served in a
senior role at PJHQ in its early years, on operations including the
1998 air strikes on Iraq, and Kosovo the following year.
"PJHQ has been refined, but the basic structure and operating
procedures have stood the test of time," said Air Marshal Torpy.
"As an operational headquarters, it has an enviable reputation and
is still looked on by many other nations as a model to follow.
"But we are now seeing more complex operations requiring
higher tempo and agility." He said the organisation’s relatively
‘flat’ structure, with short chains of command, meant that during

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an operation it could respond quickly to events unfolding on the
ground, and steer the situation.
Air Marshal Torpy joined the RAF in 1974. His career has
included spells flying Jaguar and Hawk, and active service in the
first Gulf War. He also brings to Northwood experience at what
he calls "the tactical end of the spectrum", having commanded the
UK force on Exercise Saif Sareea and UK air component during
the combat phase of Operation Telic.
"Today it is rare for a problem to be solved through simply
military means," he says of recent experience. Other departments
such as the Department for International Development (DfID) and
non-governmental organisations like Red Cross and Amnesty
often play a vital role.
"The next step," he said, "is to move from a joint military
mentality to a truly integrated approach to crisis prevention, that
harnesses all the levers of government. We need increased
awareness of what these other organisations can contribute, and
they need to be aware of what the military can offer.
"In Iraq today we have seen the direct link between
development work such as reconstruction and employment, and
improvements to the security situation. That needs to dovetail
into the military operation. People think of the combat phase of
Operation Telic as a discreet element, but in reality as soon as we
crossed into Iraq, stability operations were also being conducted."
Air Marshal Torpy described the creation of the Post-Conflict
Reconstruction Unit, which will include permanently embedded
representatives from DfID, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office
(FCO) and MOD, as "a really positive step", and one which would
improve coordination and effectiveness.
When operations are being developed, his opportunity to
enforce this "truly integrated approach" comes when MOD issues
PJHQ with a planning directive demanding a particular end state.
The Air Marshal and his staff develop possible courses of action
and send them back to the Ministry, which chooses one, "adds

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strategic gloss" and ultimately recommends it to the Prime
Minister.
The CJO then receives a directive from Chief of the Defence
Staff explaining the mission, the end state, and the allocated
forces. "An important part of this process is the nomination of the
joint force commander and, of course, our role if within a
particular coalition. It’s a well-defined sequence of events, but
with sufficient flexibility to respond to rapidly evolving
situations."
One such example occurred in June 1998, when the Ethiopian
air force bombed the military airport in the Eritrean capital of
Asmara, leaving a number of British stranded. PJHQ
masterminded an evacuation by air. "It happened on a Friday
evening, as they always do," he remembered. "It was over and
done with in 48 hours, which showed how quickly a well-oiled
machine can respond."
Part of his job now, though, is to anticipate crises, which he
does as part of the Operational Tasking Group. This also includes
MOD’s Policy Director, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, and
representatives from the Foreign Office. Chaired by the Deputy
Chief of Defence Staff for commitments, it looks at countries
likely to require attention, prioritising resource allocation.
Deciding whether to intervene in potential trouble-spot is a
difficult judgement, he says, but adds: "The earlier we can
identify a potential problem, the more chance we have of heading
a crisis off, which in my view is real crisis prevention. Invariably
it won’t involve the military, and diplomatic or political action
will suffice."
On the topic of the Defence White Paper, Glenn Torpy does not
believe that having smaller Armed Forces will impact adversely
on Britain’s ability to contribute to operations abroad. He rebuffs
the phrase "less people on the ground", but acknowledges that
across all three Services a "critical mass of forces on the ground"
is required to create effect and achieve influence within a

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coalition. Rebalancing will enable procurement of digital
network technology to make those forces "more capable".
In turn, with this technology the British Forces can integrate
more closely on operations with other NATO and EU countries,
rather than handling tasks on their own. There are also benefits at
the training stage: "The increasing complexity of the battle-space
means that the way we have trained in the past has not exercised
all the different elements of our Force structure."
Modernisation, he says, will also introduce simulation
technology which means that top-level commanders and their
headquarters can be linked up for "distributed training" with
forces on the ground, without having to physically deploy. And
by the same token, training with EU and NATO partners can be
undertaken more easily and, crucially, cheaply.
Air Marshal Torpy sees technological lessons learnt from
previous campaigns reflected in the pages of the White Paper.
"The strong shift towards medium-weight forces and network-
enabled capability indicates a realisation that we have got to be
able to deploy swiftly, often over distances, and to operate at a
high tempo, 24 hours a day, whatever the conditions."
Yet he says progress had been made in time for war in Iraq, and
sees a favourable contrast with Kosovo: "In 1999 our air
component didn't have the right weapons and technology to carry
out 24-hour all-weather operations, so there were periods in the
campaign when we couldn’t keep the enemy under pressure.
"In the time between Kosovo and Iraq, we introduced all-
weather precision-guided weapons that were all as good as – and
in some cases, such as Storm Shadow, better − than those being
used by the US Air Force."
Technology, he says, will enable us to "do more complex things
more quickly". But perhaps unsurprisingly for a Gulf War
commander who lost two Tornado pilots to friendly fire, he has a
warning for anyone believing that technology means no more
blue-on-blue incidents: "It will allow us to do things we had never

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imagined, in a more complex battle-space, which in itself will
introduce more risk and the possibility of fratricide."
What argument does the Chief of Joint Operations see for
retaining Armed Forces as individual organisations, instead of a
single entity with career opportunities to switch around? He
agreed there is a "blurring" with increasingly joined up operations
and multi-Service organisations such as the NBC Regiment, the
Joint Staff College and Joint Helicopter Command.
Air Marshal Torpy said that inter-Service personal relationships
and improving individuals' understanding of what the Services
can offer are "vitally important", and that joint staff courses play a
key role here. But the idea of a unified British Defence Force
would, it seems, be unlikely to capture his imagination.
"There are robust and good arguments for maintaining
individual Service identities," he said. "It's important from a
recruitment and ethos perspective, and you would lose that sense
of belonging that I think everyone wants."

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Truth or Consequence (December 2004)
The Freedom of Information Act becomes law on 1 January.
Walter Scott spoke to Ian Andrews, MOD’s “FOI champion”, and
Richard Thomas, the man who will make sure we stick to the rules
WHEN the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas,
addressed the Whitehall permanent secretaries in October, he
reminded them of a Yes Minister episode in which a mandarin
called Sir Arnold says of an open government white paper: “My
dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you
can have government.”
“My message to them was that Sir Arnold was wrong,” Richard
Thomas told Focus over tea at the Rubens Hotel on Buckingham
Palace Road. “You can have open and effective government –
indeed effective government involves being open.”
Freedom of Information (FOI) takes effect on 1 January 2005.
From then on, written requests for information from anyone in the
world, to any UK public sector body – be it a department of state,
an agency, a school or even a GP’s surgery – must be answered
within 20 working days.
The reply must either supply the information requested or, if it
meets criteria for exemption, explain why it cannot be released.
But that may not be the end of the story. Disappointed applicants
can appeal through the Information Commissioner, and he is
empowered to penalise organisations that refuse to open their files
without good reason.
“FOI is linked very closely to accountability and trust,” said Mr
Thomas. “This is a reminder that it is the people who elect and
pay for government. They expect government to serve their
interests at national and local level.”
Richard Thomas is no stranger to the public sector. After a stint
as consumer affairs director at the Office of Fair Trading, he was
director of public policy at the law firm Clifford Chance for 10
years. He has also sat on various public advisory boards.

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When Focus met him, the Information Commissioner was en
route to a meeting with 200 local authority representatives. He
produced from his briefcase the results of a survey that were to
feature in his speech. The figures showed a decline in the public’s
trust in government, and an increase in the number of people who
believe openness is an important principle of government.
He mentioned work by the Audit Commission that demonstrates
very close linkages between the public’s access to reliable
information and their trust in government. Many local
governments appear to recognise this principle, with websites that
say they are open and transparent organisations, putting the
“customer” first. “This is the test, though,” said Richard Thomas.
“Are ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ just fancy words or are they really
meant?”
Under the act, a decision to withhold information must satisfy
the “balance of public interest” test, showing that secrecy serves
the public’s greater good. But disputes will arise, and it is at this
point in the progress of a FOI submission that the Commissioner
is likely to step in. He likens his role to that of a football referee.
His 222 staff, at four offices across the country, will consider each
case in detail. In extremis, courts can impose substantial fines
against official bodies that cannot justify keeping their files shut.
“I would be extraordinarily surprised if that financial sting-in-
the-tail has to be applied in any but the most exceptional
circumstances,” said Mr Thomas. “The effect on reputation is
where the biggest punch is packed. Organisations withholding
information that right-minded people expect to see will suffer
damage to their reputations.”
He accepts that one of the 23 areas of exemptions (which
include Special Forces, harm to national security, and prejudice to
international relations) will sometimes be legitimately applied.
The Second Permanent Under-Secretary, Ian Andrews, has been
FOI “champion”, responsible for promoting awareness of the
rules in MOD for the last two years. He is confident of the
department’s ability to meet its new obligations, and points to

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FOI’s forerunner, the code of practice on Access to Government
Information, that was established by John Major in 1994.
“FOI is not a fundamental change from that regime,” he said.
“We have already established a good reputation with the
ombudsman in how we handle requests for information.”
But he is categorical about MOD’s position on non-disclosure:
“An important distinction lies between public interest and what
the public is interested in. Over recent months ministers have
taken the view that we should robustly defend what has been
referred to as the ‘space to govern’, while also making much more
information available on a routine basis.”
Advice given to ministers, he says, must be protected where
necessary. “One is not going to be in the position of offering
advice and then having it published across the front of the daily-
whatever the following day. But the extent to which that
information is subsequently withheld may become less black-and-
white.”
The Information Commissioner empathises – to an extent:
“MOD has been as clear as it can be about the ‘crown jewels’
which must be kept secret. But if information can be released then
it must be. And just because information can be brought inside an
exemption, it doesn’t mean it must be withheld. Frontline policy
people need to make judgements about whether they are relaxed
about publication of information.”
It seems that MOD is preparing for challenging requests. At
special FOI seminars, one-star officers have been looking at
actual requests dealt with under legislation from the Major years,
and deciding whether an FOI exemption could be invoked.
Richard Thomas said he was impressed by the level of training
and the introduction of procedures within the department,
pointing out that they contrast with the “rather mixed picture
emerging from the rest of the public sector”.
Special praise is reserved for MOD’s awareness campaign.
Indeed framed on the wall of Richard Thomas’s office in
Wilmslow, Cheshire are examples of the Famous Moments in

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History cartoon posters that have adorned MOD office walls
across the country for many months. “If MOD can take this
seriously and get it right, there is no excuse for any other public
body,” he said.
The media are predicted to take a close interest. “There are
journalists who have said they are poised to hit us on 1 January
with lots of requests,” said Ian Andrews. “There will be those
using FOI as a lever to get things that they have been after for
some time, and others who wish to demonstrate that we are not
serious about FOI.”
But the flipside of the journalists’ attention could be better
media coverage. “Spin, which has got a poor reputation, reveals
just some information in the best possible light,” said Richard
Thomas. “But coverage of public administration in the widest
sense ought to improve, because the trend will be for full
disclosure.”
He said there should also be a beneficial effect on decision-
making. “Other countries have demonstrated that when officials
know their decisions will be in the public domain, they are more
rigorous. They make sure that the facts, statistics and analysis
support them, and they are less susceptible to influences that don’t
lead to rational decision-making.”
What about the extra workload? Is the public sector paddling
into a tidal wave of FOI requests? “None of us know in what sort
of volumes requests will be made,” said the Commissioner,
although he said that evidence from Canada, Australia and New
Zealand suggests a modest start is likely, followed by a sharp
media-driven rise, a plateau, and then a fall.
Perhaps worryingly, the Treasury has made no budgetary
provision for the additional costs of FOI, although substantial
resources have been invested across MOD. Yet Ian Andrews said
that the culture of FOI management must in time just become
“embedded within the business”, like IT or communications.
Accessing information from earlier years could be a challenge.
Ian Andrews pointed to the department’s 160km of archive

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shelving and 11m separate records. But FOI, he said, has been the
trigger for better understanding what is held here, and for more
efficient record-keeping.
Special FOI management procedures will help, particularly the
Access to Information Toolkit, a database system by which FOI
requests will be logged and their progress tracked until replies are
issued.
The FOI-driven publication scheme (www.foi.mod.uk) will also
be vital. Through this, MOD is committed to publishing some
information on a continuous basis. Undoubtedly this will, over
time, reduce the administrative burden. The more information
made available in this way, says Ian Andrews, the fewer requests
will be received. He hopes that people will eventually look back
on FOI as “almost a non-event”.
But with just a few weeks to D-Day, FOI still promises to be a
very real challenge across the public sector. “Some people are
saying it is a damp squib; that civil servants and politicians can
crawl under the exemptions, and nothing will change,” said Mr
Thomas. “But that’s wrong. It will not be business as usual.”

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This is Kate Adie (September 2004)
Walter Scott met the former BBC journalist who, after 25 years of
war reporting, has joined the board of the Services Sound and
Vision Corporation
WHEN Kate Adie arrives on the scene, so a military wit once
said, we know we’re in trouble. By that token the military world
has been serially worried for a quarter century; through the Russo-
Afghan war, the bombing of Libya, the storming of the Iranian
embassy, Tiananmen Square, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Zaire,
Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and two conflicts in the Gulf.
So there may well have been relief in some quarters when, with
shrapnel in her big toe and a bullet-chipped collarbone, Ms Adie
hung up her flak jacket in 2002 and left the BBC’s frontline staff.
She continues reporting on a freelance basis, but with less of the
action zone stuff. In May, when she arrived as a trustee at the
Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC), the provider of
radio and television services to the Armed Forces, there was, for
once, no cause for alarm.
Visits to the SSVC studios may not offer the excitement that
she became used to, but she seems to relish her new position with
the military and takes it seriously. “I’ve knocked around in the
journalism business for a good number of years, and bring a fair
bit of working experience,” she told Focus. “That’s hugely
important.”
Kate believes that in the age of 24-hour reporting, Service
personnel have a keener appetite for news, and that if they do not
get what they want from the official sources, they will go
elsewhere. “Troops are sharper now, so you’ve got to treat them
as grown-ups.”
She is impressed by SSVC’ s efforts to meet their demands with
sophisticated solutions. “For years I would turn up on board large
warships and say: ‘How come you haven’t got a television dish?’

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People would reply: ‘Ah well, er . . .’ Now we have finally got
satellites on warships.”
Radio, Kate points out, is by no means the poor relation.
SSVC’s exploitation of the latest production technology,
including “splitting” radio broadcasts to satisfy the demands of
different audiences, has captured the imagination of a woman who
began her career editing tape with razor blades. “You can use
different transmitters to angle a piece of broadcasting to cater for
a far-flung audience – people who are sitting, maybe, in
Afghanistan and may be feeling a bit isolated. That is hugely
good.”
Sentiments like this and actions such as launching a campaign
for the military charity Combat Stress last April make it clear that
Kate Adie is a sincere supporter of ordinary Servicemen and
women. Her sympathy and fondness for them were undoubtedly
nurtured during the 1991 Gulf War, when she donned uniform
and had an insider’s view of the planning and the action. In
today’s parlance, she was “embedded”. Did this compromise her
principles as a reporter? “No.”
But what about her allegiance towards the British Forces?
“That’s a different one, and it’s got nothing to do with
embedding. It is very debatable as to whether you feel certain
obligations towards your audience because they are connected to
the people you are broadcasting about – i.e. British troops – or
whether you actually have a greater detachment.
“It is dependent on circumstances. You cannot draw up rules for
this, these days. As journalists we have a sophisticated and
educated audience, so we’re not going to be led by the nose. It is a
discriminating audience, so we must be discriminating in how we
approach a story. We must attempt to be conventionally objective,
while bearing in mind that there are connections and sensitivities
between the Forces and the audience. It is a fine line to walk.”
Objectivity, she suggests, has become harder with the concept
of embedding that became so important in Iraq last year. She
describes some journalists who were embedded with the coalition

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as getting no more than a “hitchhike ride”. During the first Gulf
War there was, she says, “full” embedding, and that was very
different. “We moved forward with the troops. This time the
Americans gave very little tactical briefing, access to intelligence
or senior officers. Journalists went for a ride, which is fine if you
want to say how the units ate and slept and drove their vehicles.
But it gave no information about the actual tactical progress of the
operation. And on the British side, the reporters didn’t move
forward until most of the fighting was over.”
It is tempting to assume Kate feels drawn to conflict, but she
bats this away: “I find it extraordinary that people think that.
Firstly, the structure of the BBC’s news organisation is if it can
find a pair of legs, it sends them down the street towards
something, without actually taking any notice of who owns the
legs. It is just a matter of getting a reporter to the scene and that
has always been the case.
“Secondly, I had no intrinsic interest in the matter of warfare. I
didn’t have that kind of boys’ interest in battles and generals and
campaigns: Wellington was the name of a boot and Waterloo was
a station. I have no inherent sort of fascination with what
conventionally boys are interested in. It came with the turf.”
But she acknowledges that her Sunderland childhood in the
aftermath of the Second World War stoked some childhood
curiosity in the human side of war. “The town had been very
badly bombed and therefore the war was there physically, in the
gaps in the terraces and the huge bombsites. A large chunk of the
town was missing. I was very aware that my parents’ generation
had gone through the war and that everybody had in some way
been involved.
“We didn’t talk about it all that much because I think for a long
time people decided to put it behind them. There were stories,
though. I remember one school friend whose father had been in
the Far East and died quite young. As I grew up I began to realise
what lay behind the stories.”

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In her autobiography, The Kindness of Strangers, Kate writes
that when in battlezones she has come to recognise in herself
“different types and grades of fear.” Yet the question of “coping
strategies” is met with a snort. “That’s the mumbo jumbo of the
counselling age. It depends entirely on character, personality and
experience. Fear goes with the turf and I just learnt to deal with it.
“As a journalist you should have a good idea of what you are
going into by reading history, knowing the circumstances behind
things and having a good idea of what might happen. That doesn’t
mean you won’t be shocked, but you ought to know what man
does to man. If you think you can’t cope with that, you shouldn’t
go in the first place.”
These days her work involves less adrenaline, but she looks
back over her career with positive feelings. “I’ve been
enormously fortunate to have worked in television news when it
really did a lot of eyewitness reporting, which I love and still do a
bit of. But it is now more about the presentation of information,
with the pressures of 24-hour news and finance, and you get more
of reporters standing near a satellite dish and delivering
information that is often sent to them.”
After 35 years with the BBC, what now? “More books. More
radio. A bit more telly. We shall see. I’ve never planned
anything.”

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Face of tomorrow's Army (August 2004)
Following the Chancellor's Spending Review and the July White
Paper, General Sir Mike Jackson spoke to Walter Scott about the
radical Army restructuring plans
CHANGE is always uncomfortable; human being are creatures of
habit," said General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the British Army,
after the most radical programme of military reform in a decade
had been unveiled. Four infantry regiments and 100 Challenger
tanks to be withdrawn. Billions of pounds' worth of digital
technology and 67 Apache attack helicopters to arrive.
In his room in the Old War Office, the Chief of the General
Staff's predecessors are arranged in a grid of photographs
stretching back to Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, looking
down over his desk as if in judgement. But in the wake of Gordon
Brown's latest spending review – which gives 1.4 per cent real
growth in the defence budget, but depends on 2.5 per cent annual
efficiency savings – General Jackson is focused on the future.
"It's part of the Chief of Staff's job to be looking ahead," he
said. "It is for the government to decide the resources that they are
politically prepared to put into defence, and then it is then our job
to get the best capability we can out of that. If I had a dream
machine I would have an Army twice the size, but we have to live
in the real world, within the means we are given."
Consequently, one of the main features of this shake-up is about
getting the best effect within existing resources. The Arms Plot,
by which battalions move barracks and assume a new role every
few years, is to be replaced a system of large multi-battalion
regiments that are permanently based in one region with a fixed
role.
Turning this into reality falls to the Director of Infantry who,
General Jackson envisaged, "will need a map, both literal and
metaphoric, of where future battalion locations will be. He will
need to ensure that geography and roles are fairly shared out right

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across the UK, so that within the large regiments there is a choice
of location and roles, to allow soldiers to move around and gain
experience of different roles and geographical variety".
Greater stability will enable regiments to lay down stronger
roots in the community and become part of a regional identity. It
is thought this will make recruitment easier and enable Army
families to integrate fully into local life, spared the burden of
continually moving homes and schools.
"We'll never have a static Army," he said. "People will go off to
training establishments as instructors or to attend courses, or will
be moved to headquarters. I wouldn’t want a static Army because
people get rather stodgy and that wouldn’t do at all. So there's a
balance to be struck here between family stability and career
development."
There is another, very significant benefit - and one that much of
the press reporting of the announcement seemed to miss. Within
the existing Arms Plot many battalions are unavailable for
operations; "The system is now outweighed by its disadvantages,"
said CGS. "We don't have 40 available battalions at any one time;
we have 32 or 33. The remainder are in the process of moving, re-
roling and re-training. That is quite a chunk out of one's
capability."
Relocation of the troops currently committed to Northern
Ireland duties means that the Army will increase number of
battalions available, despite the overall reduction detailed in the
white paper. "If you do the arithmetic you actually end up with
more available battalions than you have today," said General
Jackson. "That may sound paradoxical, but that is how it is."
How the distinctive names of historic battalions will be handled
under the restructuring plan has yet to be decided. "This is far
better done by those who take the new structure forward and I
hope it will be a subject of considered and proper debate," he said.
"If it is possible, in which ever way, to carry famous names
forward, then that would be great. But it is not for me, at this
stage, to prescribe this."

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As the regional regiments are formed, there will also be
discussion on how the regimental traditions and uniforms – seen
as crucial to fighting spirit – are to be treated. "It is not for the
Army Board, in my view, to dictate aspects of regimental life
which are themselves the product of that regiment," said CGS.
"But their traditions and history are of course very important, and
we will do everything possible make sure that they are carried
through in the new structure."
New technology such as the Future Infantry System (FIST),
linking together individual soldiers on the ground, and the
Bowman digital radio system, present another dimension of
change for the Army. The white paper's introduction explains that
"decisive military effect may be achieved through a smaller
number of more capable, linked assets acting quickly and
precisely to achieve a desired outcome".
General Jackson acknowledges that the question of how the
technology will influence recruitment is a good one: "It may be
more demanding intellectually than today's equipment, and
therefore we shall looking for soldiers who have an aptitude in
that direction. I don’t say that we have one set of people who do
the brawn and one set of people who do the brains. All of us need
a bit of both but, yes, as the new technology comes in we will
need soldiers who understand it, who can maintain it, repair it and
operate it.
"But equally, and I am very clear about this in my own mind,
the nature of close quarter battle is not going to change. That is
still going to be a gritty demanding business where physical
courage and strength will remain very important factors."
This vision of the restructured Army is the result of a study of
some three years with which, since becoming Chief of the
General Staff in May 2003, he has been "intimately involved".
Beneath the gaze of his illustrious predecessors, General Jackson
is well aware that these radical changes will represent a long-term
legacy.

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"This is how the British Army will look in 10, 15 or 20 years'
time. We're thinking long and I don’t want these changes to
happen every five years: we need something that is solid for two
generations.
"In my 40-something years of service, the Army has changed
out of almost all recognition. And it has to, because circumstances
change. If we fail to change, we will get left behind and that we
cannot have."

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Rock’s role in defence (July 2004)
Gibraltar’s civil and military leaders agree that the relationship
is still good. And the Rock’s own regiment is the evidence
THE men who sounded the guns at the Tower of London last
April had at least two reasons to feel proud. It was the Queen’s
birthday and this was only the second time in history that
members of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment had performed the
salute.
In the 90 years since some patriotic members of Gibraltar’s
rowing club volunteered to fight for their country, the Rock’s own
armed force has had no shortage of experience with big guns.
During the First World War it defended the colony as the
Gibraltar Volunteer Corps, reforming as the Gibraltar Defence
Force 20 years later with responsibilities for air defence. From
1958, the gunner troop of the renamed Gibraltar Regiment
manned the 9.2-inch coastal guns. In 1971 the Regiment reformed
as an artillery battery and air defence troop.
Today, though, the regiment concentrates on a lightly-armed but
versatile role. “We work with the Royal Navy, the police and
RAF, together providing a quick and flexible response,” said the
regimental adjutant, Captain Ivor Lopez. “The regiment’s
approximately 200 reservists and 200 regulars are braced for
terrorist attacks. North Africa, just 25 miles away across the
Straits of Gibraltar, is known to have an Al Qaeda network. Some
members of the regiment are equipped with pagers and ready to
move within one hour.”
In March, when terrorists bombed a number of Madrid trains,
the Rock Reserve’s response time came down to 15 minutes. The
heightened state of alert put extra demands on the regiment. At
the King’s Lines fuel depot, where thousands of gallons of ship
fuel are stored, the usual fire team was shored up with extra
guards. So great were the demands on the regiment’s regular

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29
troops that TA reinforcements from the Prince of Wales’s
Regiment were called up.
The Royal Navy’s Gibraltar Squadron patrols the waters around
Gibraltar constantly. Four members of the regiment’s soldiers are
constantly attached to the squadron, manning machine guns on the
squadron’s patrol vessels.
Terrorism aside, the regiment also has an important role
providing emergency military aid in times of crisis. In the event of
an air disaster, landslide, major fire or fuel depot explosion, the
regiment helps the civilian emergency services by setting up
cordons and helping with casualty evacuation and treatment.
Recruits to the Gibraltar Regiment receive conventional British
Army training. Regular troops complete their Phase one and two
training at Catterick, and troops are attached ad hoc to other
regiments’ potential junior NCOs programmes.
Gibraltar’s unique tunnels, some of which date back to
Napoleonic times, provide an excellent environment for further
training. There is even a rifle range deep with-in the Rock. At the
southern tip there is a “village” where the troops practice urban
combat skills.
“Our facilities are obviously limited, though,” said Captain
Lopez. “So in 2000 we started training with the Moroccan Army
in their country. We have run a number of joint exercises, and we
have a very good relationship with them.”
Experience is also gained on operations with regular units of the
British Army. Sixteen members of the regiment are serving in
Northern Ireland, seven are in the Gulf and 33 are in the Balkans.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Randall, the commanding officer, is
pleased that members of the regiment are being deployed further
afield. He hopes that the Army will go one step further and deploy
the Gibraltar troops to operational theatres in strength. “To be
posted out of Gibraltar every so often would be beneficial,” he
said. “I think the value of that is appreciated at the top level.”

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Rock’s chief minister values military heritage
SOMETHING of the White House hangs over the Chief
Minister’s office at 6 Convent Place. The mahogany desk set in a
half-oval space; the two flags (UK and Gibraltar) positioned
behind and the oil paintings of historic events either side, all
encourage the impression.
The framed picture of the Queen looking down over Peter
Caruana’s green leather chair leaves visitors in little doubt about
where his loyalties lie. As do his words: “The British Armed
Forces formed the foundation stone upon which the civilian
population in Gibraltar was based,” he said.
“The original civilians, post-1704, came to Gibraltar as
tradesmen and merchants to support and service the requirements
of the military fortress. Had it not been for the Armed Forces
originally heavy historical presence, the civilian economy would
never have had the platform on which to build.”
Gibraltarian by birth, Mr Caruana studied in London, before
returning to the Rock to embark on a career in commercial law.
He led the Social Democrat party to power in 1996.
He recognises that UK government funds channelled into the
many MOD facilities on the Rock have contributed greatly to its
economy, providing much employment.
Mr Caruana points out that over the years, this commitment has
paid the Forces cultural and strategic dividends. “Gibraltar has
been the most important home-from-home port that the Royal
Navy has enjoyed anywhere outside the United Kingdom. The
Rock remains an important strategic asset for British defence
interests.”
The Rock proved its worth after the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar,
when HMS Victory was able to limp into Gibraltar’s docks, badly
damaged and carrying a large number of casualties. Significantly
− if less dramatically − HMS Ark Royal also visited during
Operation Telic.

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Do occasional major influxes of sailors create problems? “There
is really no sense of we-and-them,” Mr Caruana replied. “When
this was a compulsory port of call for every passing Royal Navy
ship, and when we had a resident battalion and a large contingent
of RAF, there was more day-to-day impact. It did get quite noisy
in the pubs late in the evening.
“But it is quieter now. Gibraltar has been a military fortress
town for 300 years, and that is in the psyche of the local
population. There is no tension at all between civilian and military
elements. We regard both as part of the community.”
The Chief Minister accepts that the Rock’s economy has had to
adapt to a slimmer UK military presence. The change has been
major. “As recently as 1984 the MOD accounted for 60 per cent
of Gibraltar’s gross domestic product,” he said. “Now it is about
10 per cent. As MOD has run down, then other economic
activities have had to be relied upon to take up the strain”
The quest for economic diversification has dominated his eight
years in power, and there have been important developments. In
1999 the Financial Services Commission in London granted
Gibraltar-based banks per-mission to expand their trading area
into the entire European Economic Area. A banking boom
followed. Similar developments have benefited the insurance
sector.
The potential value of military heritage to tourism has also been
explored. The ramparts, tunnels, and other fortifications are only
now being developed as attractions. But most visitors come for
the shopping, especially the chance to buy goods in British high
street stores. “We now attract seven and a half million visitors a
year,” said the Chief Minister. “And really it is all down to our
relationship with the Armed Services over 300 years.”
Mr Caruana is proud of the ways in which Gibraltar has made
the best of its opportunities. He reels them off with barely a pause
for breath. “Gibraltar is a pretty successful cruise port-of-call,
with eight or nine thousand ship visits a year. It is the largest ship
bunkering port in the Mediterranean. We have a strategically-

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located ship-repair facility, and we have a very developed
telephone- and internet-gaming industry. That is unique for a
population of only 15,500 economically active people.”
Earlier this year the Gibraltar Government successfully
negotiated the hand-over of 40 per cent of MOD’s property on the
Rock. The deal will release apartment blocks and houses from
military use, and provide sites on which affordable housing can be
built. The transfer will also provide sites for industrial
development and much-needed recreational facilities. “I think we
are benefiting in every walk of life,” said the Chief Minister.
So deep is the history that Gibraltar shares with the Forces, that
Mr Caruana’s government is making a special effort to honour
them during this year’s 300th
anniversary celebrations. Five
hundred elderly ex-Servicemen will each enjoy a free holiday on
the Rock as guests of the government, and the Royal Navy will be
presented with the Freedom of the City.
“It’s a long over-due recognition of the enormous role that the
Royal Navy has played,” said Mr Caruana. “Not just in our
origins and our defence, but in our economic and social
development as a people and a community.”
CBF says Rock is the jewel in the crown
I FIRST came here as a scrawny cadet in 1969,” remembered
Commodore Richard Clapp, Commander British Forces Gibraltar
(CBF). “The border with Spain had recently closed, and that had
serious impact on the community. And the military garrison was
enormous and dominating.”
When he returned, thirty-two years later he was impressed by
the change. “It just looked a better place. You could see that it
was a buoyant economy.”
And the importance of the Forces had changed too. “Thirty
years ago, MOD was the jewel in the crown,” recalled the
Commodore. “But the Government of Gibraltar have now
provided their own jewel, and all credit to them.”

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Did he think that the MOD’s presence in Gibraltar would be cut
yet further? “If you ask me to look 10 years down the line, that’s a
testing question. MOD is under its fair share of financial pressure,
and therefore there will be a continuing process of being invited
to be more efficient.”
That ever-present pressure is introducing “contractorisation” to
some of the functions traditionally performed by MOD civilian
staff. “Contractorisation is a very big worry for the people of
Gibraltar,” conceded Commander Clapp.
“But it was made quite clear during a recent visit by the
Defence Secretary that contractorisation is not inevitable. If the
trades unions want to come forward with in-house bids which
realises the same level of efficiencies that we believe we could get
from a contract, then we would be extremely happy to look at it.”
He is quick to point out that the British Forces in Gibraltar still
have major responsibilities. Primarily they maintain the Rock’s
“security, but they must also maintain its role as a military staging
post. Principal among its strategic assets are the deepwater naval
base, fuel and ammunition storage facilities and the airfield
(which doubles as a civilian airport). Gibraltar’s less well known
assets are the intelligence gathering facilities and even the historic
tunnels which provide a useful training environment for visiting
soldiers.
The risk of terrorist attack cannot be taken lightly. Moving
naval ships through the chokepoint of the Straits of Gibraltar
“brings its concerns”, said Commodore Clapp. But the combined
efforts of the Gibraltar Squadron, the water-borne MOD police
and Royal Gibraltar Police provide a significant shield. And he
sees the “carefully monitored land boundary” with Spain as
another security strength.
As Focus interviewed Richard Clapp, he was preparing to
retire. How would he remember Gibraltar, a place that had
featured large in his career?
“I was watching HMS Cumberland coming up the harbour the
other day. It was just a beautiful day. That’s how I will remember

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Gibraltar − happy memories, definitely, and an enormous
admiration for what the Rock of Gibraltar with a population of
30,000 people manages to achieve.”

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Rock of ages (June 2004)
This year sees the 300th anniversary of British rule in Gibraltar.
Throughout this time British Forces have been defending the
Rock. In the first of a series of Focus special reports, we get a
taste of both modern and traditional Gibraltar, and meet a few of
the people who defend the Rock today.
BRITISH and Dutch marines first occupied Gibraltar on 24 July
1704. Today, the four-square-mile “Rock” has a civilian
population of 30,000, of which more than a thousand are
employed by MOD, supporting nearly 800 uniformed personnel.
Many miles of tunnels drilled through this mass of limestone over
nearly two centuries still provide training for British troops.
Gibraltar’s position at the gateway to the Mediterranean has
always been its true strategic value. Aircraft carriers en route to
war, nuclear submarines needing repairs, destroyers seeking fuel,
anti-smuggling and terrorist patrols – for all these, the Rock is a
valued British outpost and, in the words of Chief Minister Peter
Caruana, “a home from home”.
CLOSE to the border with Spain, the colony displays the three
flag that define its political status. The flag of Gibraltar displays
the triple-towered castle and golden key motif of the Arms of
Gibraltar, granted by Queen Isabella of Castille in 1502. The key
was originally intended to symbolise the Rock’s reputation as the
key to Spain. The European Union flag denotes the Colony’s
status as a dependent territory of the EU. Although the people of
Gibraltar have not been allowed to vote in previous European
elections, this is to change on 10 June. Gibraltarians are now
entitled to vote as constituents of south-west England.
AT King’s Lines Battery, completed in 1790, Private Benjamin
Sanguetti of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment guards the entrance to
the tunnel that leads back to the MOD’s fuel depot. From a vast

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tank in the rock, the fuel is piped down to the harbour to feed
British warships.
When these visitors are in harbour, it also falls to Private
Sanguetti’s regiment, in tandem with the Navy’s Gibraltar
Squadron and the Gibraltar Services Police, to provide protection.
PATROLLING the waters in the Bay of Algeciras to the west of
the colony, Able Seaman “Hoppy” Hopkins (left, foreground) and
Private Steven Alman man the brace of machine guns on the stern
of HMS Scimitar, a light patrol vessel. Private Alman is seconded
to the patrol boat from the Royal Gibraltar Regiment.
They watch for smugglers bound for Spain with tobacco and
spirits, and for boats carrying illegal immigrants. In the wake of
the Madrid bombings they are well aware of the threat from
terrorism. As a British symbol and with its strategically important
docks and other-military facilities, Gibraltar could be considered a
prime target.
“Our presence on the water varies,” says the unit’s commander,
Andy Canale. “It’s good that we are seen to relax, but we also
step up patrols when required”.
CAPTAIN Ivor Lopez (right), operations officer for the Royal
Gibraltar Regiment, at the southern tip of the Rock, where amid
the grassland and wildflower meadows MOD has a rifle range,
and a mock village for training. The regiment also practices
machine gun live firing out to sea – they have been known to use
confiscated smugglers’ speedboats for target practice.
“Considering the area we have to work in,” says Ivor Lopez,
“we are able to do a surprising amount, but there are limitations
such as training in navigation, logistics and other types of live
firing”.
To make up for these shortfalls, the regiment is working with
the army of nearby Morocco. From his observation point, Captain
Lopez can see the Rif Mountains in Africa, less than 20 miles
away, where both Gibraltarians and Moroccans train together.

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ICONS of the Rock, the Barbary apes (which are actually a sub-
species of macaque monkeys) have their origins in North Africa.
It is believed they were introduced to the upper regions of the
Rock by the British garrison in its early days. Seen at Princess
Charlotte’s Battery in the early evening sun, a mature monkey
rests on a canon that points across the bay to the Spanish port of
Algeciras.
Nearby, members of his family are engaged in bouts of
wrestling combined with propelling each other down a polished
concrete ramp. Named after the third daughter of George II, the
battery was built in 1732, one of many defences against the threat
from the sea.
IN his exclusive report on the Battle of Trafalgar to the Gibraltar
Chronicle of 25 October 1805, Admiral Collingwood wrote that
the victory “will stand recorded as one of the most brilliant and
decisive that ever distinguished the British Navy”, but that “Our
loss has been great in Men”.
Those killed outright were buried at sea, while several men who
died of their wounds later, in hospital in Gibraltar, were interred
in the garrison cemetery (left) alongside deceased officers and
their family members. In recognition the site was renamed the
Trafalgar Cemetery.
THE gates to the fortress of Gibraltar used to be locked each night
with a set of three keys, preventing those who might have designs
on sovereignty from entering. The keys were passed for
safekeeping to the governor. One holder of the office was
rumoured to sleep with them under his pillow.
This procedure continues today, as a ceremony practised twice a
year. Yet for those entering Gibraltar via the border checkpoint
today, a historically uniformed Royal Gibraltar Regiment
waxwork soldier offers the keys perpetually, as if to symbolise the
free access to the city which prevails today.

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Back from Brussels (April 2004)
Former defence secretary George Robertson recently retired after
four years as secretary general of Nato. He talked to Walter Scott
IN HIS modestly sized office at Cable & Wireless plc in London,
Lord Robertson put a breathless Focus reporter immediately at
ease with a cup of tea, poured from a pot beside a framed
photograph of him chatting with George W Bush at the White
House.
In the short time since he relinquished the helm at Nato, Lord
Robertson has obviously made himself at home in industry. His
office is full of souvenirs from his four years as Nato chief,
including a black leather briefcase from President Putin, and a
black Diplomat fountain pen presented to him by the foreign
affairs minister of Serbia and Montenegro in Belgrade when he
visited last December.
The pen symbolises what he describes as “the most remarkable
thing in my period as secretary general”. Before his arrival in
Brussels in October 1999 he had led Britain’s involvement in the
Nato-led bombing of Serbia, including Belgrade.
On that final visit last year, he toured the city centre with senior
officials. “They pointed out the various buildings: ‘That used to
be the General Staff headquarters; that was the Ministry of the
Interior police; that used to be the Ministry of Defence’. Of course
I knew these buildings, but from a different angle.”
He need not have worried about hard feelings. Lord Robertson
showed Focus a Christmas card from the government in Belgrade
with discernible pride. “They want now to be in the Partnership
for Peace, and they are going to be very much part of civilised
Europe.”
After Kosovo, Nato’s new operational role set much of Lord
Robertson’s agenda for office. Internally he streamlined the
command structure for quicker decision-making. Externally he

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worked to make the Alliance stronger, improved the ability of
member nations to work together, and welcomed more members.
He also addressed the tricky issue of non-Nato Russia. By the
end of the Robertson tenure, foreign ministers had agreed to the
Nato-Russia Council, giving the two powers an equal role in –
among other things – decision-making on terrorism and security
policy.
The leather briefcase suggests that Lord Robertson enjoyed
cordial relations with Vladimir Putin. Yet lying open on his desk,
it takes on a symbolic quality: “Whether or not Russia could
become – or would want to become – a member of Nato is still an
open question.
“At the moment they don’t want to enter into that kind of
relationship, and that’s their choice. I don’t know what the future
holds – all I know is that we need to – and we want to – get closer
to Russia because we have an identity of interests in the war on
terrorism among other things. We’ll see where that leads to, but it
should be taken step by step.”
Lord Robertson did not agree to leave Whitehall for Brussels
lightly, knowing that he would miss face-to-face contact with
people in the Armed Forces and the department itself. “There is
an enormous flavour that you get when you met the people in the
front line and the civil servants who support them,” he said. “I
also got feedback, because the British Armed Forces are not
reluctant to say what they mean. They respect your position, but
they don’t bend over backwards to be deferential, so I always got
firm knowledge of where I or they were going wrong.”
He would have liked more time as defence secretary. When
Tony Blair asked him to become Nato secretary general, the UK
had recently fought the Kosovo campaign, and was sending troops
to join a UN force in East Timor. Robertson had also launched the
Strategic Defence Review. “There was a feeling of wanting to see
through its impact. It’s not a secret that I said ‘no’ three times.”
So what changed his mind the fourth time? He laughed: “There
is a key lesson in life and politics that persistence pays off. There

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is no God-given right to stay in any government job and if the
Prime Minister says for the fourth time, I’d like you to go to
Nato...” He laughed again. “...Well, I’ll just leave dot, dot, dot.”
If he is prepared to use three dots, those who worked with Lord
Robertson will remember his intolerance of another form of
abbreviation. “I remember being on a plane with Sir Charles
Guthrie and telling him, ‘I’m going to have a real war on
acronyms’. And looking over his glasses, he said: ‘Be easier to
solve Bosnia.’
“And so it was. Bosnia is now doing extremely well, and the
war on MOD acronyms has been lost.”
He admits that it was a “punishing job” that he left behind. “It’s
one of the biggest management jobs in government, in Europe,
and the defence secretary is a lightening conductor. Anything that
happens in the Ministry from the bottom up, you are expected to
carry the can for in public.”
In that respect he paid tribute to Geoff Hoon: “He is one of the
longest-serving defence secretaries this country has had, and has
done extremely well. But he gets a lot of unnecessary and
unmerited criticism. I don’t miss that public flagellation aspect of
the job at all.”
But there were to be new pressures of a different nature. While
the world was united in its horror of the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, Lord Robertson had to coordinate
the joint response of 19 of America’s allies (see below).
Did he want a more operational role for Nato in the subsequent
war on the Taleban? “Well…” He paused. “There were a number
of countries who made military offers very quickly. There was
huge unanimity of view and of sympathy with the United States,
but it wasn’t capable of handling all of the offers. I think they just
didn’t know what to do with an offer of a thousand troops from
one country, and ships and planes from another country and
logistics offers from others.
“Maybe that ball was dropped at the time and I think they regret
it now because it looked like ‘thank you very much – don’t call

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41
us, we’ll call you’. In fact, the Americans were just preoccupied
with the objective of getting the job done.”
With his four years at Nato came more than 708,000 air miles
of foreign travel – paradise, surely, for a keen photographer like
Lord Robertson? “It’s one of my great regrets that on these sorts
of travels, you’re the subject of photographs not the producer.
You don’t have time, and for photography you’ve got to have
time to spot the subject and frame it. So I took only a handful of
photographs.”
Retirement to his Hebridean birthplace of Port Ellen is clearly
not imminent. So what next for George Robertson? In addition to
Cable & Wireless, he has non-executive directorships with Smiths
Group Plc and Weir Group Plc. But will his seat in the Lords
prompt a return to the political fray?
“To some extent. I’m not going to be full-time in the House of
Lords, but you know I’ve got some expertise, some experience,
some strong views, so I’ll be there. And I promised the North
Atlantic Council on my final meeting that I would mercilessly use
my position in parliament to make sure that my successor got a
budget that reflected the extra work that Nato has to do."
When terror struck
George Robertson recalls his experience of the day the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon were attacked
ON Tuesday, 11 September 2001, Lord Robertson was at the
weekly Nato ambassadors’ lunch, in preparation for the North
Atlantic Council meeting the following day.
“My bodyguard came in with a mobile phone, which broke two
rules at once – the appearance of a phone and of someone from
outside. It was a call to say there were reports of a plane hitting
the World Trade Center. Around the table we thought that a
trainer aircraft or something had maybe bashed into the building.

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42
“It was when news of the second one came in that the lunch was
abandoned and we all came back to Nato headquarters. We
watched the same pictures as everybody else. We felt the same
sickening horror that the world was feeling at the time. And then I
had to realise that we were actually part of the reaction to that.
“We couldn’t just be spectators. There were huge jets
thundering overhead into Zaventem Airport so we had to send
non-essential people home and get the essential people working
on contingency plans. Nobody at that point knew where the next
target would be.”
That afternoon North Atlantic Council members met to share
their initial reactions to the event, and to discuss what the
response might be. Then Lord Robertson gathered with his close
advisers: would Article 5 of the Washington
Treaty (an attack on one member is an attack on all) be relevant
in the circumstances?
“Later Edgar Buckley – who had the ludicrously named job
“AUS(H&O)” in the Ministry of Defence before he became
assistant secretary general at Nato – went away to draw up the
draft which with only minor amendments became the declaration
of Article 5.”
In the evening Lord Robertson was meant to be dining with a
visitor from the National Security Council who was over in
Brussels doing a project. “When we eventually did have dinner it
was about 11 o’clock at night. She remembers that evening very
vividly indeed because a lot had happened, and the next day
things were obviously going to be big stuff.”
It was well into the small hours of 12 September before the
secretary general was able to turn in for the night.
Rt Hon The Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
1946: Born on the Isle of Islay in Scotland.
1968: Graduated from the University of Dundee
1968-78: General, Municipal and Boilermakers’ Union official

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1978: Elected MP for Hamilton
1979: Parliamentary Private Secretary to Secretary of State for
Social Services
1993-97: Shadow secretary of state for Scotland
1997-99: Secretary of State for Defence
1999: Elevated to the Lords; Secretary General of Nato
2004: Leaves Nato; awarded US Presidential Medal of Freedom

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Aftermath of terror (February 2004)
Walter Scott witnessed an exercise testing MOD’s ability to get
back to work following a terrorist attack in the heart of London
THE men who detonated the bomb in the foyer of
Northumberland House in Whitehall meant business. They had
shot dead two members of the MOD Guard Service at the main
entrance. Around the country bombs had gone off in six other
public buildings. Britain was under attack.
As 25 Northumberland House staff lay in hospital, MOD’s head
of Business Continuity, Dr Keith Potter, called the controller of
the stricken building and other staff to St George’s Court. They
had assessed the extent of the damage before the Business
Continuity Plan was activated.
Luckily for MOD Personnel Director Richard Hatfield, the
catastrophic event was hypothetical. As Chair of the Disaster
Recovery Committee, it was his duty to run Simex, an annual
exercise testing Head Office’s ability to get back to essential
business in the wake of a disaster.
Held in St George’s Court, High Holborn, it brought together
about 30 people who would, in the event of a real disaster, assess
damage, brief the media, repair telephone and IT systems, and
handle enquiries from the public. In the exercise control room, 15
civil servants played the roles of relatives, MOD staff, callers
from local businesses and borough councils.
As Mr Hatfield took the chair of his committee, the extent of
the disaster at Northumberland House was becoming apparent.
The bomb, now known to be the work of the (fictional) Limbeeze
Liberation Front, had contained a chemical agent. This meant the
firemen who had entered the building to fight the blaze were
hampered by their chemical-protective clothing. The fire was still
burning and people could be trapped. In the confusion there were
no records of staff who had evacuated the building.

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Making matters worse, journalists had spotted several people in
protective clothing near the Old War Office on Whitehall. As
Corporate Communication director Tony Pawson read a draft
press release to the committee, Richard Hatfield’s phone rang. It
was a journalist: had there been a separate incident in the Old War
Office? Tony Pawson was tasked to call the Press Association and
emphasise that the men in the special suits had been working in
the Old War Office basement, where asbestos had been found
several weeks before.
Across the corridor, the Recovery Support Team were working
on getting BT engineers into Northumberland House. Getting the
engineers through the police cordon and down into the BT
exchange rooms had been no easy task.
Committee members’ telephones were unrelenting. Mr Hatfield
asked that they be removed from hooks for a few moments of
relatively peaceful discussion about temporary office space
outside Westminster for the Secretary of State and his ministers,
the Permanent Secretary and the Service chiefs.
This gave rise to a new discussion: would they fly to the new
location by helicopter, or drive by car? Helicopters would avoid
traffic jams – but what about a police escort?
The situation at Northumberland House had thrown up new
concerns. Another five people had been reported trapped and
there was concern that reporters might soon be intruding on the
privacy of families which had lost loved-ones.
And, even worse, what about the children of MOD employees
who were in the Northumberland House crèche at the time of the
explosion? They should have been safely moved to the crèche at
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but there were reports
that not all had been reunited with their parents. To prevent
speculative horror stories in the press, it was vital to get this
matter clarified.
Bad news and good filtered through. Three more people had
been reported dead, but all children from the crèche were known
to be safe. Porton Down chemical specialists were conducting

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tests and it was believed the chemical might be Priorin, a new
agent with a longer period of effectiveness than the better-known
Sarin.
Towards the end of the exercise Adam Ingram, the Armed
Forces Minister, visited St George’s Court for a situation report.
His arrival injected some calm among the stressed staff rushing
between desks and barking instructions down phone-lines.
They may have gained solace from the knowledge that it was
not for real. No bodies, chemical agents or fires on this occasion,
and Chiefs of Staff continued to wade through in-trays
undisturbed in their proper offices.
But next time Disaster Recovery staff gather, it might be a
different story.
The threat: you need to be alert
THE manner in which MOD would respond to a disaster in any of
its Central London buildings (Main Building, Old War Office, St
George’s Court, St Giles’ Court, Metropole Building and
Northumberland House) is carefully laid out in a 284-page “Head
Office London Business Continuity Plan”.
It defines a disaster as “the escalation of an emergency to the
point where normal conditions are not expected to be recovered
for at least 24 hours” and where there is “significant disruption”.
Personnel Director Richard Hatfield judges whether a situation
fits this description.
The last major disaster was a blaze in St Christopher House,
several years ago, when a fire in the canteen spread through one
floor of the building. Recent discovery of asbestos in Old War
Office nearly qualified as a disaster.
The business recovery plan uses a colour coding system to
specify the return-to-work priorities for sectors of staff. They
range from red staff, who should be back at their desks within 24
hours, through a spectrum of colours to, eventually, grey staff,

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who may not be required to resume their duties for 22 days or
more.
London Head Office staff wanting to know more about priority
coding should refer to the Head Office London Business
Continuity Plan on the intranet at:
http://centre.defence.mod.uk/Business_Continuity/HOBCPIdx.htm

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Man for all Forces (November 2003)
Minister for Veterans Ivor Caplin is new to defence. But, as he
told Walter Scott, experience inside and outside politics has
prepared him
THE man who approached the Admiralty House security guard on
Whitehall one June afternoon earlier this year was momentarily
lost. He had just accepted a job offer from the UK’s most high-
profile employer, but in which of the several massive MOD
buildings in Whitehall was his new office?
Five months on, Ivor Caplin MP, the Under Secretary of State
for Defence, additionally titled “Minister for Veterans”, seems to
have sorted out the geography of MOD. He is fully established in
the Old War Office, a few doors away from Geoff Hoon.
The four-strong private office team who supported his well-
respected predecessor – Lewis Moonie – remains the same. The
department's newest minister has also inherited Dr Moonie’s
entire portfolio, a dizzying collection of projects ranging from
civilian and military personnel, and Service veterans’ affairs,
through defence estates, medicine, environment and e-
government, to MOD agencies, such as the Met Office.
Mr Caplin was among the mass of successful Labour candidates
in the general election landslide of 1997. Just over a year after he
had snatched Hove constituency from the Tories, Margaret
Beckett (then Leader in the Commons) asked him to become her
parliamentary private secretary. The work included modernising
Commons practices.
Re-election in 2001 earned him a desk in the Whips Office,
covering Foreign Office affairs, and representing FCO at the
inauguration of the new Nicaraguan president, Enrique Bolanos.
The defence job, he said, “came as a surprise – and a very
pleasant one”. He is frank about his previous experience of
defence issues: “None”, but clear about his qualifications for the

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job. Working as a whip “meant being across the Iraq issue, which
was all-dominating during my last year in the Whips Office”.
His experience in a job that requires single-minded
determination when dealing with stubborn MPs could yet prove
useful in nudging the new Armed Forces Pension and
Compensation Schemes through Parliament. Launched in
September, this is a project for which his pre-Commons
experience is also useful. For nearly 20 years Mr Caplin worked
in Legal & General's sales division while simultaneously scaling
the greasy pole of Hove Council. “I was a trustee of the company
pension fund,” he says, “so I’ve got some experience of pensions
issues, and I understand the Financial Services Act. I was engaged
in personnel issues, as I am now, and involved in the workings of
estates, so I also understand that.”
It was just nine days after his appointment that Ivor Caplin
fielded his first defence questions in the Commons, during which
several MPs (including the Conservative Keith Simpson) paid
tribute to predecessor Lewis Moonie and his work on Gulf War
syndrome (GWS).
Mr Caplin insists that his position on GWS is identical to that of
Dr Moonie, quoting a recent High Court ruling in the Shaun
Rusling case, which declined to rule on whether Gulf War
syndrome was “a single medical entity”.
He said: “I’ve looked at all the issues, and am very comfortable
with the position that the Labour government took in 1997, six
years after the Gulf War. One of the first decisions taken was to
set up the Gulf Veterans Unit at St Thomas’s, and say that if
people have concerns they should go there for medical checks.
The same facility is there for those returning from the recent
operation in the Gulf.”
He described the £8mn spent on medical research to date as
“considerable”, asking rhetorically, “Do we take operational
illnesses seriously? Yes. That’s one reason why we are increasing
the budget year-on-year for Defence Medical Services. I’m proud
of that.”

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But there is further medical work to be done, and the minister
points out that it cannot all be achieved overnight.
He sees Services accommodation as another long-term issue.
Some quarters are, he admits, well below par. He had just visited
troops’ accommodation that had been “unacceptable”.
Improvements will be made. Meanwhile, he sees it as his job to
limit this type of “problem”.
As “veterans minister”, Mr Caplin must also focus on the
difficulties facing those who leave the Services; a transition that is
at least a serious challenge and at worst a ticket to unemployment
and homelessness. He says that in two years’ he would like to
have “eased the transition from military life to civilian life”.
Mention of unemployment and homelessness strikes a nerve, as
it does with most ministers and senior officials. He responded
briskly. “All the studies show that nine out of ten gain
employment and are satisfied with the support provided. So I’m
focusing on getting our practices right for that one in ten – which
is still about 2,000 to 3,000 people per year.”
So what specific steps is he taking? The minister cites joint
projects with the Deputy Prime Minister’s office to address
homelessness, and similar efforts with the Health and Work and
Pensions departments. The previous week he had held a two-hour
meeting on mental health with other government ministers.
Mr Caplin likes to turn the issue around: Service leavers are not
a problem, he seems to think, but a benefit. “We send 20,000
highly skilled people back into the workforce each year, which is
an important resource pool for UK plc,” he said. “We are taking
our relationship with employers very seriously.”
New minister seeks office
WHEN his phone rang at 2.40pm on 13 June, Ivor Caplin was in a
meeting with the Crown Prosecution Service. It was the Prime
Minister’s private office: could he come over to Downing Street?

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51
“I knew what it was about because, given the reshuffle, it was
quite obvious. But I didn’t know the specifics”.
Apologising to the CPS people, he cut the meeting short
without telling them what the call was about. He made his way
along to Downing Street, and up to Tony Blair’s office.
“The Prime Minister said to me quite simply: I’d like you to
become under secretary of state at the Ministry of Defence. We
had a chat about the last year – inevitably Iraq-dominated – and a
brief discussion about the job.”
Having accepted, the logical next step seemed to be a call to
Geoff Hoon. The
defence secretary’s private office told him to come straight
over.
But walking up Whitehall, while breaking the news to his
family by mobile phone, he realised he didn’t actually know
where the Ministry of Defence was. It might have helped if the
great monolith of Main Building was still the hub of operations.
But, of course, HOME was not yet sweet home, leaving him in an
interesting position – Minister without Office? Mr Caplin did,
however, know Admiralty House, so he approached a security
guard standing outside, who directed him over the road to Old
War Office, where Geoff Hoon’s staff were waiting to greet him.
Supporting the seagulls
AS FOCUS met with Ivor Caplin, Brighton & Hove Albion was
limbering up for its second round Carling Cup match against
Middlesborough. He was realistic about Brighton’s prospects:“If
you go to a premiership side and you’re in the second division,
you probably shouldn’t win. But we'll see what happens tonight.”
A lifelong supporter of his constituency team, the minister is
more upbeat about the chances of the “Seagulls” clawing their
way up to the First Division rock.
“I’m the third generation of my family to support the club, and
have seen all the ups and downs and close-run things. I’m sure

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that this season we’ll be there or thereabouts but – as Jimmy
Greaves would say – football’s a funny old game.”
Before becoming a whip, the minister was an active member of
the Commons team. “I was very pleased to have played during the
first parliament; we raised about £120,000 for charities.”
The squad of ball-savvy MPs – which included former fireman
Jim Fitzpatrick, former NUS leader Jim Murphy, and the Tory
Wales spokesman Nigel Evans – played other parliaments such as
the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Did Ivor Caplin do for parliament what David Beckham does
for England? “I did score a couple of goals, including one at
Wembley, which I am particularly proud of and have on video,
thanks to the BBC.”
Perhaps the game that night was watched with less relish:
Middlesborough dealt the Seagulls a 1-0 knockout.

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Heat and eat (October 2003)
Walter Scott gets a taste of the carefully designed ration packs
that keep British Forces well-fed and on the march around the
world
NAPOLEON Bonaparte is credited with saying “an army marches
on its stomach.” Pity he did not follow his own advice. It was
Napoleon’s army that lost thousands of men to starvation during
the retreat from Moscow in 1812. And still the advice was
neglected. During the Crimean War, some forty years on, more
British deaths were attributed to malnutrition than to combat.
Service personnel have it easier these days, thanks to the dietary
experts who work to get good food to them, wherever they are on
operations or exercise, in the form of the familiar 24-hour ration
pack.
Contained in a waterproof cardboard box and weighing roughly
1.8kg, the pack contains between 3,900 and 4,000 calories of
food. That would put weight on a deskbound civil servant, but is
not a calorie too many for Service personnel in the field.
Ration packs are a product of the Defence Catering Group
(DCG), based in Bath and headed by Brigadier Jeff Little.
Launched in 2000, following the amalgamation of the Royal
Navy, Army and RAF catering directorates, the group is
responsible for worldwide tri-Service food supply. With its motto,
“feeding the forces”, the group spans everything from finding
suppliers, through training chefs and stewards, to promoting
healthy eating.
Twenty-four-hour packs are designed so that a substantial
breakfast, a snack, and a two-course main meal can be cooked and
eaten quickly and with minimum effort. Whether on field training,
exercise or front line operations, a proper breakfast, lunch or
supper should take little more than 20 minutes to prepare.
Hot dishes and puddings are contained in silver flexifoil
packets. Heated in boiling water, they are then cut open and eaten

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straight from the bag. The hot water remains clean enough to
make tea or coffee. Fold-away cookers fuelled by solid blocks of
Hexamine are supplied separately, but where time is a seriously
limiting factor, the meals can also be eaten cold.
DCG is continually researching its customers’ tastes, and
tweaking the ration pack contents accordingly. It is a three-way
balancing act. Financial limitations preclude lobster and truffles
from the menu, yet it is important to ensure nutritional value and
popularity.
It is not enough to establish an average set of preferences. For a
start, in hot climates troops’ expectations are likely to be different
to their needs in sub-zero conditions. Then there are vegetarians,
not to mention a growing proportion of Muslim, Sikh and Jewish
servicemen and women, each with different customs.
Powdered soup is common to all ration packs. After that the
menu mix gets more complicated. When you dig into a “general
purpose” pack, you might find corned beef hash or beef-burger
and beans for breakfast, and a main meal of Lancashire hotpot,
chicken stew with dumplings, or steak and vegetables with
dumplings. From the four pudding types, you could expect rice
pudding, or fruit in custard sauce with . . . you’ve got it –
dumplings. There are seven general purpose menus.
As a vegetarian Serviceman, your three menus will include
beans for breakfast, either with non-meat burgers or potatoes, and
a main meal of vegetable tikka masala or spicy vegetable
rigatone. This formula is also deemed “kosher” for Jewish troops.
Sikh and Muslim personnel receive the same pork-and beef-free
breakfasts. Muslims also receive H1 to H3 Halal menus with beef,
chicken and lamb slaughtered according to Muslim law.
Troops on particularly energy-sapping patrols receive P1, P2,
P3 or P4 packs, which have dry, lightweight oat and apple cereals
(to be rehydrated with water, snow or ice) and meals with higher
calorific values, such as pasta carbonara and chicken balti. For hot
conditions there are extra sachets of fruit-drink powder.

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Tucked in among the meals are a host of other components,
such as fruit biscuits and the time-honoured “biscuits brown”,
which can be topped with cheese spread and meat paté. Boiled
sweets and milk chocolate deliver a quick shot of energy and
cheer, as do tea bags, sachets of coffee and hot chocolate.
Topping off the contents list are chewing gum, waterproof
matches, water purification tablets and paper tissues.
It is as well that DCG strives hard for variety and customer
satisfaction. In extreme operational circumstances, servicemen
and women self-cater with ration packs for up to 40 days. The
dumplings surely start to sit heavy and the balti may lose its bite.
But the fate suffered by Napoleon’s men is safely consigned to
the past.
Cooks on standby
IN MOST situations, Service personnel deployed on operations
are required to self-cater with 24-hour packs for two to three days
at a time. After that, a mobile catering support unit will normally
have arrived and set up a field kitchen.
Flight Lieutenant Bev Hodder commands one such unit,
supporting the RAF. Before getting a commission she was a hotel
manager, and latterly worked for Sutcliffe Catering, under
contract to Sandhurst Royal Military Academy.
Bev’s team is composed of between five and seven staff. Alone
they can cook for up to 150 personnel. But when strengthened by
chefs and stewards from Trade Group 19, they can fill the
stomachs of a good many more. They cook with a Mark III cook
set, transported on a four-ton truck.
When the team reaches deployed personnel, 24-hour packs are
replaced with 10-man “ambient” ration. Introduced in early 2002,
the 10-man pack is provided by 3663 (formerly Booker Foods).
Most of its products can also be found in supermarkets and have a
shorter shelf life than 24-hour pack components.

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At first Bev’s team will cook solely with 10-man packs. Dishes
at this stage could typically include powdered egg omelette with
cheese, pasta, peas, bean and bacon hash, beef stew and chocolate
pudding with custard. “It’s sometimes necessary to really kick the
creativity into life,” she said. “On their own they are pretty
limited ingredients.”
When local suppliers, transport and refrigeration have been
sorted out, it is usually possible to introduce fresh supplies. Fruit
and vegetables are always welcome, and the arrival of flour
means fresh bread and rolls, naan, and Chelsea buns.
Sometimes, though, fresh supplies remain no more than a nice
idea. “In Afghanistan I’m afraid the guys were on 10-man ration
packs alone for three months,” said Bev. “In a snowbound
location, everything had to be flown in. Ordnance and machinery
took priority over refrigerated units.”
Eat your heart out, Delia
Focus reporter tests the standard 24-hour ration pack
Golden vegetable soup
Has the colour and creaminess of lentil soup, and sure enough
there are distant flavours of lentils, onion and perhaps . . . carrot?
The suggested 300ml of water may be a little too much for a truly
soupy consistency. Green pea chips and parsley trimmings
floating on top are a nice touch, helping to rub out memories of
the soup's powdery beginnings.
Chicken madras and rice
Five minutes boiling, as prescribed on its pouch, leaves the rice a
bit harder than the average gastronome would be comfortable
with. But the result is nonetheless tastefully yellow and saffron-
scented, in the manner of pilau rice from Tandoori Palace. The
madras is a surprise still more pleasant: the meat is a little tougher
than perfect, and breaks into filaments, but the sauce is precisely

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what should slither from a takeaway box marked “chik M” as
Man U kick off on telly. Chilli is very much in evidence (but can
those military palettes hack the pain?). Nice distant tinges of
coriander, and the presence of “fresh” herbs excuses a drop too
much orange-coloured oil.
Burger and beans in tomato sauce
The burger is infused with a most pleasant smoky quality, which
sits very nicely in the tomato sauce. The beans' flavour more than
makes up for being squashier than their Heinz counterparts.
There's an initial bitterness, which may be the necessary nitrogen
or other preservative, but the taste buds forget about it after a few
mouthfuls.
Chocolate pud in chocolate sauce
Considering that it has been crammed into a vacuum-sealed
packet and crushed into a box, the cake is in good shape. And
given that it has been surrounded by chocolate sauce for many
months, its texture has remained remarkably cakey. The chocolate
sauce is harder to get excited about, lacking a proper cocoa edge.
It’s a bit too fluffy. But the pudding does prompt that
endorphinous buzz around the temples that is expected from rich
chocolate.
Orange drinking powder
Has a refreshingly acidic edge. Would more than take the edge off
post-assault course thirst. Not enough orange about it, although
the colour is vivid enough. If too much is drunk without food,
there's a slight sense of the mouth's lining being corroded.
Instant white tea
The powder looks like the substance that covers the Iraqi desert.
But when boiling water is added, it looks like the real thing and
produces that warm feel-good glow typical of a good strong
cuppa. Does exactly what it says on the sachet.

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Cadets get a taste for new-style ration packs
A MODIFIED ration pack was recently tested by recruits from the
Army Technical Foundation College, Reading. The 16 to 17-year-
olds were camped in in a wood near Andover during a basic skills
exercise. They had used ration packs before, but new components
offered a novelty factor.
“I’m hoping it’ll be a hot one," said Apprentice Tradesman Hew
Williams referring to the chicken madras he had earmarked for
supper. “And I’ve got a chocolate pudding. They come out of the
packet looking just like chocolate cake. Brilliant!”
Elsewhere in the wood, the new sachet of hot pepper sauce had
impressed Apprentice Tradesman Chris Wharrier. It would shortly
be going into his beans and sausage.
Apprentice Tradesman Stephen Williams, was equally pleased
about the new quick-energy-fix components: “When the sergeant
told us there was Yorkie in the packs, I thought he was taking the
p***. Lucozade was a nice surprise as well.”

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Smooth operators (September 2003)
Praised for its contribution to Operation Telic, the Whitehall
Exchange is a hidden hub for defence communications. Walter
Scott met the civilians who keep us in touch
ONE evening some 40 years ago, Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery picked up his telephone and dialled the War Office.
Somewhere in Whitehall a young operator called Irene Edmonds
pushed a plug into one of the countless sockets in front her, and
took the call. Montgomery asked to be put through to one of
Harold Macmillan’s ministers. Irene transferred the plug to
another socket, and put the hero of Alamein through to that
minister’s office.
Another evening, some 30 years later, as the Allies were wiping
away the last traces of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the UK
defence secretary Tom King wandered, unannounced and
unaccompanied, into the MOD telephone exchange. He explained
that having been heavily reliant on the service during Operation
Desert Storm, he was curious to see its staff in action. There at the
time was... Irene Edmonds.
If you dial 100 today from your MOD phone, within Whitehall
area – or 962 100 outside it – you go through to the MOD’s
Whitehall Exchange. There’s still a one in 24 chance you will
speak to Irene. She retired two years ago, but as Operation Telic
was mounted, the number of calls rocketed. Irene’s skills were
badly needed.
“It was manic,” she said, “but I was pleased to be back in my
old job. I didn’t mind coming out of retirement at all.”
The Whitehall Exchange is based in Northumberland House,
manned by 24 operators during the day and seven at night,
handling between 15,000 and 20,000 calls per week. When you
make a call via the Exchange, you are given a line that is secure.
It cannot be tapped and, unlike a normal landline, no-one can
interrupt your call.

BEHIND THE WIRE
60
“We might have, for instance, the captain of HMS Illustrious
wanting to speak to the Chief-of-Staff,” says operations manager
Chris Papadatos. “He will want to speak on a special ‘Mentor’
satellite line, knowing that it provides him with a secure service.”
Currently about 75 per cent of calls made via the Exchange are
from people working on operations around the world.
So what has sustained Irene over her marathon career – which
began when Lord Mountbatten was First Sea Lord – and
colleagues like Rose Campbell, a relative new girl with just 30
years experience? Irene and Rose both cite variety as a motivator:
“So many different people, from so many backgrounds with
different types of interesting jobs – and interesting calls,” said
Rose.
Take the case of a caller from the US. He told Rose that he’d
complained to George Bush about custody of his children being
given to his former wife. Mr Bush hadn’t provided any help so he
now wanted to speak to Tony Blair. Rose said she’d see what she
could do. “He seemed satisfied.”
Then there was the man whose son was writing a history essay,
and wanted to know if there was such a position as Lord High
Admiral. Rose didn’t know, so – “in for a penny, in for a pound”
– she called up the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jock Slater. It was
a winning move: Sir Jock revealed both that there was such a
position, and that it was filled by the Queen. “He warmed to the
topic; he told me about the ceremony where a flag gets taken out
of a box and put back in again.”
There is no shortage of MOD staff and Forces personnel calling
because they cannot summon the energy to look in the MOD
directory, or haven’t learnt how to use dDirectory on the intranet.
The most interesting calls, according to night duty operator
Patricia Griffin (with just 23 years’ experience), come when there
is a conflict. Well-intended and intrepid people seem to answer
some unspoken call-to-arms. People will sing down the
line to sell their skills as military entertainers. Patricia listened
as one woman played Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer on the piano.

Walter Scott_Behind the Wire (formatted) 1.3

Walter Scott_Behind the Wire (formatted) 1.3

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