'Friendly fire' a tragic part of modern war
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/04/2003
The harrowing interview with the commander of the Household Cavalry Scimitar reconnaissance vehicle, telling of how his patrol was shot up by a US A10 tankbuster aircraft, was a grisly echo of the killing of nine British soldiers in the 1991 Gulf war by a similar aircraft.
It is an appallingly tragic fact of this war that the same number of British soldiers have been killed by their own side as by the Iraqis.
So far five of the 25 British servicemen have been killed in friendly fire incidents, three of those by US forces. Another 15 have died in accidents.
America's most senior military official has apologised for two US friendly fire incidents which killed three British soldiers. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would make it his "quest" to ensure it did not happen again.
Two RAF pilots were killed 10 days ago when their GR4 Tornado was shot down near the Kuwaiti border by a Patriot missile, while on Friday Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull died when a US A10 tankbuster aircraft fired on two armoured vehicles.
In the sanitised language of warfare, such friendly fire killings are known as fratricide or "blue-on-blue" - a reference to the colour used to mark friendly troops on maps.
But no matter what term is used, such deaths have been, and can be expected to remain, a constant feature of war, a product of the unimaginable stress and confusion that defines the battlefield.
A 1993 study conducted by the Pentagon of medical records from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, concluded that nearly 15 per cent of US casualties were the result of fratricide.
The gruesome and bitter fighting of the First World War saw countless episodes of troops firing on their own side.
Typical of these was the experience of the Australian 50th Infantry Battalion in April 1918 during the second battle of Villers-Bretonneux.
Despite heavy enemy fire, the Australians advanced steadily towards the German trenches under cover of the darkness. As they neared the German position, several shots were fired at them from close in front, someone yelled "Bomb the b*******," grenades were thrown, and a rush of the trench was made.
The trench proved to be occupied not by Germans, but by remnants of the Devon and Worcester Battalions.
One of the worst episodes in the Second World War was the invasion by 35,000 US and Canadian troops of Kiska, an Aleutian island, in August 1943.
The allies believed the island to be held in strength by the Japanese. The assault was complicated by dense fog. Bitter fighting continued through the night, and 28 men died and 50 were wounded.
It was only later discovered there were no Japanese on the island at all.
In the 1950-53 Korean War the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders where ordered to seize a key hill. They succeeded - but then an American ground attack aircraft arrived and dropped napalm on them.
The lucky ones were the 17 who died instantly. Another 76 suffered horrific burns in the inferno.
Mistakes in war are the consequence of what the great Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, called "friction", which he identifies as "the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper".
As he observes, "everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate, and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable. This tremendous friction . . . is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...1/nbrit101.xml