Sami checks in

Yes, I know there are lots of things to write about. And I'd love to push them all. But I have limited time and I have these weird strings that stretch back decades.

Samantha Crozier took the time to acknowledge the post written here.

I would like to start out by pointing out that The Telegraph got the name of one of her children wrong. Samantha and Lance Corporal Douglas (Andy) Crozier are the parents of Ethan and Caleb, two-years old and one-year old respectively.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, but I suspect that Samantha and Andy met while Andy was on a temporary duty to BATUS in Sheffield, Alberta.

Andy was subsequently posted to Germany and Samantha accompanied him. That was over four years ago. But Samantha had no reason to believe that the vagaries of the British immigration system would not allow her, as the spouse of a British serving member overseas, to household with him once he returned, on posting to the UK.

On returning to the UK, after both sons were born, Samantha, who was on a five year stamp approving her residency on a British overseas base, was told to apply for citizenship ... and that there would be no problem. (She paid 400 Pounds for this. Call it 1000 Canadian dollars).

Hey. She's family. She's the spouse of a British serving member of the REMEs.

No such luck.

The question is, how many ways can you spell B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.?

So, while her husband faces the prospect of cranking the fifth wheel off broken down Challenger tanks in Afghanistan, Samantha faces the prospect of being deported and leaving her two young children behind.

We could accept the line that if you were supposed to have a family the army would have issued you one, or we could get behind Samantha Crozier and insist that the circumstances demand a second and very critical look.

Samantha has a Facebook group. Sign in and support her.

I'm trying to think of a group that should be all over this. On the other hand, navels are much more interesting to them.

Samanatha Crozier has been told to get out of the UK...

Because she doesn't meet their immigration rules.

That's fair enough, I suppose. After all, Cozier is a Canadian. She's not entitled to become a UK citizen unless she goes through the process. Unless of course, there are extenuating circumstances. Let's see. What would be something significant?

The wife of a soldier faces deportation as her husband prepares to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Oh... fucking, OOPS!

Canadian-born Samantha Crozier, 23, has been given notice by the Home Office to leave the country by April 30, when her temporary visa expires after her application for British citizenship was refused.

Mrs Crozier, who has a British mother, Antoinette, claims their children, Ethan, two, and Celeb, one, will have to be put into care while her husband, Lance Corporal Andrew Crozier, is sent on a tour of duty after he completes training. Mrs Crozier says she has spoken to 15 other Army wives facing deportation.

Mrs Crozier moved to England with her husband, also 23, in October last year. She said MoD officials failed to tell her of the complicated procedure to become a British citizen.

Ethan and Celeb, who were born while her husband was posted to Osnabruck, Germany, were awarded full British citizenship and Mrs Crozier applied for a Status Stamp at the British embassy in Dusseldorf. The stamp allowed her to stay in Germany at the UK base for five years. She was stopped at Newcastle ferry port by Customs and Excise and advised to apply for citizenship. She said she was told that because she her husband was born in Northumberland her application would be successful.

That, apparently was one of the newest in famous lies.

However, Mrs Crozier received a letter last month, the day after her birthday, from the Home Office rejecting her application.

It read: "You have applied for leave to remain in the United Kingdom on the basis of your marriage to Andrew Douglas Crozier.

"However, the immigration rules direct that a person seeking such leave is to be refused if they do not meet the requirements set out in the immigration rules.

"This includes that the applicant has limited leave to remain in the United Kingdom other than where that leave is of six months duration or less. On 30 October 2007 you were granted limited leave to enter as a visitor for a period of six months from 30 October 2007 until 30 April 2008 therefore you do not meet the requirements.

"You are not entitled to appeal this decision."

Mrs Crozier, living in Bordon, near Petersfield, Hants, said: "We rang the MoD to tell them we were coming over and they gave us no advice other then to tell us to have a nice journey.

"I think it is disgraceful. I came here to start a new life with my husband and my two wonderful little boys. My husband is very patriotic and would gladly fight for his country but it seems his country won't fight for him."

Oh, how have I wanted to quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and now I can.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

Ah, yes. Those days when the nation was at war, but, well, not really. The army was in a far off distant land fighting, dying, living with the great blunders. Oh well. There was tea to be sipped and thick cream on cakes at High Tea.

What has changed?

Goddamn! The lot of the British soldier has always been a bad one, but to deny him his hearth, home and a loving wife, because she's Canadian and hasn't followed Queen's regulations for having conjugal relations with a loyal trooper?

Apparently nothing has changed.

Cannon fodder is cannon fodder. At least that's the way the British Home Office sees it.

Notwithstanding that the delightfully attractive Samantha will do much to elevate the the level of the British gene-pool, rules are, after all, rules. It's in the book!

Given that the British army is now begging for troops, it is perhaps a good time to make a few introductions.

Left hand meet the right hand.

I wonder if Samantha Crozier's husband will remain with the British army or if the treatment of his wife will result in further unforecast attrition?

This must be one of those "world stage" moments.

Hat tip reader Cat

The British spend the last of their army

Oh yeah. Kosovo. Everyone forgot about that little episode.

Britain's overstretched Armed Forces are to send as many as 1,000 troops to the Balkans in a move that will see the military's last remaining reserve unit deployed on operations. Britain's overstretched Armed Forces are to send as many as 1,000 troops to the Balkans in a move that will see the military's last remaining reserve unit deployed on operations. The deployment - part of Britain's commitment to the Nato-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) - takes place at a time of growing pressure on the military. It will mean that more than 14,000 British troops are on overseas operations, a figure last equalled at the end of the Iraq War in May 2003.

And with that, the British army and marines are spent. There is no regular reserve force available for any other contingency. If an emergency, requiring the British military to respond, occurs over the next few months something will break. Something will have to be dropped.

The Army is currently 3,800 men under strength, virtually every infantry battalion is undermanned and one in 14 serving soldiers is not fit for active service. In the next few weeks thousands of Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade will fly out to Helmand in southern Afghanistan for the start of a widely anticipated Taliban "spring offensive".

It's worse than that actually. Here I pointed out that the two Para battalions are understrength by about 100 men each. They are pulling 60 men (total) from the Territorial Army (part-time reservists) in an attempt to make up some of the manning deficit.

There's more, however, and it could be the thing that puts the British army into a flat spin.

Sources have also indicated that despite the troop shortages, the British Task Force in Helmand might need to be reinforced before the summer in order to hold on to the strategic town of Musa Qala, which was taken from the Taliban in December.

Who those reinforcements would be remains a question at this time. One thing is certain, if the British contingent in Helmand requires reinforcement and it has to come from the British military, it will be a unit which has just recently returned from deployment.

Then there are commitments which tend to fly under the radar and are leading to desperation moves.

The lack of available troops has also forced the MoD to call up two entire Territorial Army regiments to serve with the United Nations in Cyprus, to free troops for operations elsewhere.

Two entire TA regiments. Those are part-time reservists intended for home defence. Cyprus should cause a few Canadian ears to perk up. Canada had maintained an infantry battalion in Cyprus until it was withdrawn by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and left the British holding the bag.

The British had hoped to be fully air-mobile by the time 16 Air Assault Brigade arrive in Afghanistan in April. They too have been taking losses by having to move on the roads. That, however, appears to be unlikely.

Commanders had hoped that an extra fleet of Chinooks would have been available for operations but software problems have meant that the helicopters will not be ready for another year, it can also be disclosed.

The helicopter shortages will force troops to travel by road, making them vulnerable to attack from mines and improvised explosive devices.

So, you'd think that, given this horrendous tasking placed on its peacetime armed forces by the British government that they would be finding ways to get more money into the services.

No such luck.

A SENIOR defence official has warned that the armed forces are heading for a “train crash” because the government is starving them of funds for vital equipment.

In a confidential presentation to colleagues at a meeting in the Ministry of Defence to discuss budget cuts, he said defence spending had been so severely pruned that vitally needed equipment was simply unaffordable. He also warned that the government risked “mortgaging the future” of national defence.

The official, a senior defence equipment capability manager, resorted to black humour, portraying the Treasury as an axeman who has cut off the arms of his MoD victim and is saying: “Stop whingeing . . . at least you have got your legs.” The meeting, one of a series to try to work out how to pay for all the equipment the forces need to meet their commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, was also told that the Treasury has exaggerated the increase in the military budget.

This is underscored by two British coroners' inquests which found that a lack of adequate equipment was a significant factor in the deaths of three British servicemen, all of whom were killed in Afghanistan.

The manning situation will only get worse. If the British MoD isn't able to provide sufficient equipment and the operational tempo of the British military remains at its present level, there will be a mass exodus of troops which will take years to correct.

The Strangelove effect

BBC Magazine Monitor publishes, as their first item of the new year, 100 things which we did not know last year. Extracted mostly from their own reporting it is a list of the things we learned which were either hidden from view or just forgotten about over time.

Think back for a minute. Do you recall that whenever James Bond, in whatever 007 movie you wish to refer, was dealing with the humanity-destroying weapon of whatever sinister master-mind formed the Bond antagonist?

You might recall that, in 007's world, the fictional weapon had various lock-outs and mechanisms preventing it from being armed by... well, anybody except the person with all the right codes. And, you probably thought it was pretty cool. A bit silly, but cool. The real thing would be far more difficult.

Maybe.

One of the things I had obviously missed was this little bit of information.

Newsnight has discovered that until early days of Blair government the RAF's nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock.

There was no other security on the Bomb itself.

While American and Russian weapons were protected by tamper-proof combination locks which could only be released if the correct code was transmitted, Britain relied on a simpler technology.

It's not like there wasn't an effort to bring the nukes up to a safer standard.

The British military resisted Whitehall proposals to fit bombs with Permissive Action Links - or PALs - which would prevent them being armed unless the right code was sent.

You can watch the procedure here.

Iraq veterans suffer stress and alcoholism

The British have started to figure it out.

Thousands of frontline veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing escalating mental health problems, alcoholism and family breakdown, an extensive examination of the British military has found.

Prolonged periods in conflict are linked to higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological distress and problems at home, researchers report in the British Medical Journal online.

The Ministry of Defence said it would study the findings to try to better understand mental health problems in the military, but last night there was pressure on the government to address accusations that the military is currently overstretched, forcing personnel into longer tours of duty. Opposition MPs said the burden on the military was another reason to begin phased withdrawal from Iraq.

The Royal Navy has, for well over a decade, maintained "Harmony" guidelines, intended to provide an opportunity for individual sailors to spend time with families. It can get complicated because it depends completely on ship deployments, commitments and available refit locations for ships. These were extended across the whole of the British forces with the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq become the focal point of individual rotations on long deployments.

The problem is, "Harmony" guidelines were regularly breached. In 1996 the Royal Navy had been able to report that very few breaches of "Harmony" guidelines had occurred and in some of those cases they had actually been able to leave one watch ashore while the ship sailed on fisheries protection duties.

That's all well and good, but Afghanistan and Iraq suddenly put the army, in particular, into long and recurring rotations. Harmony guidelines took a second place to the need to maintain strength on the ground in theatre.

It's the price of going into a protracted engagement with a peacetime armed forces.

An MoD spokesman said: "We will of course study the research and work with the researchers to improve our understanding of the effect of operations on personnel.

"Before their deployment every member of the armed forces will know the length of their operational tour. But there will always be occasions where unforeseen circumstances will impact on their return. The MoD works hard to minimise the effects and will not keep personnel in operations unnecessarily."

He said that the latest figures showed that of all personnel less than 1% of the Royal Navy, 12% of army and 6% of RAF personnel were exceeding the harmony guidelines.

The concern here is actually the extending of tours. While the study talked about tours extended to 13 months or more, that only constitutes 20 percent of the total British force deployed. The usual length of tour is between six and seven months. And the British are concerned about the effects on troops extending longer than that.

The Americans have extended tours to 15 months and many troops have done multiple rotations.

Wait until that has to be sorted out.

h/t Cat