Free The Falklands Intercept by Crispin Black Page B

and appurtenances of war without ever risking their own necks. Indeed they were sending young men into harm’s way and asking them to do stuff that they had never had to do. Obviously not the senior officers who had fought in the Second World War and Korea, but most of them hadn’t.’
    â€˜So you don’t like staff officers either Lady Nevinson’, interjected Jacot with a smile. ‘The Blackadder effect you might call it. They are necessary you know. I am one technically . Most of the really big cock-ups in war are as a result of poor staff work. If Captain Nolan or Lord Cardigan had been to a proper staff college we wouldn’t have had the Charge of the Light Brigade.’
    â€˜Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She almost blushed. ‘And I loved all things French – including the men although some of them were a pain. Later I spent some time in Bonn and then Berlin. I found I liked and admired the Germans too. Our disagreements with them seem so strange now.’ She looked at Jacot ‘I had forgotten to English public school boys the Germans remain something out of a pantomime.’
    â€˜Actually I am a great admirer and speak a little of the language after three years in the Rhine Army.’
    She continued unperturbed. ‘All in all it meant I never fell under the American spell. You saw the television pictures.’
    â€˜Yes I did as a teenager living in Hong Kong. And we realized all was not going well as our flights out from school took longer the further south the North Vietnamese penetrated . I can remember in the early days the BOAC pilots pointing out the site of Da Nang which is somewhere in the middle. By the end we were taking the long route round the South China Sea.’
    She poured more whisky for them both, got up from her desk and walked to her office windows again. ‘I’ve seen what it looks like – leaving in a hurry and beaten or too exhausted to carry on. Saigon was a frightening place in the final days and hours. Weird things happen. The world gets turned upside down. For instance money became absolutely worthless – even dollars, or perhaps especially dollars. The only currency thatwas any use at buying a passage on a boat or an aircraft was gold. Krugerrands were popular. We Brits have done it ourselves time and time again. We got out of India just in time. Palestine. Too many places, culminating in our scuttle from Aden. As the helicopter carrying the last British governor of Aden out to a waiting warship lifted off from the grounds of government house the rebels burst in and began looting it. And yet we cannot help going back. It’s in the military, political and diplomatic DNA.’
    She was in full philosophical flow. Jacot sipped his whisky. It had been a long day but he admired her and respected her judgment, mostly.
    â€˜How do you extricate a lost army? Nobody really tried to get our people out of Singapore in late 1941. They were left to defeat and their fate. At least after that disaster we didn’t have the generals appearing on television every five minutes telling us how the battle for Singapore was a ‘journey’. I bet that’s the sort of thing the Roman generals, unworthy descendants of Caesar, were saying just before their game was up. “Emperor, the defence of Rome is a journey.” Colonel Jacot where do you get these people?’
    â€˜To be fair, Lady Nevinson I think the man who talked about “a journey” was an Air Marshal.’
    â€˜Well, the Romans were lucky that they didn’t have an air force.’
    â€˜Lady Nevinson the government which we serve has decided that we are going to stay in Afghanistan until 2015. I understand it’s probably now going to be 2014. It’s a democratic decision taken by parliament. “Period” as our American allies would say. It’s above my pay grade I know but whatever anyone might feel about