Young Soldiers

Closed Thread Subscribe

Thread Tools

Apr 15th 2012, 5:52 pm

#16

ukecadet

Joined: Dec 2007

Posts: 2,838

ukecadet is an unknown quantity at this point

Re: Young Soldiers

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amazulu

I only saw the first episode so have not followed it. Most soldiers are young - and always have been. Only young men are capable of doing some of the infantry shit that they are required to do.

I'm surprised that that some of them are on operations after only 6 months training - that's not long enough. We trained for a year before going into combat (and it was a genuine 10 months of hard training, with 2 months leave, farting about) - and we needed every minute of it.

Give me a quick history lesson.What was going on in your neck of the woods when you were in?We picked up a couple of our guy's who were doing a sneaky off Gambia in79 with best part of his leg hanging off.Don't know what they had been up to.

Apr 15th 2012, 6:15 pm

#17

Amazulu

Proudly Deplorable

Joined: May 2003

Location: Alloha snack bar

Posts: 24,246

Re: Young Soldiers

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukecadet

I did 2 years national service in the South African Infantry from 1985-87, with the last year, 1986-87 on combat operations. I don't want to go into it too much (as it can bring out the looneys on here), but South Africa was involved in a war on the Namibian/Angolan border from the late '60s to the late '80s. It started off as a classic insurgency, but by the mid-'80s was morphing into a conventional war, although my battalion was mainly involved in the COIN side of things. We did AFV-mounted operations against terrorist bases in Angola, classic hot-pursuit, foot patrols and heli-borne 'fireforce' type missions. There has been stuff written about this war, but it remains relatively unknown in the western world. This is a basic enough summary of the conflict:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War