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Originally Posted by perardua
Equally, our leadership felt that we were fine as we were. I can't speak as to other units, but we never had an incident of essential kit being forgotten, or lack of spares.
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That's impressive, I've never heard of any unit that could make that claim. I don't know, Reserve units in the UK must be massively different from what we call the Reserves. In the US, Reserves have outdated, crappy equipment that is usually left over from Vietnam or Desert Storm. Their discipline usually matches, despite their good intentions.
I have a couple of Brit officers in my large class, I'll have to ask them about this stuff on Monday. I just find it mind-boggling that they don't do it. That's not a derisive comment, it's just one of astonishment.
I didn't mean to imply that you guys were "wrong" for operating the way you did in an absolute sense of the word. After all, there are a million ways to fight. I just meant what I said, I could not operate that way as a leader. See below for reasons.
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Our leadership chose to treat us as professionals, and it paid off for them.
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It isn't a question of "treating them as professionals" or not "treating them as professionals" in my opinion. In mine, it's being a professional leader yourself and taking every action you can to mitigate as much tactical and accidental risk as possible to ensure that as many of your people come home as possible.
It sounds melodramatic but as a former NCO and now an officer in the Infantry, I've been entrusted by mothers and fathers to do everything in my power to keep their sons safe. Even more basic than that though, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if one of my guys didn't have something that got them or someone else killed or maimed on one of my patrols. My incident with the 240 glove was minor, but when we needed it, we didn't have it, and as a young Lieutenant who had gotten lazy, I checked myself.
You keep mentioning your "Flight." I assume you were RAF?