Ronin Concepts Security Elite Ltd - News
The Mark Wright Project.
The Mark Wright Project. This newly established project is seeking to raise funds and support to establish holistic post-conflict recovery rehabilitation and support services for serving and ex-serving military personnel.
Our son, Corporal Mark Wright, 27, a paratrooper with the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment stationed in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan, was killed in action on September 6th 2006. Mark entered a minefield in an extraordinary attempt to save the lives of other injured soldiers, but sadly Mark lost his life during the incident. Mark was awarded the George Cross, one of the highest awards in the UK for acts of gallantry.
To see more about The Mark Wright Project please visit this link: The Mark Wright Project
Books
Highway to Hell by John Geddes
"Anyone entering Iraq must travel the road from Amman to Baghdad along the Fallujah by-pass and around the Ramadi Ring Road. It's the most dangerous trunk route in the world used as a personal, fairground shooting gallery by insurgents and Islamists with rocket propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. For newcomers to the country it's terrifying - but hell only really begins when that first journey ends..." Present-day Iraq: a crucible of torture, chemical warfare and Islamic terrorism, and straddling over it all the mighty US Army and its allies; but there's another western army in Iraq that dwarfs the British contingent and is second only in size to the US Army itself. It's a disparate and anarchic multi-national force of men gathered from twenty or more countries numbering some 30,000. It's a mercenary army of men and a few women with guns for hire earning an average of $1,000 dollars a day.
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Spearhead Assault: Blood, Guts and Glory on the Falklands Frontlines - by John Geddes
In the last great hand-to-hand battle of the twentieth century, the men of 2 Para bit off more than they could chew...but they chewed it anyway. On May 21st, 1982, nearly four hundred soldiers from the 2cd Battalion Parachute Regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert 'H' Jones, landed with a British Task Force at San Carlos Bay on the Falklands. Their mission: to take the strategic position at Goose Green where military intelligence reckoned there were a couple of hundred Argentine troops guarding an airstrip. The intelligence was wrong and when they attacked on May 27th, they were confronted by a 1,500-strong regiment of Argentine soldiers dug in with so much machine-gun ammunition they stood on the ammo boxes to keep their feet dry. Some of the enemy soldiers were Special Forces; some were Guarani Indians, a proud warrior race; a few even were Welsh-speaking members of a community founded in Patagonia in the nineteenth century.
>> Listen to John tell of some of his memories of the battle for Goose Green
08:45 - BBBC Radio 4. More from our series of letters from the Falklands War, and John Geddes, who fought in the battle of Goose Green.
Lives would be saved by learning lessons of Troubles
There are no better trained or motivated troops in the world than the British and like the rest of the nation I'm proud of the job they're doing in Afghanistan.
But I have been watching their tactics closely and come to the conclusion that lessons learned in Northern Ireland, Malaya and Borneo have been forgotten and that's costing us an unacceptable toll in dead and injured heroes. When I served as a young Para in Northern Ireland's bandit country we didn't call them IEDs, we called them culvert or roadside bombs, but they were just as lethal. The first of many bombings I was to witness was at Warren Point, where 16 of my 2 Para mates were slaughtered.
It was the turning of terror onto the enemy that had the IRA running scared, so their political leaders were eager to get to the negotiating table. We didn't do that by continuing to drive down roads in enemy territory where bombs could be laid to blow our vehicles from underneath us. It was realised that you can't take these bombs on - you leave them on the roadside waiting for a target that never comes.
During the Troubles troops did not mount vehicle patrols in bandit country - that led to casualties. Instead we gathered intelligence and moved by helicopter or at night in snatch operations and targeted raids. We used those tactics to take the war to the enemy and put him in fear. That lesson seems to have been forgotten in Helmand, where we need to adapt our tactics. We also need to live up to our reputation as the finest counter insurgency army in the world. If we don't we'll be feeding coffins on a conveyor belt through RAF Lyneham.
Former SAS warrant officer John Geddes has fought terrorists all over the world. His book Highway to Hell is widely read among British and US troops.
