Do you have a link, or a scan of the report you could upload?Originally Posted by William F. Owen
Ted
Brigadier Wavell COIN
Post exercise report, Blackdown, Hampshire, England 1930!“this is a common task for soldiers, yet there is little known about it in any text book…it is a poor job for a soldier, dangerous and dull, very hard work and very thankless. Last night and its results are typical of this sort of operation, four Bn’s …turned out to hunt 40-50 scallywags, having hard day and night, losing perhaps a dozen comrades sniped from ambush, and all there is to show for it is tenor twenty ragged toughs, of whom half will be released by civilian authorities in a week or so, and you will perhaps be lucky if you don’t have to apologise to some of them. But we’ve got to learn to do it, or at least think about it. The advantages are nearly always on the side of the guerrilla in that he is bound by no rules, tied by no transport, hampered by no drill books, while the soldier is bound by many things, not least by his expectation of a full meal every so many hours. The soldier usually wins in the long run, but very expensively”.
As Ken White says, "wheels reinvented here!"
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Do you have a link, or a scan of the report you could upload?
Ted
Sorry no. I was sent it by a friend who found it in Wavell's memoirs. I am pretty sure that Wavell and Gwynn were friends.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
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