Total PR stunt. Calling in air strikes from well away from the front line.
I wouldn't call that mop of carrot on his head very in keeping with military styles. The Taliban sniper orders were probably to shoot all red-heads on sight in the hope of getting lucky!
Vlad The Impaler was the original stakeholder!
It's not that hard to fire one really for anyone who has trained on personal weaponry - I would reckon he meant the first time he had fired one action TBH- as it's one of the BAs standard tactical weapons he almost certainly fired one during basic training.Originally Posted by badinage
Anyone read the Guardian today? I thought their coverage of the Harry story was a little pathetic - they were clearly (childishly) bitter that it had had a positive PR impact on the British Army and the Afghan campaign. I was a little disappointed by them actually - article after article were written with a 'bad loser' tone.
It was a PR stunt. It was also allowing a soldier to do the job he'd been trained to do, when he expressed a very strong interest in doing it. The two aren't mutually exclusive. And it wasn't a cheap PR stunt - regardless of the level of danger he was actually exposed to, he was still out in Afghanistan - anyone who watched Ross Kemp in Afghanistan will remember him sh*tting himself just landing (into a major secure base). And that was a PR stunt as well, but people still respected Kemp for going out there (though he did expose himself to real danger)
You're not referring to John Snow's attack on the agreement not to report the story, are you? Because the criticisms were pro-Harry, not anti-Harry, some people even called him traitorous.
If he was reading out criticisms of the actual reporting of the story, then he was doing it because he agreed with them.
Well yeah. Do you honestly think they'd let an untrained officer take over a machine gun he'd never fired before (he said it was his first time firing a .5 cal), during an actual attack? And do you really think he wouldn't be aiming, and would be laughing and joking with the journalist and Gurkha instead of firing at the enemy?So he was shooting at thin air when firing that machine Gun then?
Having said that, I don't see what the big deal is if his job was to remain in a base directing air strikes - he still went through the hardships, discomfort, and risk of mortar attacks, etc. They could have just stuck him in a HQ in a huge secure base in Kabul.
The expertise comes in the maintence and sighting of such weapon thus the Ghurka being there to lay the sights as it were and ensure a smooth rate of fire.
He was probably engaged in a spot of regular suppression fire on know Taliban positions rather than fending off a determined attack - it has a range of 2km BTW so very little chance of Taliban snipers picking off young Harry through return fire.
.5 Inch Heavy Machine Gun
The powerful L1A1 12.7 mm Heavy Machine gun (HMG) is an updated version of the Browning M2 'Fifty-cal' - recognised as one of the finest heavy machine guns ever developed. Currently, the HMG provides integral close-range support from a ground mount tripod or fitted to a Land Rover TUM using a Weapon Mount Installation Kit (WMIK) and a variety of sighting systems. The performance of the HMG has recently been enhanced with a new 'soft mount' (to limit recoil and improve accuracy) and a quick change barrel.
Calibre: 12.7mm
Weight: 38.15kg (gun only)
Length: 1,656mm
Barrel Length: 1,143
Muzzle Velocity: 915 m/s
Feed: 50 round disintegrating belt
Cyclic rate of fire: 485 - 635 rounds per minute
Effective range: 2000m
http://www.army.mod.uk/equipment/pw/hmg.htm
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
Ah but you see Ross Kemp works in the media and so is someone who the media can recognise as one of their own and hence identify with. Anyone else in Afghanistan is alien to large swathes of the British press, whether Afghan, British or American. Since Vietnam Western press has treated war as a place for journalists to make their name, other considerations, such as who is winning or right etc, are secondary. Soldiers are usually treated with distain by a media unwilling to share the spotlight or dilute their own perception of heroism they feed the public back home (the only acceptible criteria for which is the bravery required for a journalist to do their job).
My opinion on this is fairly straightforward - fcuck the little ****************************** in the ear. It was nothing more than a sick and disturbing PR stunt, that no doubt put many lives at risk (all commoners I'm sure - British or Iraqi) so this inbred little ************************nut could play at being a hero.
He's not a hero, he's not brave, there was NEVER any hint of danger to him and to top it all off, he probably lived in comfort to boot.
Anyone who deliberately goes off to a war because they feel a need to 'prove themselves in a disturbed person. Especially someone propping up the morality of a petro war.
End of my opinion.
If I could mass-sterilise the planet, I would. Seriously.
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So his Mother, the tramp, had good P.R on trying to eradicate anti-personnel mines, now the son is sending warplanes to bomb Afghan villages????
And the masses are fooled by both.
Just 1 gram of cocaine destroys 4m2 of tropical rainforest. Give it up ya selfish b'stards.
Anyone else notice the majority of his propaganda photos show him bare-chested in a feckin war-zone.
This is a P.R stunt.
Not for the Royals but to attract more officer material to the B.A, who've suffered their most serious recruitment crisis in decades.
Just 1 gram of cocaine destroys 4m2 of tropical rainforest. Give it up ya selfish b'stards.
If this is genuinely your opinion then given that it is factually wrong in several areas, you appear to be a moron, and an unpleasant and boorish one at that.
I don't understand why everyone has such a problem with that. Every time they allow the media to Afghanistan, its by definition a PR stunt. Ross Kemp in Afghanistan was a PR stunt as well, but didn't provoke the disgust and outrage we see here.
And if the response is that Kemp didn't kill anyone while there, Harry is a professional soldier and went out there to do a job he'd been trained to do - if he hadn't gone, someone else would have done the exact same tasks as him. Nobody died who would otherwise have lived because of Harry.
Ross Kemp, on the other hand, was just been a war tourist, thinking he was macho for exposing himself to danger, turning war into an adventure - yet that didn't result in an 11-page thread.
Methinks the reaction is because Harry is a member of the Royal Family. If he was some ordinary celebrity who joined the army, or if he was Gordon Brown's son, I can't imagine it would have provoked the same reaction on this thread
er OD he was in Afghanistan not Iraq!
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
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