Right, Teribus, the Mods made it clear they wanted this left where it is and You have chosen to ignore it. YOU TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES, AND YES, I AM NOW SHOUTING AT YOU.

Firstly, have you ever served in an Infantry Unit? How the fuck do you know what you're talking about if you haven't? I talked about the Military "Battle" Police, not the Royal Military Police. Lets begin from basics. The practice in Army units is for everyone to take a turn on guard duty, whether in camp or in the field. The guard has the duty of protecting the unit, and it extends to dealing with stragglers, whether returning drunk from the pub or AWOL. They often have armbands to identify them, and the Duty Offficer, their Commander, is easily identifiable in the Officers' Mess, because he's the only one with a Sam Brown on. Minor crimes happen all the time, the Guard hauls them in and holds them until preferably their sergeant, failing which the CO, sorts it out. The NCOs are the people doing the work, so the Officers can advise neutrally: it's why the Duty Officer tries to keep clear other than giving the Guard their orders and a very occasional check-up that there's not problems not being reported to him. It was the same in Kipling's day, "Drunk and resisting the Guard", whose job it was to calm him down, sober him up and get him back in line before anyone noticed. The entire thing is designed to deal with it with as little fuss as possible: the CO who has to notify the RMPs of a AWOL becoming a deserter is pretty irritated, believe me: if you want out, there are other ways, nobody needs someone who's not doing their job in the Army of the last forty years, because someone else will have to do it for him. If it's something you'd put up with from one of your mates, fine, everyone turns a blind eye, the job gets done. Family and life problems also. But if you routinely fuck up, then you cease to be a mate and you're on the way out - we try to eliminate these in training, but people change. And there are times when it's not so simple, like in the line.

In WWI, most battalions had the practice of rotating one company out of the immediate front line to do the admin, getting supplies (mostly food, drink, medicines and dressings and ammunition) up to the line and all the rest of it. It also had a hidden objective: if the front-line companies got wiped out, the reserve company could act as a cadre to rebuild the unit.
It's the NCO's jobs to do that in the platoon: the Platoon Commander is usually off getting his next set of orders and planning how to put them into effect as soon as one job is finished. While he's doing that, the sergeant's doing his "mother" bit, ensuring someone's on guard, those who need to sleep sleep, everyone gets hot food, the used ammunition is resupplied, the dead get buried, the wounded sent for treatment, and their replacements assigned, so his boss has a functioning unit when he returns. The NCOs work with the Warrant officers, CSM and CQMS or one of the Staff Sergeants at Company level, RSM and RQMS at Battalion level. Part of their job is therefore making certain those doing the fighting do the fighting, and the RSM, tasked with Battaalion discipline, is the backline when shirking's concerned. Almost every execution for desertion was done against a charge from the RSM in WWI, for example: the Officers stand back to be seen to be neutral, within the linits of the culture, which I agree is a very daunting quibble. The worst would be a complete mutiny, it happened in the French Army in 1917, and could have spread. The model is Sam Small, as immortalised by Stanley Holloway: Sam, Sam, pick up tha' musket. "just for thee I'll oblige".

So, you have an image here of the RSM and his heavies, sometimes from the Reserve Company, keeping order, which means in particular making sure soldiers bloody well fight. They're sometimes called Provosts, but still not RMP Provosts who are the next line up the tree, and that's why your research doesn't find them, Terribus, because you think everything;s neatly pigeonholed - this isn't, it's part of the million-and-one parts of an RSM's job, from yelling at people slouching across the Parade Sqaure to ensuring that Private X's slut of a wife doesn't disrupt his section by screwing the Corporal whose wife is his rifle. The shennanigans of Court Martials are particularly disliked by Officers, who, you will have noticed, and not in the gang being mother-henned by the Sergeant, and who invariably get fuck all sleep. A Court-Martial comes out of their disposable time, which is firstly tasked in the line to being able to sleep so they can still think straight. In addition, the documentary BS is beyind belief. I feel much the same way here, I've got things I'd rather do than explain all this to a bunch of armchair warriors.

Part of the reason the lads from the Reserve Company do it is because if they don't, they'll be the ones sent forwards to replace the Company that's not doing the job. There tends not to be too much love lost outside the Company as a result, even now everyone thinks their Company's the best.

And under those circumstances, nobody's going to be too fussed about what happens in the way of straightener to anyone not doing their job. Straighteners still happen, which is why people like Nasr Al-Khalifa still have bodyguards: one of my chums wanted to declare informal war on him earlier this summer and had to be talked out of setting half the pikeys of the East End onto him and his to teach them the kind of lesson they badly needed. Instead, Nasr got declared persona non grata by the State Depaartment with an International Arrest Warrant on his head and my mate spent the summer in body armour, because Nasr went home to Daddy and threw his toys pout of the pram: I'm no longer welcome in the Savoy as a result. Oh, me f'in heart bleeds. The reason I'm safe is because he, Nasr, asked me for my help, and he really would lose face paying me back any worse.

You will have noticed that in theory the Officer should preempt these problems. What arose in WWI is that nobody had time to find out what the inevitable baggage a newcomer brought with him was, and so if they were of such weak character their minds snapped and they turned and legged it, then the consequences were likely to be inevitable. As I type, the BBC is talking about the effects of bullying on children, and there's some of that in these problems: life is sometimes too kind, and when you get someone immature bullied and ordered into a position where he'd rather kill himself than put up with it any longer, or commit suicide by Military Cop, then it will happen, particularly where the High Command didn't give a monkeys.

This was true at Blenheim, it was true at Waterloo, it was true in the Somme and it's true now. It will probably be true until we no longer need an Army. HOWEVER, the awareness of what's going on behind the facehas advanced, if only by learning the hard way, although we still don't sign up to all the H&S psychobabble. Nowadays, we try to kick out the bastards who still don't give a damn, as they're the sort who won't give a damn about the women and children in the way. We need soldiers who have been trained to perform under continual pressure, and this is why some of the recruiting films you'll have seen have only one in three passing the course, you may be too weak in limb, mind or morality to do the job. The Special Forces add other criteria, which is why I know them, but walked away from them, because they had not added morality to the list when I was in. It's there now, and I have friends there because they've learned I was right: for example, one of my WEU mates has Chapter 8 of the Osprey Book on Heroes of the SAS all to his little self, much to his fury: I paid him for eight years, and his pension for another ten. Which is why I calm down people wanting a slice of an Arab Crown Prince. That extra is what makes them Special, and is why I continue to argue here, because the work the folk movement can be very helpful in bringing children on to become balanced adults who know when to act and when to hold their hands. The gung-ho types have to be balanced with proportionate responsibility, or we end up in the situation where nobody can see because of an eye for an eye and nobody can hear because of an ear for an ear. It's why I ended up in WEU, I've not changed, I was always a moderating force on new officers coming in full of "I'm the Colonel of the 4th Foot and Mouth and had 2000 serving men": we taught them that their new serving men were Kipling's 5: What, and Who, and Where, and Why, and When. Or for that matter Warsaw Pact people who'd been brought up to be afraid of their won shadows, and had to be taught that they had a valuable voice and opinion from what they had spent their time observing. WEU succeeded because we made the diplomats and military talk to each other, and exercise jaw-jaw instead of war-war. It's the futurte of the world, and not the guys who react to the red fog of war.

And foremost among them at the moment seems to be you, dearest Teribus. When you try to dis me like you have, I'm human, and get insulted, and may treat you with the contempt you have undoubtedly earned. I've been around diplomats for long enough to count to ten, but when, having counted to ten, you still are a prat preaching respect for the armed forces but not observing it when it comes to it, then you live with the consequences. Let's put it this way. I'm never likely to want to perform with you if ever I discover your real identity. Max knows mine, and has checked my background: my friends detected his checking and asked me who he was, as they were concerned about my arse during the summer's contretemps. That will have to satisfy you.

So, have you ever served in an infantry unit?