British Casualty Rate in Afghanistan Is Highest Ever

[Coventina]

Source: Bloomberg

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- British forces in Afghanistan suffered more casualties in the first two weeks of July than in any month since the war began in 2001, government figures show.

Fifty-seven British troops were wounded in action between July 1 and July 15, compared with 46 in June and 24 in May, the Ministry of Defence said today. There were 16 serious injuries.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been under pressure over the war in Afghanistan after 22 British service personnel were killed this month, taking the toll since operations began in 2001 to 191. That’s more than the number who died in six years of fighting in Iraq.

Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of the defense staff in charge of health, said British surgeons in Afghanistan had been overwhelmed by the number of casualties and had received backup from American surgical colleagues.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=au2uvcvvG.I4

[saigon68]

1. Guess the FOOLS didn't learn enough from the last time around

The guns o' the enemy wheel into line,
Shoot low at the limbers an' don't mind the shine,
The Young British Soldier Rudyard Kipling




For noise never startles the soldier.
Start-, start-, startles the soldier . . .

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .


When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier OF the Queen!

cut up -- the Afghan women were said to mutilate enemy dead and wounded

[jakeXT]

2. the word "ever" is probably not correct

[ColonelHEP]

3. Saigon68 comment on the Afgan womens butchering dead or wounded soldiers

I can confirm that the Afghan women in the Khyber Pass did come and cut off the genitals of wounded and dying soldiers with a Batarn knife, a vicious weapon I think made from bayonets captured in earlier battles, an example of which I have. So the poem was sound advice to any soldier left for dead when ambushed by the enemy. Exactly why they cut off the private parts is something I do not know but it must have some significant point as it sure frightened the hell out of any wounded soldiers who was waiting for his comrades to drag him to safety.