The Official ARRSE Guide to the British Army

312 Pages·2011·7.61 MB·English

by  Major Des Astor

ABOUT THE BOOK
Guaranteed coarse, scatological and offensive, the Army Rumour Service
(www.arrse.co.uk) is the British Army’s online meeting place for chat, bullshit,
whingeing and schimpfing.* Read by everyone in Britain’s defence community
from the Secretary of State downwards, Arrse is where you will find the inside
view from Britain’s soldiers.
Now you too can join in the fun with Arrse’s very own easily digestible,
profusely illustrated, highly absorbent guide to the British Army. Compiled
and edited by one of the most extensively passed-over officers in British
military history, The Official Arrse Guide is a unique inside view of what the
British Army really is and how it really works.
As well as comprehensive information about the regiments and corps, their
weapons and equipment, where they live and work, who joins and how they
get in, this book tells you how to: • GET THAT CRUCIAL ‘ALLY’ LOOK
• MAKE YOUR OWN WANK SOCK
• MOCK THE RAF
• WALT WITH GIANTS
• ESCAPE THE ‘LEPRECHAUN OF DEATH’
25% of royalties received is being donated to Arrse’s own ‘Holidays for Heroes’
fund, which pays for wounded serving personnel to holiday and recuperate
with their families.
*Read on for details.
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Foreword
An Introduction to ARRSE
What the British Army is, and How it Works
Combat Arms
Combat Hardware
Combat Support Arms
Combat Support Hardware
Combat Service Support
Formations
Joining Up
Recruitment
You’re in the Army Now
Training
The Kit
Bulling Boots
Rifle Cleaning
Who’s Who
Army Places
Booze
The Movements Game
Odds and Sods
The Other Services
The Weird and Wonderful World of Walts
Appendix: MULTI-LETTER ACRONYMS
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits
Copyright

I don’t imagine it will come as any great surprise to readers of this book that
the Army was initially wary of embracing the concept of ‘Arrse’, websites like
it and, indeed, of the world wide net as a whole. I can honestly say that back
in 2004, when I was first appointed to head the scoping team for future Army
digitification, it took an immense amount of lobbying on my part of ministers,
service chiefs, senior officials and, of course, my very good friends in the
defence industry – whom one will, one hopes, be joining shortly after one’s
formal retirement from the service – to ensure that requirements were
identified, funds released and equipment procured to make certain that
‘Defence’ was at the forefront of the electrical age.
I feel a certain amount of – I hope justifiable – pride that as Director
General Defence Network Capability I was the first officer of two-star rank or
above to have an official ‘email’ address and that, since that exciting day in
2007, Miss Sherrard, my PA, has been able to send and receive ‘email’ on my
behalf at an astonishing rate (once they’ve been through the usual staffing,
checking and red-inking procedure involving my Chief of Staff, the SO1 J6 and
Staff Sergeant Hobsbawm, who knows about computers). It’s a sign of the
times that a memo or letter which might have taken 10 days from first draft to
release in the old ‘snail mail’ era can now be ‘good to go’ in 8 days or less as
an ‘email’, with no more than a 20% increase in our manpower bill.
But the white heat of progress comes at a cost. When we started Project
DIGIT, ministers were rightly insistent that as much of the spend as possible,
right across the piece, should come from commercial off-the-shelf sources.
Sadly, this proved impossible. After much lobbying from industry, we realized
that operating systems like Windows™, Unix and Linux were hopelessly
insecure and the first part of the project involved the development – by a
consortium of European defence contractors – of our own powerful, bespoke
platform called ‘DefenceDoorways’. Despite the 42% cost overrun, I am
confident that when finished this will prove to be £12 billion well spent,
especially after we have developed the tools to enable our hardware to
communicate with the Windows™ based systems of our allies.
Of course, in this ‘digital’ age, computers aren’t just about work. I’m told
that it is possible to play games, read newspapers, buy books and even ‘chat’ if
you plug them in to the ‘net’. Staff Sergeant Hobsbawm has recently taught me
‘Solitaire’ (a computerized version of patience) on my state-of-the-art secure
laptop and as soon as I get it back from lost property I shall be getting some
practice in.
Entertainment is what Arrse – The Army Rumour Service, to give it its
polite name – is all about. It’s absolutely marvellous that the soldiers can have
what they call ‘a laugh’, and we at the top of the military hierarchy are very
keen that they should continue to do so. It’s just a shame it has to be
accompanied by all that griping and by what are, let’s face it, some exhibitions
of very questionable taste indeed. Nevertheless, once we have identified the
ringleaders and taken action – including but not limited to AGAI 67 – against
them, I’m sure we will be happy to endorse it, albeit in a limited way.
It is no surprise to me that Des Astor is involved in this project. I first
encountered Major Astor as a subaltern in my company in Osnabruck in 1976.
We were, I dare say, a pretty cosmopolitan Officers’ Mess in the Loamshires
back then. Chaps came from all kinds of backgrounds, ranging from the
traditional – Eton and Winchester – to the frankly outré: Wellington,
Charterhouse and one, you may find it hard to believe, from Stowe (although,
to be fair, he didn’t last long). Despite this, Des was something of a ‘coloured
person’ in this particularly diverse woodpile, with his unusual north Midlands
accent and Bri-nylon shirts. It’s a tribute to his determination and, admittedly,
thick skin, that he stuck with it and forged a career despite the open hostility
of officers, soldiers and chain of command. In a meritocratic hierarchy like the
Army, we can’t all reach the top, but to give credit where it’s due, Des Astor
gave it his best shot. The fact that he fell well short of the required standard is
by the by. Doubtless his involvement with Arrse gives him a sense of fulfilment
he is unable to obtain elsewhere.
So, slightly caveated, I commend his book to you. I have yet to read it
myself, but Major Astor has assured me that it is an amusing and affectionate
introduction to some of the finer points of life in the British Army. If this is
indeed the case, then, up to a point, he need have nothing to fear.
H P R N Clench
Lt Gen
HQ Cyber Command
November 2011
It so happens that this one took place on Christmas Eve 2000. One
participant, known only by the cover name ‘Adjutant’, expounded a theory
that an internet discussion forum like the ‘Professional Pilots Rumour
Network’ (PPRuNe) might be popular in the Army. His co-conspirators (the
artists now known and feared as Good CO and Bad CO) thought about this,
scratched their heads, rearranged their testicles, bought a book about HTML
from PC World and, in the new year, ARRSE was born.
With a rudimentary form of Arrse online not long afterwards, many of the
early members were poached from among military users of PPRuNe, which
explains why, in the early days at least, there was quite a strong flavour of the
Army Air Corps about the site. At this stage, the biggest boost Arrse received
was the decision (since rescinded) to block Arrse from the network at the Joint
Services Command and Staff College – fantastic free publicity among the
target audience!
Traffic on Arrse steadily built over the next couple of years with, oddly
enough, events like the invasion of Iraq helping to build membership by
spreading the word outside the fairly narrow circles who had been hitherto
using the site. It so happens that I was first shown it by a REME officer on a
satellite internet terminal in southern Iraq in July 2003.
But the first really major boost to Arrse came about in May 2004 when the
Daily Mirror, under editor Piers Morgan, bought and published photographs
allegedly showing soldiers of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi
prisoners in the back of a truck. Thanks to some sharp-eyed Arrsers – led
initially by ViroBono – suspicions were soon raised and it quickly emerged
that (a) the pictures had been taken at a TA centre in north-west England, and
(b) Morgan and the Mirror had made no serious attempt to check their
veracity. Uh-oh. Amid a storm of public anger, Morgan was unceremoniously
dumped from his job. Bye-bye Piers! Since the egregious Morgan bought it at
the Mirror Arrse has led several high-profile campaigns, including: securing a
change in the law which had disenfranchised thousands of British service
personnel before the 2005 general election; forcing Tony Blair to back General
Sir Richard Dannatt, the then Chief of the General Staff, when he spoke out
about the pressure of fighting two underfunded wars; the creation of the
British Armed Forces Federation, the new and surprisingly influential staff
association for Armed Forces Personnel; rights of UK residence being granted
to Tulbahadur Pun VC, the World War Two Gurkha veteran; the fight to allow
a house for wounded soldiers’ relatives to be converted next to the