Naked to the Enemy It seems that at long last
steps have been taken to remedy some of the more glaring weaknesses in the conventional equipment of the British forces in Germany. The feeblest arm of the ser- vice is the artillery, as Julian Critchley pointed out in this paper five months ago. The British Army of the Rhine has two kinds of guns, both obsolescent (to put it politely) and neither with the range or the mobility to match the enemy's. It is being said that the War Office has made an emergency purchase of a large number of Swedish self-propelled 155 mm. guns, to the tune of about £30 million. These will be complemented' by a 105 mm. gun which is not due to enter ser- vice until 1964. Until then, nothing. The nuclear artillery--Honest Johns, the dual-purpose howit- zers, and the Corporals—have apparently been drawn back away from the frontier. (These weapons played no part whatever in this autumn's manceuvres. The warheads, or 'tops,' seemed in fact to have disappeared with their American custodians.) Thus the Rhine Army is enjoying the worst of both worlds. Its lack of soldiers and poverty of equipment would suggest that the only way in which a Russian attack could be met is by the immediate use of tactical nuclear weapons. But this is what it would not be allowed to do. The decision to use nuclears is General Norstad's. His 'forward strategy' would mean a delay of hours or even days before tactical nuclears could be introduced into the battle. A forward strategy makes sense only if there are the conventional forces necessary to implement it. These the Rhine Army, outnumbered by its women and children, completely lacks. •
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