Article published in the Colchester Gazette, 10 November 2016. © Richard Kemp

ONE of the most moving letters I have ever read was sent from a young Colchester man to his parents 100 years ago.

“I am writing this letter to you just before going into action tomorrow at dawn,” he began.

“‘I am about to take part in the biggest battle that has been fought in France.”

He went on to explain: “My idea of writing this letter is in case I am one of the costs and get killed. I do not expect to be but such things have happened and are always possible.

“It is impossible to fear death out here when one is no longer an individual but a member of a regiment and of an Army.

“What an insignificant thing the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them. It seems scarcely worth talking about.

“Well goodbye, my darlings, try not to worry about it and remember that we shall meet again quite soon.”

He wrote that letter at 8 pm on Friday June 30th, 1916. The next day was the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The British Army suffered by far the greatest casualty rate in its history – 20,000 killed and 40,000 missing or wounded on that one day alone. Among them was the author of that letter, killed as the battle began at dawn.

He had been a pupil at my own school, Colchester Royal Grammar. Two other former pupils and a teacher from there were killed that day. In all, 79 old boys and masters of the school died in the First World War. A remarkable number from a school with only 200 on the roll in 1914.

Many today would dismiss this young man’s sentiments as mere jingoism, claiming after 1914 the initial enthusiasm to defend their country had been extinguished and soldiers were unwilling cannon fodder driven to their deaths by heartless politicians and incompetent generals. Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 6 November 2016. © Richard Kemp

This week we enter the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration. This document, signed on November 2, 1917 by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, was the first recognition by one of the world’s great powers – in fact at the time the greatest power in the world – of the right of the Jewish people to their national homeland in Palestine.

It was the single most significant step taken in restoring Jewish self-determination in their historic territories. Under the San Remo Resolution three years later, the Balfour Declaration was enshrined in international law, leading inexorably to the 1947 UN partition plan and ultimately to the proclamation of the State of Israel by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948.

As Britain, Israel and the free world begin to mark this monumental anniversary, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demands an apology from the UK.

The man whose constitutional tenure as Palestinian leader expired seven years ago, yet remains in place. The man who raised funds for the 1972 massacre in Munich of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. The man who misused millions of dollars of international aid intended for the welfare of his people. The man who dismissed as a ‘fantastic lie’ the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

This man demands an apology. Of course he does. And in demanding that Britain apologise for a 99-year-old statement supporting a national home for the Jewish people, he exposes his true position, and the true position of all factions of the Palestinian leadership: that the Jewish people have no right to a national home; the Jewish State has no right to exist. According to Abbas, Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, belongs to the Arabs and only to the Arabs.

At a dinner held by the Zionist Federation in London on April 12, 1931, Sir Herbert Samuel, British High Commissioner in Palestine Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 25 October 2016. © Richard Kemp

Last week General Lord Richards, former Chief of the Defence Staff and the UK’s most senior military officer, made an extraordinary allegation. Speaking on the BBC, he said that elements of the British establishment in Whitehall think their own soldiers are “bad,” and terrorists are “freedom fighters.”

Lord Richards’s assertions have far-reaching significance both within the UK and more widely, affecting the US, the prosecution by the West of the war on terror, and British relations with the State of Israel. Yet they have gone largely unnoticed.

Lord Richards was talking about the ongoing legal campaign against British troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan – the first time in history that any government has turned on its own armed forces in such a way.

1,492 cases of alleged abuse in Iraq are under investigation, and over 600 in Afghanistan. Most of these cases involve allegations against multiple servicemen, so the number of troops under scrutiny can be counted in the thousands. We are not talking here about minor misdemeanours but the most serious forms of abuse including rape, torture and, in Iraq alone, 235 accusations of unlawful killing.

Some soldiers have been under constant investigation for more than 10 years. Some have been acquitted during preliminary investigations or at court martial, only to be dragged back to face repeated legal inquiries and judicial hearings. In some cases, there have been as many as five investigations into a single incident.

Thousands of men who have volunteered to put their lives on the line for their country, and who have been involved in the most traumatic events imaginable, including seeing their close comrades torn apart beside them, have been forced to re-live their experiences over and over again under intense legal scrutiny. Families have broken up, jobs have been lost, lives have been ruined. In some cases, soldiers have attempted or contemplated suicide.

Continue reading →

Article published in The Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2016. © Richard Kemp

In action in the western desert at the height of the 2003 Iraq War, Sergeant Colin Maclachlan and his SAS comrades were fighting under the internationally agreed laws of war. Those laws make clear that killing wounded enemy soldiers is always illegal.

According to the first Geneva Convention of 1949 they must be ‘respected and protected in all circumstances’, and ‘any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited’.

So much for the law – what about military reality? Sgt Maclachlan’s SAS patrol had been hammering Iraqi vehicles with machine gun fire and missiles packed with enough explosive to destroy the heaviest battle tank.

As you would expect, some of the survivors were horrifically wounded, one with three limbs blown off. According to the book, you treat the wounded and evacuate them to an aid post or hospital. But there was neither anywhere near.

The SAS could not spare a vehicle to drive them across the desert and nor would the battle situation have allowed it. Calling in a helicopter would have compromised their mission.

Those who could be treated with field dressings and tourniquets to stem their bleeding would have to be made as comfortable as possible and left to their own fortunes or taken prisoner.

So far so legal. But what about the three who were bleeding to death in agony, begging to be put out of their misery?

Amidst the violence and horror of the battlefield, British soldiers have confronted that dilemma down the centuries. And not just with the enemy.
Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Mail, 4 October 2016. © Richard Kemp

Sometimes in war there are no good decisions — only a difficult collection of bad ones. The soldier’s challenge, often with no more than a split second to make the choice, is to pick the least dangerous.

I have faced such impossible situations in Northern Ireland, in the Balkans, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I’ve had to act when, whatever I did, I might face heavy criticism — for instance, when my unit captured Al Qaeda terrorists in 2003.

Execution was out of the question. It would be morally repugnant to me and completely against the laws of war, however convenient it might have been as a solution. Handing the men over to the Americans, perhaps to face extraction to Guantanamo Bay, was not an option.

I could have put them in an Afghan prison, though that was tantamount to setting them free. Or I could use British troops to hold the prisoners, even though we lacked the necessary facilities and my men were desperately overtaxed already. Any extra burden of responsibilities could threaten their own lives.

Ask yourself what you would do, and you’ll realise there was no right choice — some options were in a grey area, others were plainly wrong. I was lucky: with more than two decades of soldiering under my belt, I could figure out a solution.

Get that choice wrong, and I would be breaching the human rights of those Al Qaeda terrorists and murderers. It sounds ridiculous, but that is the truth of the matter. I might have faced years of investigation and harassment by Left-wing lawyers demanding heavy punishment for me and compensation for their clients.

It’s even possible that my case could have ended up at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where war criminals are tried.

This is not fanciful. It is the sickening reality that faces hundreds of British troops.

Take the case of former Guardsman Martin McGing (interviewed in this edition of the Mail), who was just 19 when he was ordered to restrain looters in Basra, Iraq, during the chaotic days following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Continue reading →

Letter published in The Times, 27 September 2016. © Richard Kemp

British troops risk and often sacrifice their lives for our freedom, yet Jeremy Corbyn, who despises all that they stand for, seeks to undermine the security that they provide (“Corbyn riles veterans by supporting abuse inquiry”, Sep 26). The peddling of merchandise mocking the service of soldiers at a fringe event at the party conference illustrates just how much contempt the Labour Party under his leadership has for service personnel.

Labour should be sticking up for our fighting men, demanding that the government ends the legal witch-hunt against them that has no precedent in history. Instead Mr Corbyn bays for their blood, calls for further cuts to the already threadbare forces and opposes the protection of our citizens by a necessary expansion of MI6. Tony Blair, who has rightly called for an end to the persecution of our troops, referred to Britain’s armed forces when prime minister as “the bravest and the best”. They are, and they require the unwavering support and respect of both government and opposition.

Colonel Richard Kemp

Commander of British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, London SW1

Image: Garry Knight

Finding a sensible (and safe) way to move forward

by Harold Rhode and Richard Kemp

Article published in The Washington Times, 25 September 2016

Hilary Clinton’s refugee plan is an open invitation for Radical Islam’s unyielding nature to run roughshod over American culture.

It’s by now clear that at least some of the perpetrators of last weekend’s spate of attacks harboured extremist views and sought inspiration in the work of Islamic State and al Qaeda (ISIS praised the Minnesota stabber, and the New York bombing suspect travelled to jihadi hotbeds in Afghanistan and Pakistan).

This is a clarifying reminder that the presidential election must be a referendum on Hilary Clinton’s failed approach to the struggle of radical Islam, and specifically a pressing matter at hand: her plan to admit 65,000 Syrian refugees — a 550 percent increase from the 10,000 Syrian refugees supported by the Obama administration.

It pains us greatly to see the crush of humanity fleeing the violence engulfing the Middle East. We’re also concerned about the security and stability of key American allies. Germany — a country roughly half the size of Texas — has already taken in some 1 million asylum seekers. America must find ways to help. The Clinton proposal, however, is naive and dangerous.

Of course, President Obama bears some responsibility for the turmoil. Some of this started with his hasty withdrawal from the region. It spread with Secretary Clinton’s refusal to punish the perpetrators of the September 11 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, and her failure to intervene effectively in the subsequent collapse of that country. Filling the vacuum, terrorists have targeted ethnic and religious minorities they consider apostates, destroyed archaeological and sacred religious sites, and advanced a form of Islam whose cruelty knows no bounds. Continue reading →

… we’ll have to kill civilians and we’ve got to hit ISIS harder from the air and the ground

Article published in The Sun, 21 September 2016. © Richard Kemp

THE Commons Defence Committee’s report rightly suggests the UK’s war against ISIS is a “token gesture”. We are simply not doing enough.

We’ve got to hit ISIS harder from the air and the ground and we need to do it more frequently and more effectively.

We need more boots on the ground — not a full-scale ground operation but major hit-and-run attacks and raids by special forces.

Our special forces’ capability is very limited now. We need to increase our numbers and hit ISIS harder.

That requires more troops than we’re currently committing. The operations we’ve been conducting have been effective to an extent, but limited.

We need greater intelligence capability, some of which can only come from troops on the ground to identify targets and direct air strikes.

One of the reasons why the drone campaign against al-Qaeda in Pakistan worked so well is the Americans also had support from Pakistani intelligence, who were helping them with targets.

We don’t have that to the same extent in Syria so we have to put our own people in.

Have we run out of targets in this terrorist haven? Absolutely not.

It’s not that there are no new targets, it’s that the targets we know of are among the civilian population.

Our politicians are terrified of our troops killing civilians.

But ISIS hide behind human shields. Unless we are prepared to risk Continue reading →

Article published in The Mirror, 29 August 2016. © Richard Kemp

It is not possible for anyone to contribute more to our country than those who are killed fighting for us. After too many years of official neglect, this ultimate sacrifice was recognized when the Queen instituted the Elizabeth Cross in 2009, following a long campaign by the Daily Mirror in the face of staunch opposition from the military hierarchy.

The Mirror’s campaign, which I was honoured to lead, demanded official recognition for our soldiers who were wounded as well as those killed in action. This was overwhelmingly supported by the public, politicians and serving and retired soldiers from private to field marshal, including men who had fought in both world wars. But it was roundly rejected by the top brass who didn’t want to be ‘like the Americans’ with their Purple Heart. The Purple Heart – awarded to wounded US servicemen and the families of those who die from their wounds – is America’s oldest and most revered medal.

We must now have our own Purple Heart to recognize the sacrifice made by British soldiers severely wounded fighting for our country. During recent campaigns in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, large numbers of our troops lost limbs, were emasculated, burned, blinded, deafened, torn apart and brain damaged. According to an MOD report published last week, a total of 1,982 troops suffered traumatic wounding in Afghanistan alone. For many, their lives and their families’ lives have been shattered forever. Continue reading →