The soft plight of the German soldier

Times:

They have a beer ration of up to a litre a day, and wurst for dinner. Taleban or no Taleban, Germans take a little bit of home with them when they serve in trouble spots. Even their carefully sorted rubbish gets dumped in wheelie bins before being sent from Afghanistan to Germany for recycling.

Now Germany’s most senior officer has berated his troops for going soft. “We cannot guarantee soldiers that they will have an all-round feel-good experience,” said General Wolfgang Schneiderhan.

His outburst follows complaints made by German soldiers to the official ombudsman about their tours abroad. Some have grumbled about unsuitable sleeping bags for their Congo peace-keeping mission — “there is no reason why this issue should have come before Parliament,” said General Schneiderhan — while others moaned about the long hours, a lack of childcare for their families at home and poor medical care.

Army doctors say that they are on the brink of leaving because pay and conditions are so bad. So many have returned to civilian life that there is a shortage of medics in the field.

“We have to tell a professional soldier who complains about his third tour of overseas duty that he has to get a grip — this is his profession,” said General Schneiderhan.

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It is a far cry from Germany’s old military traditions — the Prussian officers who helped to defeat Napoleon or the tactical flair of Rommel, the Desert Fox, but the troops’ reluctance will not come as a surprise to the country’s allies in combat zones such as Afghanistan, where German participation is limited by a host of caveats.

German Medevac helicopters have to be back at base by dusk. German Tornado aircraft are restricted to unarmed reconaissance. Der Spiegel magazine highlighted the case recently of a Taleban commander — nicknamed the Baghlan Bomber because of his role in blowing up a sugar factory in that northwestern province — who was cornered by the KSK German special service unit but allowed to escape; under the terms of engagement imposed by Parliament the KSK are not authorised to kill unless they are under attack.

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It does not look like much has changed since the last report on the German military. It appears that the US was too successful in eliminating German militarism after World War II.