Siege mentality
On Saturday, 9 August this year some 10,000 marchers will parade through the Northern Ireland city of Derry (Londonderry) to celebrate an event that took place on 1 August 1689. The marchers call themselves "Apprentice Boys", but the majority of these traders, civil servants and farmers are far removed from the industrial culture of apprenticeship, and with their pin stripe suits, bowler hats, ruddy faces and often jowly cheeks, they're way beyond boyhood, too. Although the parade route is heavily policed, the day usually ends with clashes between some of the marchers and those who regard them as triumphalist bigots.
So what's it all about then? Well, believe it or not, it's about a five-letter word beginning with "s" and ending with "e" and something that took place over 300 years ago. On 7 December 1688, as a Catholic army approached the Protestant garrison of Derry, thirteen young men, most of them apprentices, raised the drawbridge and closed the gate in the face of the soldiers of James II. Six months later, a siege train of heavy guns sent by James arrived and the bombardment of the city began in earnest. The barrage of cannon balls and mortar shells took a huge toll of life from the defenders, but the city walls remained intact. On 1 August 1689, after 105 days of blockade, the Jacobites were forced to withdraw by the arrival of Williamite forces and thus ended the last great siege in British history.
And your point caller? Well, the Apprentice Boys parades show how enduring folk memory of siege can be, and they also make clear that if those doing the besieging don't achieve their objectives great damage can be done to their cause. None of us wants to contemplate a future where Al-Jazeera shows the sons of the Fedayeen Saddam marching down the Boulevard Hussein celebrating their heroic role in the siege of Baghdad.
So what's to be done? In "Tough decisions at Baghdad gates", John Keegan, Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph, writes:
"If the Iraqis will not fight outside Baghdad, and it is one of the simplest military principles not to do what the enemy wants, then Gen Franks may have to organise a siege of the city. His object would be to deprive the defenders of electricity and water, food and other commodities.The trouble is that a close blockade would inevitably inflict hardship on the civilians as well as the soldiers. Indeed, Saddam would certainly make sure that his troops got the lion's share of whatever was going."
Apart from the moral implications of siege, Keegan looks at the daunting military challenges involved:
"It may prove to be a difficulty in organising a siege that there is a shortage of troops. The breakneck speed of the advance has disguised thus far how thin on the ground the allies are. Almost the whole of the British force, amounting to a light division, is engaged in the south around Basra.The drive on Baghdad has been conducted by only two American formations, the 3rd Mechanised Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, a reinforced division. The 101st Air Assault Division is making its way forward, largely by helicopter lift. However, the 101st has no tanks, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is largely infantry.
The formations that Gen Franks expected to have received via Turkey by this stage, the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, effectively an armoured force, are in transit and in unsatisfactory fashion, with the equipment aboard ships proceeding through the Suez Canal and the personnel arriving by air, mostly from the United States."
Asked what would happen if Iraqi units withdrew into Baghdad itself, the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus said:
"If British and US troops actually get to the gates of Baghdad before the regime has crumbled, then they have problems.They clearly do not want to go into the city in any great degree of force. It could be very costly, in terms of both military and civilian lives."
Given that siege is seen by most commentators in such negative light, we should, perhaps, write it off as an option.
Diarist of the day: Kenneth Williams, 27 March 1961"Blackpool in the end of the line. It is the English Siberia. It is pure TORTURE. Hateful, tasteless, witless, bleak, boring, dirty, tat -- IT HAS NOTHING. I loathe every disgusting minute of it."
