yes, the GIRLFRIEND - does this tour in Iraq, and she  says, oh, every time some raghead pops a couple rounds off, they get them up out of their trailers and make them run for cover, where they stay for a couple hours until it's all clear.

But the Limeys have adopted a Maginot line mentality, nobody goes outside the perimeter.

Now that is a fucking recipe for disaster, everybody running around beating off then shooting their dicks right off.

Because if there was any real danger, the last thing you want to do is (1) work and sleep in a trailer, instead of a sandbagged hooch, and then even worse, once the rounds start dropping, you get up and run around looking for cover.  

No, you sandbag your rack, and sandbag the comm lines, and then they have to make a direct hit on a tiny assed target, and you don't get up in the middle of the night (or work day) and mill around hoping to collect some stray fragments with your body.  You don't let them interrupt your workday with a stray round.  Does nobody see what's going on?  A false alarm costs the entire detachment a couple hours' work.

(2) 2nd, you can't hide.  You have to patrol.  As soon as you give up patrolling, you're dead.  Sounds like the Brits were way demoralized.  You have to go out and secure every place they could fire on you from, and you have to have reliable contacts in the ville, even if you have to buy them off.  You cannot think a Maginot mentality is going to work, unless you want Dienbienphu results.

This is WAY fucked up and reminds me of what my friend Nguyen Go Phuc Me said 30 years ago, "Must remember politicians all phucked in the head, will always defeat own soldiers."