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Senior officers with the Black Watch battle group sent north to replace American soldiers believe that the Government agreed to send them there without properly understanding the risks the troops face. They said the United States marines they were replacing had suffered more than 200 casualties, including nine dead, since July. "We expect every lunatic terrorist from miles around to descend on us like bees to honey," a high-ranking officer said in an e-mail home this week. Speaking at Basra before boarding an aircraft, 19-year-old Pte Manny Lynch, from Fife, admitted that he was nervous. "We have controlled the situation...

SHE tried to be as gentle as she could. "I am very sorry but you will never be able to join Her Majesty’s Forces. You are colour-blind I’m afraid." It wasn’t a total surprise that my perennial difficulty with pastel shades had transformed itself, officially, into a disability that barred me from service with the Army, RAF or Royal Navy - at least according to my Broughty Ferry doctor. Even all those years ago, such a verdict wasn’t deemed to be too much of a handicap to life’s chances. Volunteering to become a sailor, soldier or airman in the years...

BRITISH soldiers today stumbled across the biggest haul of weapons discovered so far in the two-week campaign against Iraqi militia insurgence in Al-Zubayr. Corporal Andy Lambert, 28, was on a routine patrol with Delta Company of the Black Watch regiment when he spotted rocket-propelled grenades near a bus shelter in the east of the town just before first light. He halted his warrior fighting vehicle and found nine boxes of lethal warheads beside the launchers. He then ordered a search of the adjacent building. Inside a walled compound, he and his men broke into a freight container holding an...

The Black Watch encircle a burning Basra, which continues to be in Iraqi hands. IT’S 6am and Basra is burning, black clouds of oily smoke drifting over the city to the east, the sound of gunfire rolling across the canal. A 20ft statue of Saddam Hussein lies in ruins, the television mast that dominated the skyline is gone, and many of the militia men who have tormented the British troops laying siege to the city and fired on their own people as they tried to flee, lie dead amid the rubble of their headquarters. For the past 15 minutes...

British Capture Top Baath Official Leader Was Organizing Resistance to Allied Invasion By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 25, 2003; 5:13 PM WITH U.S. FORCES, Southern Iraq, March 25 -- British soldiers and sniper teams operating under cover of darkness stormed a local Baath Party headquarters in southeastern Iraq to capture a top official who had been organizing resistance to the U.S.-British invasion, officers said today. The British snuck two companies from a 7th Armored Brigade regiment known as the Black Watch into the town center of Zubair, a vital city in southeastern Iraq that has been...

Black Watch find cruise missiles in huge arms cache at heliport IAN BRUCE SCOTTISH troops from the Black Watch battle group yesterday discovered a huge cache of weapons which could show that Saddam Hussein's regime is in breach of UN sanctions. Two Al Harith anti-ship cruise missiles supplied last year by Russia and explosive components from a Hampshire firm were discovered at a bunker complex sited at the As Zubayr civilian heliport south of Basra, in southern Iraq. The soldiers found 24 reinforced underground bunkers and 48 arms storage sheds containing hundreds of thousands of rocket propelled grenades, landmines,...

UK MADE MISSILES FOUND British troops securing the outskirts of Basra have discovered missiles and warheads hidden inside fortified bunkers, reports say. Cases of rockets, giant anti-shipping mines and other ammunition were found in dozens of Iraqi bunkers near what is marked on maps as the Az Zubaya Heliport. Some of the boxes are clearly marked with the names of British manufacturers, Gethin Chamberlain of The Scotsman filed in a pool report. It was not clear when the missiles were made. Skirmish One pile of boxes in a store housing rocket propelled grenades bears the name of Wallop Industries Limited,...

Iraqi arsenal of banned weapons discovered British troops outside Basra have discovered cruise missiles and warheads hidden inside fortified bunkers as part of a massive arsenal abandoned by Saddam Hussein's disintegrating southern army. Cases of rockets, giant anti-shipping mines and other ammunition are piled from floor to ceiling in dozens of bunkers at what is marked on maps as the Az Zubaya Heliport. The most disturbing find was two Russian-made Al-Harith anti-shipping cruise missiles, each 6m long and 1m in diameter, and nine warheads, hidden in two enormous reinforced concrete bunkers. Another missile, as yet unidentified, was found still crated...