Commentary: U.K. Iraq war medals tangles U.S. relations

LONDON, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- British Trooper Christopher Finney says he does not harbor bitterness towards the American A-10 pilots who wounded him and killed his friends in one of the worst friendly fire incidents seven months ago in Iraq.

"S..t happens," he said in a magnanimous gesture that suggests that at barely 19, with only a year in the British Army, his youth offers a soothing balm to help put the terrifying incident behind him.

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But the British government's decision Friday to award him the nation's highest medal for bravery -- the rare George Medal, equal to the even more rare Victoria Cross -- has dramatically reminded the public that once again in battle, American forces can be as much danger to British troops as the enemy.

The vivid descriptions of the attacks, in which the two A-10 tank-buster planes came back for a second attack on the frantically waving British troops near two blazing British light tanks, was given prominence on TV and in all of Friday's British newspapers. Finney was one of some 370 soldiers and civilians whose operational awards were announced by Gen. Sir Michael Walker, chief of the Defense Staff, for Iraq operations through May 1.

It was clear from Trooper Finney's account Thursday that although his unit of the Household Cavalry Regiment was well in advance of the main Anglo-American forces 25 miles north of Basra on March 27, and close to a village with no Iraqi troops, it was daylight and their Scimitar vehicles were clearly marked with infra-red recognition panels and British flags on their roofs.

While the focus of Finney's citation was on his own first-hand account of radioing a clear and concise report of being under friendly air attack back to base, and of then dragging out two badly wounded colleagues while being wounded himself in the second A-10 strike, senior British officers privately anguished over what lessons had been learned.

They anguished, too, whether the award might contribute to a rising sense of anti-Americanism as Iraq continues to be a running sore in British public attitudes to the Bush administration. Significantly, another award given prominence was one for leadership to Col. Tim Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, whose rousing pre-battle speech to his men won admiration around the world, reportedly including President Bush.

Col. Collins, however, came under investigation when a junior U.S. reserve officer attached to his unit filed charges alleging mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and prisoners of war. The charges have since been dropped and the award is seen as vindication of his actions.

British officials fear that the A-10 incident is likely to occur again in one form or another as pending budget cuts force curtailment of training exercises, particularly expensive ones in which the British and Americans work together.

Although a spokeswoman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said an investigation into the A-10 incident was still underway and she could not comment on any aspect of it, United Press International has learned that most A-10 pilots have had little or no experience in recognizing British vehicles in realistic training conditions.

While a squadron of regular USAF A-10 crews still operates with the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem in Germany, where they regularly practice with NATO forces in Europe, all the other A-10 squadrons are based in the continental United States, and 50 percent of their crews are reservists with the Air National Guard.

It was a reservist A-10 unit that shot up the British Scimitars, just as it was a reservist A-10 unit that caused Britain's worst single loss of life in the 1991 Gulf War, when nine soldiers in a Warrior armored personnel carrier died.

Most A-10 training is carried out at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Montana, primarily in the 2-million-acre Barry M. Goldwater range in desert conditions. According to a base spokesman, the pilots are tested on coalition vehicles by viewing cards and watching videos, in the British case watching cockpit videos provided by the British Royal Air Force.

A British source, however, said the A-10 pilots only started seeing these videos late last January, less than a month before they deployed to Kuwait, and while British combat aircraft traveled to Davis-Monthan to train with American vehicles, there were no British vehicles on hand for the Americans to train with. Arguably, from certain directions the British Scimitar tracked reconnaissance vehicle looks a little like the old Soviet BMP2 armored personnel carrier, also in the Iraqi inventory.

"You can't put all the blame on the Americans if we don't provide the vehicles for them to train with," said former RAF Wing Commander Andy Brooks, an air power specialist with the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. "Of course this sort of training is extremely expensive, but if we're not to have friendly fire incidents like this over and over again it just have to be done."

Brooks was extremely skeptical that technology would provide the answer to Identification Friend or Foe problems. "The only answer is training and coalition experience, and I'm sorry but giving the job to part-time reservists just isn't the answer. If you are going to use ANG reservists, then eventually you are going to have to pay on the day."