DAVID CAMERON DOES WHAT THE NAZIS COULDN'T DO IN WW2 TO THE DESERT RATS.

As the 'Desert Rats' lose their tanks, the Army needs a new role - and our national security fits the bill
THE HEADQUARTERS of the 7th Armoured Brigade - the 'Desert Rats' - is to leave the dingy garrison town of Bergen–Belsen, 50 miles south of Hamburg, and move back to the UK as part of the army's accelerated exit from Germany, announced by the Ministry of Defence on Monday.In the process, it will lose its tanks and become the 7th Infantry Brigade, whose heaviest equipment is likely to be the Jackal wheeled reconnaissance vehicle. And it will be based in the unappetising garrison town of Chilwell outside Nottingham.You can hear the retired colonels and generals spluttering into their mid-morning pink gins. One veteran of the Desert Rats' exploits against Rommel wants to wring David Cameron's neck. But the criticism is hardly fair.Cutting heavy tank formations is logical enough. They haven't been used in a serious two-sided conflict since Korea (few regard Iraqi conscripts or even Saddam Hussein's much-hyped Republican Guards as a serious opponent).

More tanks would be kept on if we had designed one that might have been useful in the last decade of conflict. Regimental rivalries prevented the development of a troop-carrying tank like the Israeli Merkava ('chariot' in Hebrew) where the heaviness of the tank turret and tracks provides additional protection to the infantrymen in the back – up to six of them. The Israelis even have a version fitted for medical evacuation, the 'tankbulance'. Hezbollah struggle against the Merkava – their only attack technique is to hide in a tunnel or ditch and attach a mine as the tank rolls over.Read More HERE