The Third World War: August 1985

Public dissatisfaction in Britain with its contribution to NATO, as Soviet military preparations still showed no sign of slowing down while pressure within the Alliance upon its members to do better steadily increased, caused the British government to introduce in 1979 a new Army Reserve Act, whose main purpose was to tap unused sources of trained military manpower. This Act laid down the means by which a liability for annual training and for embodiment in a national emergency would be given to those officers and men leaving the army each year (some 20,000 in number) who had hitherto not had any such liability. There were two main categories: first, those who served on short regular engagements, that is, officers who had completed a three-year Short Service commission and soldiers who had served for three, six or nine years with the colours. The second category (for it was decided to disregard Long Service men who retired at the age of fifty-five) comprised officers who had served on Special Regular commissions of up to sixteen years and soldiers who had completed twenty-two years. Although this second group already had certain reserve liabilities in an emergency, they were not required to do annual refresher training. The new law would therefore enable the government to call on both junior officers and soldiers and also on more senior ones, such as majors and warrant officers. All those in these various groups would for three further years have a training liability for two months’ annual embodiment, including overseas training, and their reserve liability in times of national emergency would continue until their forty-fifth birthday. The necessary safeguards of employment and so on were included in the legislation. Thus some 20,000 officers and men, well trained in existing equipment and techniques, from all corps of the army, became available each year from 1980 onwards.

Four things would be required to turn this availability of men into a really valuable NATO contribution — weapons to equip them, the structure to absorb them into units and formations, training exercises both at home and in their NATO role, and all the administrative, ammunition and transportation support necessary to make them operationally effective. Extra equipment came to hand in two ways: first, a modification of regular infantry and armoured units reduced them once more from four companies/ squadrons to three, which was all their authorized manpower could properly support anyway; second, re-equipment programmes for regular units on a rather more generous scale made it possible to transfer weapons and vehicles to the newly forming reserve units. These were themselves formed by the expansion of existing TAVR organizations. The Artillery and Engineer Groups were trebled, each regiment forming a group; the dismounted Yeomanry Regiments were remounted on armoured vehicles; the two fully equipped Yeomanry Regiments quadrupled in size, each squadron forming a complete regiment; fifteen more of the TAVR Home Defence battalions were given a NATO role and equipped accordingly. There were similar expansions and re-equipment programmes for signal support and logistic units, and all was fitted into the existing organization of UKLF. At the same time, what was known as TAVR II was again, after some years in suspense, brought into being. It was a force resembling a militia, mobile and lightly armed, with an important role on the home front.

By 1984 the whole position had been transformed: 5 Field Force stationed at Osnabruck had become a division, which, with its TAVR and regular reinforcements, could be made fully up to strength. Both 7 Field Force and 8 Field Force (which was stationed on Salisbury Plain and which had had a home defence role), with their TAVR components, became fully-fledged armoured divisions on the same pattern as those in I British Corps. Their despatch to Europe meant that a second corps would be available to NORTHAG, a corps HQ having been formed at Bulford from resources thrown up by the reduction of HQ UKLF and the former HQ South-West District. In addition to these increases, 6 Field Force became a full light division with a limited regular and TAVR parachute capability, to be employed either on the flanks of NATO or in the Centre.

The Home Defence units of the TAVR, together with certain regular units formed from the Training Establishments and Base Organization, numbered in all some 30,000. Thus C-in-C UKLF was able to retain a sufficient fighting strength to ensure the security of so-called key points, and have a mobile reserve for emergencies, provided initially by 6 Field Force, and later from mobile columns from the Training Establishment.