Major Des Astor - The Official ARRSE Guide to the British Army

ABOUT THE BOOK

Guaranteed coarse, scatological and offensive, the Army Rumour Service (www.arrse.co.uk) is the British Armys online meeting place for chat, bullshit, whingeing and schimpfing.* Read by everyone in Britains defence community from the Secretary of State downwards, Arrse is where you will find the inside view from Britains soldiers.

Now you too can join in the fun with Arrses very own easily digestible, profusely illustrated, highly absorbent guide to the British Army. Compiled and edited by one of the most extensively passed-over officers in British military history, The Official Arrse Guide is a unique inside view of what the British Army really is and how it really works.

As well as comprehensive information about the regiments and corps, their weapons and equipment, where they live and work, who joins and how they get in, this book tells you how to:

GET THAT CRUCIAL ALLY LOOK

MAKE YOUR OWN WANK SOCK

MOCK THE RAF

WALT WITH GIANTS

ESCAPE THE LEPRECHAUN OF DEATH

25% of royalties received is being donated to Arrses own Holidays for Heroes fund, which pays for wounded serving personnel to holiday and recuperate with their families.

*Read on for details.

CONTENTS

I dont imagine it will come as any great surprise to readers of this book that the Army was initially wary of embracing the concept of Arrse, websites like it and, indeed, of the world wide net as a whole. I can honestly say that back in 2004, when I was first appointed to head the scoping team for future Army digitification, it took an immense amount of lobbying on my part of ministers, service chiefs, senior officials and, of course, my very good friends in the defence industry whom one will, one hopes, be joining shortly after ones formal retirement from the service to ensure that requirements were identified, funds released and equipment procured to make certain that Defence was at the forefront of the electrical age.

I feel a certain amount of I hope justifiable pride that as Director General Defence Network Capability I was the first officer of two-star rank or above to have an official email address and that, since that exciting day in 2007, Miss Sherrard, my PA, has been able to send and receive email on my behalf at an astonishing rate (once theyve been through the usual staffing, checking and red-inking procedure involving my Chief of Staff, the SO1 J6 and Staff Sergeant Hobsbawm, who knows about computers). Its a sign of the times that a memo or letter which might have taken 10 days from first draft to release in the old snail mail era can now be good to go in 8 days or less as an email, with no more than a 20% increase in our manpower bill.

But the white heat of progress comes at a cost. When we started Project DIGIT, ministers were rightly insistent that as much of the spend as possible, right across the piece, should come from commercial off-the-shelf sources. Sadly, this proved impossible. After much lobbying from industry, we realized that operating systems like Windows, Unix and Linux were hopelessly insecure and the first part of the project involved the development by a consortium of European defence contractors of our own powerful, bespoke platform called DefenceDoorways. Despite the 42% cost overrun, I am confident that when finished this will prove to be 12 billion well spent, especially after we have developed the tools to enable our hardware to communicate with the Windows based systems of our allies.

Of course, in this digital age, computers arent just about work. Im told that it is possible to play games, read newspapers, buy books and even chat if you plug them in to the net. Staff Sergeant Hobsbawm has recently taught me Solitaire (a computerized version of patience) on my state-of-the-art secure laptop and as soon as I get it back from lost property I shall be getting some practice in.

Entertainment is what Arrse The Army Rumour Service, to give it its polite name is all about. Its absolutely marvellous that the soldiers can have what they call a laugh, and we at the top of the military hierarchy are very keen that they should continue to do so. Its just a shame it has to be accompanied by all that griping and by what are, lets face it, some exhibitions of very questionable taste indeed. Nevertheless, once we have identified the ringleaders and taken action including but not limited to AGAI 67 against them, Im sure we will be happy to endorse it, albeit in a limited way.

It is no surprise to me that Des Astor is involved in this project. I first encountered Major Astor as a subaltern in my company in Osnabruck in 1976. We were, I dare say, a pretty cosmopolitan Officers Mess in the Loamshires back then. Chaps came from all kinds of backgrounds, ranging from the traditional Eton and Winchester to the frankly outr: Wellington, Charterhouse and one, you may find it hard to believe, from Stowe (although, to be fair, he didnt last long). Despite this, Des was something of a coloured person in this particularly diverse woodpile, with his unusual north Midlands accent and Bri-nylon shirts. Its a tribute to his determination and, admittedly, thick skin, that he stuck with it and forged a career despite the open hostility of officers, soldiers and chain of command. In a meritocratic hierarchy like the Army, we cant all reach the top, but to give credit where its due, Des Astor gave it his best shot. The fact that he fell well short of the required standard is by the by. Doubtless his involvement with Arrse gives him a sense of fulfilment he is unable to obtain elsewhere.

So, slightly caveated, I commend his book to you. I have yet to read it myself, but Major Astor has assured me that it is an amusing and affectionate introduction to some of the finer points of life in the British Army. If this is indeed the case, then, up to a point, he need have nothing to fear.

H P R N Clench

Lt Gen

HQ Cyber Command

November 2011

It so happens that this one took place on Christmas Eve 2000. One participant, known only by the cover name Adjutant, expounded a theory that an internet discussion forum like the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRuNe) might be popular in the Army. His co-conspirators (the artists now known and feared as Good CO and Bad CO) thought about this, scratched their heads, rearranged their testicles, bought a book about HTML from PC World and, in the new year, ARRSE was born.

With a rudimentary form of Arrse online not long afterwards, many of the early members were poached from among military users of PPRuNe, which explains why, in the early days at least, there was quite a strong flavour of the Army Air Corps about the site. At this stage, the biggest boost Arrse received was the decision (since rescinded) to block Arrse from the network at the Joint Services Command and Staff College fantastic free publicity among the target audience!

Traffic on Arrse steadily built over the next couple of years with, oddly enough, events like the invasion of Iraq helping to build membership by spreading the word outside the fairly narrow circles who had been hitherto using the site. It so happens that I was first shown it by a REME officer on a satellite internet terminal in southern Iraq in July 2003.