The Pistol on the Battlefield
Feb 2006, Vol. 151, No. 1
By A D Harvey
The British Army took longer to replace the .38 with the more powerful 9mm Browning automatic than it had to replace the perfectly adequate .45 Webley with the inadequate .38. This may have been because it was felt that the pistol was of little importance in modern warfare in any case. But just as the close quarter fighting of the First World War controverted the experience of the Boer War, so recent experience of counter-insurgency, most recently and most notably in Iraq during the past two years, negates the experience of the set-piece battles of the Second World War. A former Territorial Army brigadier who spent some weeks with the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment in Iraq in 2003 told me he was surprised at the number of automatic pistols he saw, though all the officers were also carrying rifles. The reason for this, presumably, is that troops in Iraq almost never know they are in immediate danger to their lives until their antagonists have come very close. The utility of weapons, therefore, depends not on fashions in tactics, but on the nature of particular wars.
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By A D Harvey
The British Army took longer to replace the .38 with the more powerful 9mm Browning automatic than it had to replace the perfectly adequate .45 Webley with the inadequate .38. This may have been because it was felt that the pistol was of little importance in modern warfare in any case. But just as the close quarter fighting of the First World War controverted the experience of the Boer War, so recent experience of counter-insurgency, most recently and most notably in Iraq during the past two years, negates the experience of the set-piece battles of the Second World War. A former Territorial Army brigadier who spent some weeks with the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment in Iraq in 2003 told me he was surprised at the number of automatic pistols he saw, though all the officers were also carrying rifles. The reason for this, presumably, is that troops in Iraq almost never know they are in immediate danger to their lives until their antagonists have come very close. The utility of weapons, therefore, depends not on fashions in tactics, but on the nature of particular wars.
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