>И нигде не говорится о том, что они были убиты штыками или что у них кончились патроны. Повсеместно — "direct attack". Просто дана была команда "примкнуть штыки" и бой шел агрессивно на близких дистанциях. Короче, какое-то подразделение шотландцев наехало на группу иракцев, мирно гревшихся на солнышке (судя по результатам, это не было организованной засадой) и перестреляли их с близкого расстояния. Сколько было иракцев и сколько их погибло — абсолютно неясно. А далее сработала легенда о шотландских гвардейцах, которые круты по определению.
"When they saw the insurgents waiting in ambush in foxholes alongside the road, the four infantry sections in the Warriors, 28 men in all, dismounted, carried out a flanking manoeuvre and charged the insurgents with fixed bayonets.
Cpl Mark Byles, 34, from Portsmouth, who is awarded the Military Cross, said: "The look on their faces was utter shock. They were under the impression we were going to lie in our ditch, shoot from a distance and they would run away.
"I slashed people, rifle-butted them. I was punching and kicking. It was either me or them. It didn't seem real. Anybody can pull a trigger from a distance, but we got up close and personal." - Quote from Daily
Telegraph, 18/03/2005 "
И совсем недавний случай в Афганистане, тоже британцы, кстати:
ЭThe officer was one of 145 members of the armed services who last week received awards in the latest Operational Honours list.
In a graphic description of the intense fighting in Helmand, the officer told of the moment killed the second fighter. He said: "It was a split second decision.
"I either wasted vital seconds changing the magazine on my rifle or went over the top and did it more quickly with the bayonet.
"I took the second option. I jumped up over the bank of the river. He was just over the other side, almost touching distance.
"We caught each other's eye as I went towards him but by then, for him, it was too late. There was no inner monologue going on in my head I was just reacting in the way that I was trained.
"He was alive when it went in – he wasn't alive when it came out – it was that simple."
Recalling his feelings in the moments afterwards Lt Adamson, said: "He was young, with dark hair. He only had kind of whispy hair on his chin, not a proper beard, so he wasn't that old, maybe a teenager.
"Afterwards, when he was dead, I picked up his PKM (Russian-made belt-fed machine gun) machine gun and slung it over my back.
"We then had to wait for more of my men to join us. We thought there could be more Taliban about and we were just watching our arcs of fire, waiting for more to come out of a big field of maize which came right up to the river we had been wading through.
"One of my men, Corporal Billy Carnegie, reached us, looked at the two dead Taliban on the ground and then saw the blood on my bayonet and said "boss what the **** have you been doing?"
За этот случай офицер получил две награды.
К чему это я - штыки применялись именно по прямому назначению, их не "просто примкнули".
