| The first overseas test
of the joint airportable strategic reserve came in March 1960 with
Exercise Starlight in Libya. Its aim was to practice the air move of a
Brigade group to an undeveloped country, and to maintain it there by air
during operations against a middle eastern aggressor equipped with modern
weapons including tanks.
Both logistically and tactically, Starlight provided
unique experience for staffs and units, and the exercise area, the barren
desert and rugged Jebel Akdar west of El Adem, gave them through practice
in air movement and re-supply. By the end of the exercise the brigade
airhead at Tmimi was 60 miles forward of the Strategic airfield at El Adem,
the fighting troops 50 miles beyond that, and a total of 3,550 personnel,
670 vehicles and trailers, 40 guns and 2 million pounds of freight were
moved throughout the brigade airhead. Major General HARINGTON stated
afterwards that the exercise was of enormous value, but perhaps his most
significant conclusion was that a lightweight force operating in good tank
country against a well equipped enemy must have its own tanks. The Malkara
(A defensive weapon) even when supplemented by hunter FGA aircraft, could
not provide the offensive anti-Armour capability so essential to a force
if it is to intervene successfully. He recommended that tanks should be
stockpiled overseas in areas where they might be needed, and that suitable
shipping should be earmarked, capable of transporting and unloading tanks
at an unsophisticated port with its own derricks. He also sounded a
warning against the danger of overloading the infantryman beyond his
fighting capacity, which could result from the constant efforts to reduce
transport.
To the Infantrymen of the 1st Battalion Duke of Edinburgh's
Royal Regiment all the above would have been rather academic apart from
the Generals concluding comments regarding the weight carried by Infantrymen.
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