Belgian army ‘will create mummy’s boys’

BELGIUM will create an army of “mummy’s boys” if it presses ahead with plans to let homesick cadets leave barracks and spend the night with their family during training, veterans have claimed.

One in six recruits to Belgium’s army, which is in the grip of a recruitment crisis, give up the military because they miss home too much. Commanders are now considering dropping the rule that cadets must live in barracks during training.

The situation has been exacerbated by pension reforms, poor job prospects after leaving and the long-running Operation Vigilant Guardian, which has seen soldiers patrolling major cities such as Brussels after the terror attacks in the capital in 2016 and Paris in 2015.

Some units in the ageing force pounded the streets for about 200 days out of 365 last year. Supporters of the reforms argue that the army is adapting to the realities of modern life. But Danny Lams, a former paratrooper and a veterans association chairman, told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper: “You don’t go to a war zone with men who miss their mummies.”

Alex Claesen, a spokesman for the ministry of defence, said: “The army wants to include more free evenings where the recruits can leave the barracks.”