Sadly, I was right about ‘coffins on wheels’

Under the headline “Coffin on wheels”, a coroner was reported on Friday ruling that Corporal Marcin Wojtak had been “unlawfully killed” in Afghanistan in 2009 when his Pinzgauer Vector patrol vehicle was blown up by an IED or roadside bomb. The coroner was highly critical of the fact that a soldier had been sent out in a vehicle which, as he had told his family, was known as “the coffin on wheels” because it gave no protection against IEDS – especially since his unit was due to be equipped, the very next day, with mine-protected Mastiffs which might well have saved his life.

This shocking story took me back to October 29, 2006 when, in an article headed “Our troops will patrol in coffins on wheels”, I warned that at the heart of the disaster gathering round our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was the Ministry of Defence’s decision to equip our troops with vehicles giving no protection against IEDS. Astonishingly, I reported, they were about to send Pinzgauer Vectors to Afghanistan – which gave even less protection than the Snatch Land Rovers they were replacing, in which 26 soldiers had already died.

Pinzgauer was so aggrieved by my story that it went to the Press Complaints Commission. It is poignant today to read the exchanges that followed. They attempted to defend the Vector by pointing out that its deployment to Afghanistan had been welcomed by the Tory shadow defence spokesman, Gerald Howarth MP (who was even pictured praising these vehicles on Pinzgauer’s website). We defended our criticisms and said we would be happy to take up the firm’s offer of a visit to its factory if they were prepared to show us a Vector driving over an IED. The firm’s complaint was not upheld.

The Vectors went to Afghanistan, with the predicted results – of which last week’s inquest was just one example. After three years, they were finally withdrawn, to be replaced with Mastiffs (but too late to save Cpl Wojtak).

Pinzgauer has since been sold off. But Mr Howarth is now part of the Government’s ministerial defence team.