Leading from the front

The recent death of six British soldiers in Afghanistan has highlighted the cost of our country's involvement in this long-running conflict, but an article in The Guardian last week spelled out one way that this cost is being paid. A side panel (that I haven't been able to find online) gave the breakdown of the rank of the casualties: 37 officers killed, 188 NCOs and 173 at the rank of private before the last deaths. The revealing figure in that sad list is the number of casualties among...