General Sir Mike Jackson is a soldier’s soldier. His doctrine, as told to The Daily Telegraph, is that “everything starts and finishes with the soldier”. He adds, ruefully, that he failed to persuade the Ministry of Defence of that doctrine when he was Chief of the General Staff. He has now written his memoirs that put the strategic blame, where it almost certainly belongs, on Donald Rumsfeld for the US failure to follow up their victory in Iraq with a postwar plan. He also recognises the weakness of British defence policy in its failure to match resources to commitments.

It is easy to say, as some have, that the general should have made his criticisms when he was still in office. I have no doubt he did fight his official corner. He fought inside the system when he was still on active service, and he has gone public now that he has retired. I can see nothing wrong with that. Retirement gives a man back his freedom of speech, and perhaps an even greater duty to speak out. Retired generals are right to use their authority to serve the welfare of the troops they used to command.

What do the soldiers themselves want? They would like their pay to be comparable to that of civilian servants of the State. Last week the prison officers went on strike because part of their pay increase had been delayed. They can make comparisons with the higher pay of policemen. But soldiers on active service are lower paid than prison staff or policemen: they are paid only a little more than £1,000 a month. However one looks at it, that is not big money for risking one’s life.

Fighting soldiers naturally want the best available equipment. That does not mean that they want nuclear submarines, which would hardly fit into the Basra Palace. It means the provision of armoured vehicles that will withstand mines and that do not brew almost to boiling point in the desert sun. It means the Army should have enough helicopters, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does require some bigger pieces of equipment, including sufficient Hercules and strike aircraft.

The US Air Force has the strike capacity to command the skies; the RAF has the skills but not the capacity. Our Army depends on US air support. As Brigadier John Lorimer, the commander of the Helmand Task Force, wrote yesterday; “We simply could not conduct operations without it.” There also needs to be attention to detail. US troops have more convenient equipment down to their boots, their gloves and their sunglasses, and a soldier’s convenience promotes his efficiency.

Fighting soldiers also want to be given sufficient leave. Even in the First World War, frontline troops were regularly rotated out of the trenches into billets behind the lines. Both in Iraq and Afghanistan British troops have been under fire for periods that could stretch into weeks. The need to fight the war on two fronts has overstretched the troops available for frontline action. After four years, it has been discovered that continuous stress over a long period greatly increases the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Fighting soldiers also want to be sure that their families are well looked after and have good housing. General Jackson has a comment on that: “Some of the accommodation we provide is still, frankly, shaming.” What more does anyone need to say? If you neglect housing for wives and children at home, you demoralise the soldiers at the front.

As a nation we send our soldiers to the risks of war. Nearly 250 British soldiers have been killed either in Iraq or Afghanistan. In Iraq, 3,100 have been wounded or evacuated on medical grounds. Currently, there are some 13,000 troops operating in the two theatres. These are quite high casualty rates. If we send men to war, we owe them the best possible nursing care. The last surviving specialist military hospital was closed in the middle of this war on the cost-saving argument that there would not be casualties to fill it.

The United States may have mishandled its occupation strategy, but at least the US Administration does have a strategy. Last year President Bush decided to reinforce American troops in Iraq and put General David Petraeus in charge of the “surge”. Soon the general will be reporting to Congress on the results of this strategy. Few people in England thought it had much chance of success, but the Petraeus report may be relatively confident.

General Petraeus apparently expects that the United States will have to keep troops in Iraq for nine to ten years. The US surge has been relatively effective in suppressing Sunni terrorism, but it has not been able to stop the war between the Sunni and Shia. Sectarianism has got worse.

Some American commentators regard the results of the surge as a military victory, but a political defeat. Certainly relations between the US Government and the Iraqi administration have deteriorated.

Relations between the British and American forces have also deteriorated. There is now a paper war of the generals, with the British generals criticising the American strategy, and the American generals criticising what they see as the British defeat in Basra. This damages Anglo-American defence relations, though Mr Rumsfeld himself is now criticised almost as freely in Washington as in London.

What Britain lacks is a defence policy. As General Jackson argues, this would have to be based on meeting the real needs of the soldiers – they are the foundation of everything else. If money was spent on pay, conditions, equipment, housing and hospitals, Britain would have a better basis for a defence policy. These are the preliminary issues, and the Treasury is the real enemy. If we paid properly for our Army, we could then have a strategy. Until we do, it is little use criticising the Americans; they are not going to take any notice.

Times Recommends

• Farwell to the stiff upper lip
• It’s about who runs the US, not health
• The Iron Lady and her blue felt-tip sympathy