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Despite massive reductions in requirements, the Army is still seriously short of man and woman power, Fighting arms are 8,000 recruits down - too few gunners, tank drivers, and foot soldiers. Each infantry battalion is, on average, two platoons short, nearly a quarter of its fighting strength. Artillery batteries cannot man the full complement of six guns.

The legendary Parachute Regiment cannot get enough recruits to pass through its gruelling basic training in "P" Company. To spare their tender trainer-accustomed feet, Para recruits do not have to wear boots in the first weeks of training. It is now being suggested that the gap in the Paras' ranks should be made up by a full company of Gurkhas. These, by contrast, are in abundant supply, and hundreds of disappointed Gurkha applicants have to be turned away by recruiting officers in Nepal.

The conclusion from the recruiting crisis is, either, we are now a nation of wimps and couch potatoes, or, that our Armed Forces are suffering severe mismanagement by their political masters. In the video arcade culture of Britain today, the soldier's life seems out of place. The physical standard of recruits has declined steadily as sports have faded out of the daily life of secondary schools.

Flat feet, obesity and poor education are the most frequent causes of dismal performance by recruits. Once the requirement that recruits should be able to run one and half miles in 40 minutes seemed ludicrously generous. For many, it now seems impossibly tough and recruits now undergo courses to qualify for the entry tests.

Recruiting sergeants and senior officers are apt to shrug and say it is a sad reflection of the times. This is the era of the "mammista" armies, where the mammas of the nation's soldiers for-bid them to fight for anything but their own survival.

Soldiers now have recourse to civil rights and courts of appeal unthinkable a generation ago, in matters ranging from sexual equality to maternity leave. Almost every soldier returning from Bosnia has the right to psycho-therapeutic counselling. American politicians of all stripes are reluctant to commit American servicemen to operations if they risk entering what they deem a life-threatening, and therefore vote-threatening, situation.

This led to the muddle over the planning of American operations in Haiti. American troops, it seems, will be sent as Nato's peace force in Bosnia only provided the peace has been thoroughly established beforehand.

The British Army is most definitely not a "mammista" army. Despite the shortage of recruits, the Army has never stood higher in the esteem of friend and potential foe alike. An American adviser to the UN in Yugoslavia has called it "the best trained and best supported army in the world, physically and mentally",

A British staff officer serving a French general in Sarajevo lamented that we are Europe's new warrior race: "We are now regarded as the new Prussians of Europe - the ones always prepared to fight." The performance of British servicemen and women in Bosnia has exposed very few weak links among the grandsons and granddaughters of Kipling's Tommy Atkins, from two outstanding UN generals to the gunners on Mount Igman, the aid-deliverers and engineers, the Welch Fusiliers manning the redoubts at Gorazde.

The cause of the poor recruiting tends to be elsewhere; in the continuous chopping and changing of policies, cuts and reviews follow each other the double. There has been a study or a cut every two years out of the past 10; Options for Change, Front Line first, the Hart Study, the Bett Report. Each time the slicer shaves a little closer to the bone, cutting out bands, educational services, recruiting offices, the rank of lance corporal. Despite the trumpeting of the terrible powers of the SAS at the Blackpool party conference by the new Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, and the brief service in the 11th Hussars of the Armed Forces Minister, Nicholas Soames, it is as if the Government, and even more the Opposition, do not know what the modern Army is for.

For the number crunchers of Whitehall, the forces seem an expensive anachronism. Yet today, though Britain is at peace, one third of the Army's 102,000 men and men are on operational duties.

Though many of the new policies have tried to bring the Services into line with the best civilian practices, many senior officers fear that the forces are becoming increasingly divorced from the community, The genius of the British regimental system, after all, is that it ties fighting units to local communities,. But now these links are weakening. Most aspiring soldiers would prefer to join the Royal Scots or Devon and Dorsetshire Regiment than an abstract such as the Logistics Corps.

The closure of Army careers; offices and shifting recruiting to Job Centres might seem a wholly sensible economy. But it has long been known that the greatest hurdle in persuading the youth of Britain to join up is getting them to make the initial approach to the friendly recruiter behind the counter. When the Services are just one item on the multiple choice list of job opportunities, they are even less likely to tempt the undecided.

The clash of civilian and military culture goes beyond the issue of flat or tender feet, of turning couch potatoes into punchy Paras. "If this were, ICI or any commercial corporation we would have to find a way out. Our survival depends on it - and ways will be found," a senior officer told me recently. The heart of the problem is with the infantry, where riflemen still need to have the match fitness of professional footballers - and most do. But they also need the incentives of learning skills that will win jobs when they return to civilian life. It is thought the lack of such schemes is responsible for the large numbers of soldiers quitting early.

All the bonuses and incentives, the reorganisation of regiments on the lines of the best management theory, should not disguise the primary role of the modern soldier, to defend the realm, fight the Queen's enemies and support her friends.

Few are likely to join the colours just to become a UN peacekeeper -however important such duties may be. "We must not be hypocritical, about this," a senior officer explained this week. "If you take the Queen's shilling, it means you must. he prepared to go across that start line at 0300 hours, come what may."