Sent home in shame, the British commandos who stripped naked for crass stunt in a foreign bar

Eight British Commandos have been flown home in disgrace for stripping naked and engaging in appalling behaviour in a Norwegian bar during an Arctic training exercise.
The men disgusted onlookers in the town of Harstad with a drunken game of "naked bar".

After whipping off their clothes, they urinated on each other - splashing other customers and furniture - before slurring insults and abuse.
Furious senior officers ordered the soldiers, from the Army's 59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers, back home to face disciplinary action.

"This is taken extremely seriously," a Ministry of Defence official said.
The shameful case has been widely covered by the Norwegian media.

They highlighted local people complaining that they were fed up with yobbish behaviour by British troops, whom they accused of displaying a "nasty edge" compared with soldiers from other countries.

The incident happened on Wednesday night, after the eight soldiers had been honing their Arctic warfare skills alongside Royal Marines.
They were part of Exercise Octans, an annual exercise involving thousands of personnel from more than a dozen Nato countries.

Local media reports said the men had been drinking before they arrived at the Sfinx Bar in Harstad, the nearest town to the exercise area.
They began "bothering" female customers, before shouting "naked bar!" and stripping off.
"Naked Bar" is a popular drinking game in many units across the British armed forces.

The rules are simple - participants immediately remove all clothing - and the game is usually tolerated among high-spirited troops when it is played well away from the public gaze.

In this case, however, the soldiers began urinating on one of their party who had slumped drunkenly to the floor, splashing urine over the bar's furniture and other customers.
Local police were called, and handed spot fines of £500 to each of the men before handing them over to the Royal Military Police.

Harstad police spokesman Gair Pedersen said: "They were drunk and there was a problem in the bar but we are quite used to dealing with British soldiers like this."

Lars Torsten, another resident, said: "The Dutch like a drink and get a bit boisterous but they do not have that nasty edge that so many of the British troops display - once they have got some schnapps inside them."