Could be useful
It's one of those situationaly useful things and the argument of having too much information to be useful is ignorant.
Anyone who works in IT knows that the more info you can get the better you can diagnose a problem, you may not need all the information all the time but you'll use all the information at some time depending on the problem.
This information could largely being ignored most the time but to cite some examples, if radio comms go dead then it's an indicator as to whether the radio has simply failed or whether your entire squad has just been taken out by an IED.
Also in a firefight, if your squad gets split it's nice to know that everyones okay or if someone gets hit you need to know if it's worth risking your life to get to him or leaving it until it's a bit safer - i.e. does he have a pulse or has he gone already?
What if they link this information to satellite maps of troop movements? If you see the people that have gone down are all on the right flank you can take a good guess that that's where the sniper that's picking them off is.
All information is useful situationally, to expect it to be useful all the time is missing the benefits of needing it some of the time though.
As for the whole British vs. French thing it's simple, the French are very strong on national pride and they've had to accept, admit or display weakness to us Brits on many occasions through the years. They don't hate us and we don't hate them, if it came to and the need arose the British and French would gladly fight alongside each other but they also don't like to admit publicly that they've required our support on so many occasions and on the same note we don't like the fact they don't acknowledge our support on so many occasions. It is a shame because we have so much shared history and together have more power in the world than many other nations. There is little that could compete against the influence of an Anglo-French political machine.