Page 12 - Mercian Eagle 2013

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Pte Pulley and Pte Anderson (BEEK) lead the way on a patrol with JJ the dog checking for IEDs
able to recover back to the UK and Headley Court.
The accommodation was less than luxurious, with 30 men sharing a tent built for eight. Through a combination of a
large amount of black tape, ponchos and bungees the tents were waterproofed to keep away the inevitable winter downpour. With life ticking along nicely 5 Platoon kept itself entertained with a busy patrol matrix, a number of Monopoly games and, to start with, watching the odd game of football through BFBS. This was the case until LCpl Angtshering started playing with the satellite dish in an attempt to get more channels
– all he succeeded in doing was cutting
the reception so from day 14 all channels on the TV were lost; needless to say LCpl Angtshering was not the most popular person in the CP.
G4 played a major part in the patrol matrix. With no aviation support for the
first two and a half months and only one road in and out (which got closed on day
8 following the RSM hitting an IED), any
kit required came in on foot. PB Salang was, on a quick day, just over an hour each way with some good old 12/16 foot deep ditches to cross for good measure. On getting into PB Salang the commanders would head in to get debriefed by the
OC, whilst the remaining soldiers from the multiple would swarm the PB like locusts and take/borrow/steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, including on more than one occasion large legs of lamb and boxes of After Eight Mints.
Entertaining yourselves in a CP after seeing the same faces on a regular basis and being confined to the same four HESCO walls is no easy task. Morale was kept high by a number of imaginative ways thanks to the NCOs. The options ranged from stag duty, Monopoly, the badminton tournament, playing cards or trying to cook the most exotic food on heximine with the remnants of the 10-man ration boxes left over from 1 Royal Anglian. As we hit the festive period Cpl Kane created a large-
event; a 12 hour package of powerpoint presentations. The following six days covered a lot of topics from MST, flavoured with the current operational edge which had the desired effect of highlighting a number of key lessons and also the gravity of the situation.
the vehicle capacity, but thankfully the first foot patrol went largely uneventfully and 55 minutes later saw me delivered to CP Polad.
CP Polad was one of the more austere check-points within the AO and this was quickly realised during the initial walk around. 5 Platoon would spend the next
three months sharing their checkpoint with eight ANP members and the compound owner next door. The remainder of the platoon arrived over the next couple of days and quickly settled into the routine of CP life. The next couple of months saw a trickle of contacts
and CP attacks, with the first and most significant IED unfortunately hitting Pte Paul on 9 Nov. Thanks to the immediate first aid delivered by those closest to him within the first couple of minutes, it ensured he was
The Coy HQ flew
out to PB Salang on
the morning of 8 Oct
13. Arriving at 0350
with very little idea of
what was going on we
were able to snatch a
few hours sleep before
being briefed by OC
C Coy 1 Royal Anglian
at 0800. 0915 saw us
being ushered out of
the PB; whilst the HQ from 4 Platoon got a Husky move south to CP Polad, I was lucky enough to see my name on the foot patrol flap sheet instead. I was unsure whether they deemed my head was too large for
JJ the BEEK dog being introduced to some Grand National jumping by Pte Anderson and Sgt Ritchie
CP Polad was one of the more austere check-points within the AO and this was quickly realised during
the initial walk around.
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