Page 28 - Light Dragoons 2022 CREST

After almost a year of training, and only once SSgt Purvis had painstakingly yet meticulously made the team account for well over four thousand items of equip- ment, Command Troop finally deployed out to Mali on Op Newcombe. The Troop went out with about as small a team as you can get with, Capt Quicke as the RSO, WO2 Duncan as the RSWO, SSgt Garsrud as BSM, SSgt Purvis as the Tp Sgt/Ops Room Manager (as he liked to be called), and last but by no means least LCpl (at the time) Nash.
Comd Tp were the first ones to arrive in theatre and set about establishing the HQ building and communications around camp to ensure all was ready for when the remainder of the Task Group Headquarters arrived two weeks later. Thankfully, despite some tricky language barriers, searing heat in the shipping containers and thousands of bits of equipment to be tracked down, the timeline was hit and the HQ arrived into brand new offices to com- mence planning.
Over the course of the deployment, the task group became the first British troops to use Slingshot not only in the UK but also on Operations, while the BSM worked his magic to finally be the first unit to get data working on Jackals at a range of 160km. We had a Task Group HQ sat in Gao speaking to troops over 150km away
The Regimental Journal of The Light Dragoons
Command Troop
26