Page 70 - KRH Year of 2021 CREST

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The Regimental Journal of The King’s Royal Hussars
Coalition operations would be a lot easier if the Americans would just speak English.
Capts Walch and Hatchley have spent the winter of Russian dis- content maintaining the standards of polite society in the US led headquarters of the Special Operations Joint Task Force – Levant (SOJTF-L).
Made up of UK, US, Spanish, French, Polish, Italian and Norwegian staff officers, the pair deployed initially to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait as the HQ was expanding its area of operations. Previously only aligned to Op INHERENT RESOLVE, the extra responsibilities passed from the higher HQ in Florida meant that the remit of SOJTF now broadened to include Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Capt Walch was immediately launched into working out a plan in J3/5 about how to move the HQ to Jordan to get away from the loudspeaker trumpet calls sounded across Arifjan each reveille and sunset; while Capt Hatchley joined J5 and finally got his own back from previously watching Walch chilling out as Recce Tp Ldr on Op CABRIT while he had been thrashed as RSO.
In Jordan our heroes moved into a specially built base that pro- vided plenty of opportunity to remind the Americans about what civilisation and real history should look like while visiting Roman and Byzantine ruins. The work was fast and furious with Capt Walch and his team focusing on future operations including that of ongoing and perpetually knotty issues in Syria and Iraq, while Capt Hatchley’s gang designed an operational approach to suit the new AOR.
Trips to Amman to eat locally were often a highlight as it meant a chance for the subalterns to finally eat with real cutlery (in the
correct hands), at a reasonable time of the night and with no one straight out of the gym.
Ultimately despite the urge to impose HM Queen back on a lost colony, they have made some friends for life and learnt an immeasurable amount from a cohort of seriously impressive coa- lition soldiers and officers. They would go back to work for the US Special Operations team in a heart beat. They will certainly miss their desert lifestyle once they both report for duty for “staff development” in Andover in summer 2022.
Hawks in The Gulf