Afghanistan: A Soldier's Diary | Reader Blogs | Blogs | Features | Homepage - The Northern Echo

Awesome firepower protecting base

4:11pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

It is our multiples turn to guard the front and rear gates and watch towers at night.

Being cruel to be kind

4:01pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

Today is my first patrol after recovering from my injury; we are to conduct it around a very busy part of the city.

Running repairs

3:19pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

Today is our training day and we have permission to have a lie in until 09:00, believe me when I say we are glad of it. Me and my colleague head down to the Motor Transport department where we are to give our Snatch Land rover a full yearly service.

Night patrol in Kabul

3:03pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

After our orders it was about 21:00 and Kabul was in darkness. Our orders were to conduct a vehicle patrol through the city and up to a village on a hillside, where we were to conduct a vehicle check point.

Ready to react

2:53pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

It was my multiple’s turn for Quick Reaction Force (QRF) duty, this entails us being on a 24 hour standby to react to anything that may happen within our area of operations. For example, if an explosion happens or one of our call signs is attacked we may be called out at a moment’s notice.

Crowd gathers to watch training carnage

5:47pm Friday 1st May 2009

05:00 Delta Platoon gets up and packs 15 kg of weight into our day sacks and takes on plenty of water, today is our training day and we are starting with battle PT.

Acting like bait for VIP convoy

5:40pm Friday 1st May 2009

We were given the call to conduct a VIP route clearance tasking, this basically entails two fire teams in two vehicles travelling ahead of the VIP’s convoy to prove the route, almost acting like bait.

Threats of suicide bombers

5:38pm Friday 1st May 2009

It was our turn this week to guard the base through the nights; this entails guarding the main gates at the front and the rear as well as manning the towers that surround the walls of the base.

First look at insurgent informants 'Dickers'

5:06pm Friday 1st May 2009

My fire team was woken at 06:00 for our first vehicle patrol; we were all looking forward to getting out on the ground and do what we had been training for the last few months to do.

Meeting our Italian comrades

4:56pm Friday 1st May 2009

We woke up and stood outside for inspection, it was light and the base looked quite different, maybe as it had been snowing hard, the weather was certainly not like what we had experienced down south in Kandahar and I could hear one or two words exchanged between the lads about the temperature that I cannot repeat.