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.

On a night the city is a completely different place. Only the centre is lit up constantly and there is not much traffic on the roads at all. To be truthful I prefer to do this on a night as it is a little more relaxing than through the day when the city is a hive of activity and the base is bustling with vehicles and personnel.

Through most of the night it was quiet, however we had been given a massive suicide bomber threat warning as our shift started, so we had to double man each position. In the one position I was in one of the towers or ‘sangers’ as we like to call them, with one of our Italian comrades looking out over a main junction that ran beside the base. We had been told to look out for certain registrations of vehicles and anything else that seemed suspicious. The Italian told me that something was strange, there were always three police officers from the Kabul City Police manning the junction and tonight they were nowhere to be seen. Straight away I thought, well I can’t repeat what I thought but I’m sure you get the idea. I rang the guardroom and our intelligence cell straight away and informed them. Sure enough they got back to me, informing me that there definetely should have been three officers there and to inform them straight away if anything further suspicious happens.

For the rest of the week, the city on the whole was quiet through the night. One of my friends informed me that the one night approximately 13 explosions, possibly motors hitting the city making a massive amount of noise, luckily it was my night off and I slept through the whole ordeal.