ARMY officers from the region are to meet Prince Charles to collect their campaign medals for service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Staff from the 9 Regiment Army Air Corps, based at Dishforth Airfield, near Thirsk, will travel to London.

The Army personnel, who looked after Lynx helicopters in the war zones, prepared for the ceremony at Dishforth.

The airmen will be given Operation Telic campaign medals at the special ceremony at Clarence House on January 27.

Fifty military personal headed to London some of them just days after they returned from Iraq.

Warrant officer Richard Twinn, 34, formerly of Station Road, in Thirsk, in North Yorkshire, was amongst them.

He said: "It’s quite an honour and we are quite proud that we are going to London to meet him.

"We’re a little bit nervous as well that we are meeting a member of the royal family."

WO Twinn joined the Army 17-years ago straight after he left school.

He was in Afghanistan in 2005 and he returned from five month tour of duty in Iraq earlier this month.

He spent his time as an aircraft engineer working on six Lynx helicopters used by the British forces in the war.