IT WON'T be the horrific sight of hundreds of mutilated children aimlessly wandering the streets that will make PC Barry Coulson's beat in County Durham seem a world apart.

And it won't be the searing, hot sun, the constant threat of violence or even his gun-wielding personal bodyguards. Barry Coulson says it will be the scale of his new job which will strike the deepest chord in his new life.

The 32-year-old has been chosen by the British Government to join a handful of police officers given just two years to create an accountable, effective community police force in the ravaged country.

A modest man, he stresses that his role is advisory but, as a member of the Commonwealth Police Development Task Force, he will be an important part of a team trying to move a country destroyed by a civil war towards something approaching a civilised society.

At present, a 20,000-strong UN peace-keeping force, which includes 4,000 British troops, is in what was a British colony until 1961.

Barry, who lives with his partner back in North-West Durham, will be the only serving police officer among the tiny British team. And he will be the only one directly involved in actually setting up a police force over a period of

two years, even though he expects to make regular trips home.

He is looking forward to his task, to making a difference. "Everything at this stage is something of an unknown quantity, a blank piece of paper. There is no police force as we know it and our job will be to examine the problems and local needs and then, in a short space of time, put in a community policing system."

Barry has ideal experience to help him in his task. Two years ago, he spent 12 months helping the work of the United Nation's international police unit in Bosnia. He also spent five years in the Royal Military Police in Norway and Germany.

But he knows that nothing he has experienced will prepare him for what he faces in the scarred country of Sierra Leone - a country where rebel soldiers amputated the right hands of thousands of people to prevent them from voting, where women and children were raped and tortured on a massive scale and where thousands have been murdered in a bloody civil war.

But still, he is optimistic he can help. "There is clearly an entirely different culture in Sierra Leone," he says. "But, even though everything is untried and untested, I feel I have the skills to help, to do something positive."

If he succeeds, the people of that West African country will be forever in the debt of this working bobby, a man used to walking the beat of the windswept town of Stanley, County Durham.