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Chapter 4

About fifty of us were to deploy early as part of the ‘pre-pre-advanced party’. The day before our deployment, we were brought to the mess hall of our camp where we queued to be processed by the regimental clerks. We were given dog tags and Ministry of Defence wills to fill out as we sat and waited. When it was all done, I was assigned to the baggage party. Myself and another private left in the early hours of the next morning in a truck stacked with bags and equipment and we drove through the night to RAF Lyneham. Once there, we humped the bags onto a big steel weighing plate built into a hangar floor. Bleary-eyed airmen tallied the weight and signed it off. We milled about until the rest of our squadron arrived.

We were sent into the departure lounge as it filled with more soldiers and a company of Royal Marines. We boarded by rank, beginning with the most senior. It was my first time on a plane and I was flying to war. We were instructed to keep our body armour and helmets with us. Filing across the tarmac, we boarded an RAF TriStar passenger plane where I sat next to two marines. Even to me they seemed young – even more childlike as they munched on packets of sweets.

We stopped in Dubai and were herded into a fenced enclosure next to the runway, to wait in segregation and smoke as many cigarettes as we could while our plane was refuelled. I imagined that British soldiers in uniform were not popular in Middle Eastern airport lounges. We got back on and flew towards Kabul.

The sun came up and I saw Central Asia from the air. It seemed barren and brown, with occasional spidery tracks and snow-capped peaks. It looked like the legendary Hindu Kush, though in truth I had no idea where we were. I vaguely knew that we didn’t like Iran, so assuming we had to avoid its airspace, we were perhaps over Pakistan or Turkmenistan. Over the tannoy we were ordered to don body armour and helmets as we descended into Kabul. I was afraid and excited and out of the window I could see this was a spectacular and rugged place. The runway was flanked to its edge by sheer rock capped in white. We bumped down into Afghanistan and taxied. We disembarked and trudged the tarmac amongst the marines. It was icy cold and fresh. I’d expected heat but it was early morning. We were immediately processed into theatre by RAF movement controllers before being herded onto a Hercules amid piles of kit secured under cargo nets, and we took off heading south.

Kandahar was choking with dust and full of Americans. The temperatures would reach the mid-fifties that summer. A bus took us to our living area and we sifted through baggage to find our own. We settled into the eight-man tents that the Royal Engineers had put up. There wasn’t much to do in the first few weeks, so we waited and acclimatized. We got our bush hats tailored from the massive brim they came with to the little one which army fashion required. If just the very tip of your nose got sunburnt you knew you were trendy.