Regiment 'overwhelmed' by welcome - BBC

Thousands of people have lined the streets of a Monmouthshire town to pay tribute to an Army regiment which has returned from Afghanistan.

More than 400 soldiers and officers from the 1st Battalion The Rifles marched through Chepstow in their desert combat uniforms.

Commanding officer Lt Col Joe Cavanagh, said his soldiers were "overwhelmed" to find around 5,000 lining the streets.

The regiment is based at the nearby Beachley Barracks.

Lt Col Cavanagh added the occasion was an emotional one as eight soldiers from the Rifles' battle group lost their lives during the deployment in Helmand province.

These were Rifleman Stuart Nash, Corp Richard Robinson, Corp Daniel Nield, L/Corp Stephen Kingscott, Sgt Chris Reed, Rifleman Jamie Gunn, L/Corp Paul Upton and Corp Tom Gaden.

Lt Col Cavanagh said: "We thought that there would be hundreds of people there but in fact there were thousands.

"We were overwhelmed with the number of people that turned out to support us. This was the formal homecoming for us.

"We have had lots of informal ones since we came back from Afghanistan but this was the town and the people of Chepstow welcoming us home."

He added: "It was quite an emotional march with the sound of the crowd cheering. It was a wonderful occasion but it was obviously tinged with sadness because of the eight soldiers we have lost."
The mayor of Chepstow Henry Ashby said the cheers during the march could be heard for miles.

"It was absolutely amazing," he said.

"I think the whole of the town turned out. We think there could have been 5,000 people there as it was at least six deep at the side of the road.

"I think the cheering would have been heard from as far away as the racecourse which is miles away from the town centre."

He added: "We asked the regiment because they have only recently moved here and we thought it would be nice as a mark of respect to say 'welcome home."'

After the march, the soldiers were presented with the Operation Herrick medal in the presence of the Duke of Kent, the Royal Colonel of 1st Battalion The Rifles.

Inside a freed Taliban town - BBC

The Pakistani army says it is making progress in its operations against Taliban fighters in the Swat valley, and the neighbouring districts of Buner and Dir.

The BBC's Haroon Rashid is one of the first journalists to see the impact of the fighting in Buner and he reports from a checkpoint in Ambela, where the military is claiming victory.

Laura Jones on a mission which is much more than fighting Taleban

Laura Jones travelled to the troubled Helmand province in Afghanistan not only to meet our troops but to gain an understanding of the violent and volatile situation and of what the future holds for the Afghan people.
Last week the Leader published her daily diary from the country which is a crossroads between the Middle East and Asia.

Today she reflects on her time and experiences there.

AFGHANISTAN and its people have suffered three decades of unrest.

Since the country became a key battleground in the Cold War, the people of the landlocked nation have been subjected to a series of conflicts, and there is still no end in sight.

After the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the country, then led by the Taleban, was seen as a 'cradle of terrorism', and US attacks ensued.

After only three months of fighting the Bonn Agreement was drawn up on December 5, 2001, and the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) began its mission of re-creating the state of Afghanistan in a bid to give power and security back to its people.

The moment I arrived at Camp Bastion, the military hub of Operation Herrick, it was clear to me that the people of Afghanistan will not be without war for a long time to come.

As foundations are laid and permanent structures are constructed, as roads are surfaced and the airfield stretches to capacity, the longevity of the campaign becomes apparent.

Soldiers I spoke to had already been booked for tours in 2011 and 2013, as the ISAF's mission for Afghan security becomes larger, more serious and more intense each day.

The 550 1st Battalion Welsh Guards arrived at Camp Bastion a little over a fortnight ago and I met commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the man responsible for battle groups currently occupying five of the remote forward operating bases across Helmand province.

The Welsh troops arrived at a key period in the Afghan calendar, as insurgent activity hotted up.

Not only was it the end of the harvest season, it was also the last week for candidates to put themselves forward for the presidential elections, and fighting was set to increase tenfold in the next few weeks.

But Lt Cnl Thorneloe told me he has confidence in his troops and in the ISAF mission to suppress insurgents and to increase security in Helmand.

Lt Cnl Thorneloe said: "The Welsh Guards are the best trained for the mission they have ever been and in my 17 years in the army we have never been this well focused and prepared for what we are doing.

"The Welsh Guards battle group operate in the centre south of Helmand and there is obviously a limit to what we can do. Our area where we patrol has half of the population of Helmand in it, which is significant in terms of how we operate here.

"Providing security is challenging, and we are a busy battle group. There is some demanding fighting but that is just the nature of the beast."

With little known about the numbers of insurgent fighters, the 550 Welsh Guards out on regular patrols are being stretched to capacity as the scale of the operations increases every day.

More than 8,000 British troops have been trying to secure the population centres either side of the Helmand River that cuts through the province.

But because of insufficient troop strength, brave men in their modest numbers often conduct operations only to pull back to their base, leaving the population exposed.

Lt Cnl Thorneloe admitted to me that more US forces will be 'really helpful' to 'spread the footprint' within Helmand and increase the security of 60 percent of the population in the south of Afghanistan even further.

It is hoped that the new US troops will make it possible to expand that to 90 per cent by the end of the summer fighting season.

In between, they expect a 'bloody summer' as the huge new US contingent deploys into southern areas firmly under the sway of militants.

Before the ISAF forces came into Afghanistan, two million people had been killed in the fighting and six million of the 30 million population were forced to flee their homes and become refugees.

When the British were first sent to Helmand three years ago, it was billed as a humanitarian mission to protect development projects. But since then they have been involved in some of their most intense fighting since the Korean War 50 years ago.

Soldiers must live out on the front line and put their lives in their comrades' hands.

In these small bases, they face some of the toughest living conditions for British soldiers anywhere in the world. They sleep in 12 man tents, cope with primitive outdoor washing facilities and eat boil-in-a-bag rations.

And with temperatures soaring above 44 degrees C the day I arrived, the men face a harsh battle, not only with the enemy, but with the elements.

Captain John Bethell, intelligence officer for the Welsh Guards, said: "This is the nature of a counter-insurgency campaign – foot patrols are the most effective way to combat the enemy.

"But when we talk about insurgency we are not talking about an informed army, we are talking about hardcore foreign fighters who take part in terrorist acts.

"We have seen a small backlash from small arms attacks but the majority of the attacks are now improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

"The aim of our patrols is to gather information about their activity and their plans. They are a credible enemy, not a ragtag militia and we are aware of this and are acting effectively towards it."

Patrolling in these conditions, wearing heavy body armour and carrying machine guns, radios, batteries and ammunition, is hard enough without having to worry about the Taleban.

While I was out in Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to break from the security and go out on one of these patrols with Four Mercian Company and even though I was in an armoured vehicle, the heat, which topped 112 degrees F, pushed my body to the limit.

As I drove out of the gates of Camp Bastion, over the barren desert lands of southern Afghanistan and into the sweltering villages of Helmand, I started to gain an understanding of the scale of the mission here and the immediacy of the aim.

As I stood, surrounded by vast poppy fields and mud compounds, I realised that with the battle against insurgents came a battle against the drugs trade, tribalism and religion, all of which seemed far out of even the Afghans' hands because of years of built-up tradition and pride.

Since it began seven years ago, Operation Herrick has been costly in both the lives lost and the money spent here. But Lt Cnl Thorneloe is positive the mission is not in vain.

He said: "The Taleban have a saying, 'you may have the watches but we have the time' and I really don't sense that with Herrick.

"They can offer brutal stability in a country which is tribalistic but the reason we are here is to create and maintain security. I am confident that in our time here we will continue the upward trajectory progress.

"We are grateful for the support from home and we are aware of the sacrifice our families make back home and we miss them terribly.

"The people of Wales have embraced what we are doing here tremendously, and facing these enormous hardships and dangers is nothing without their support.

"They should be hugely proud of what these people have achieved out here - they really hit the ground running. We have had some difficult situations and everybody, no matter who, have stood up to the test, and there is a great sense of camaraderie about the whole thing. The Welsh Guards still face a considerable threat here and we have to be prepared for that.

"But morale is sky high and this is a mission people believe in.
"They say that war brings out the best and the worst in people, but it has certainly brought out the best in the Welsh Guards."

Colour Sergeant Mike Saunders, 2 MERCIAN, blogs from Helmand - Part 10

Greetings friends and readers at the Marwood, Worcester!

It is with sadness that I begin this week’s blog, as you will have heard four of our soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice and I believe that certainly in our time the world is the poorer for it. Clever men will say very heartfelt statements, most will pause for a moment and then the world will turn again and something new will occupy the headlines. This is the nature of things and is no different for those who soldier here.

In these times I try to imagine what it would be like if that soldier were me and for a moment a vision of the utter devastation it would cause overwhelms me. I am sure it is the same for all those who serve here. An officer whom I respect (you know who you are) pointed me to these words of the great orator President T. Roosevelt from his address in Paris 1910. To me they strike a resonance to the struggles of the fighting man from any age.

“It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
Who strives valiantly.
Who errs and comes up short again and again.
Because there is no effort without error or shortcoming’.
But who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion.
Who spends himself on a worthy cause.
Who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.
And who at worst-if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly,
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
Who knew neither victory or defeat”.

Myself I am not a religious man, so to say that I prayed for these men would be hypocritical, however they are in our thoughts and their families have the deepest sympathy of all of us here.

To continue with the blog I would again like to use the example of recent events and in doing so to highlight the tactics of the insurgent forces. In the previous blog we spoke of the Insurgent tactic of ambush and use of key terrain. Today I would like to show how they employ guerrilla tactics to disrupt and attack our forces.

It is fair to say that with our superior fighting ability and technology we are able to overpower the insurgents in most ways. In the infancy of the Operation there was a tendency towards force on force direct engagements, invariably this would involve the initiation of fighting that we refer to as “contact” followed by a phase in which each side sought to out fire or out manoeuvre the opposition. Even in the most remote areas the insurgents would soon be overmatched by a mixture of superior weapons and more importantly air or armoured assets.

The insurgents still engage the stabilisation forces in this way, however they now employ measures that allow them to engage us from a distance, or devices that can be laid and left to do their deadly work. The following is an account of such an incident that happened here recently and involved soldiers of the 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment.

Of the many areas that the Battle group cover one is called Nad e Ali, this area has long been associated with fierce insurgent resistance. In striking distance of the provincial capital this medium sized town has seen much fighting of late and is still largely unsettled. The troops from the patrol bases Argyll and Chilli must patrol firstly re-assure the locals and of equal importance dominate the ground denying it from insurgent use.

On one such patrol recently members of the Battalion experienced a very close shave with danger as they were targeted by an insurgent improvised explosive device (IED).

The devices themselves are normally planted at night by trained teams, this again put paid to the notion of a rough uneducated bandit force. They can range from small anti-personnel devices designed to maim anyone unfortunate to stand on them, all the way to huge devices designed to destroy armoured vehicles.

On the patrol in question lead by Captain Brigham and including Colour Sergeant Ben Cox (a native of Worcester) who was the front or “point man” moved down a minor road towards a track junction. Not happy with the situation that he could see ahead Ben stopped the Patrol short and decided to do a check. It soon became evident to Ben that there was something very wrong with this area.

Approaching the area carefully, sweating with the heat and pressure no doubt coursing with adrenaline Ben must try and identify if there is something dangerous that will threaten his mates who are behind him staring into the distance for insurgents with concerned faces.

It is vital that any device if present is cleared, as the insurgent’s show little or no regard as to who they injure or kill with such devices, the amount of limbless children and injured innocent civilians speak volumes against an insurgency that professes to represent the people of Afghanistan.

After a very brief examination Ben discovers enough to convince him that something dangerous may be present. After Ben’s partial confirmation the troops prepare to move out of the area as they need to find cover from the fierce sun and escape the attentions of the local insurgents, who by now are probably aware that they are in the area and who will assume that the device failed to function or has been discovered.

The Patrol now move back towards a friendly forces location that will afford better security and still enable control of the possible area of danger. There they are met by vehicles that will act as observation and weapon platforms if required until the experts can arrive.

A hot Helmand day gives way to a cool evening with a burning bronze sunset that belies the danger that the troops have faced this and every day. Still near the scene Ben and other members of the Platoon including the Platoon Sergeant Mark Giles wait in silent vigil protecting the area and guarding against insurgent interference.

After what seemed like an eternity, assistance came to the aid of the Platoon and after an extensive search several large explosive devices were found in and around the area Ben had indicated.

As is very often the case here in Afghanistan, good observation and basic Infantry skills have avoided potential disaster. An Infantry soldier is trained to observe and remain aware of the situation constantly, this coupled with a realisation of the gravity of the situation saves lives as much as any technology that can only do so much.

Ben, Mark and his team had spent considerable time in territory hotly contested by the insurgents and in doing so saved both their own lives and potentially the lives of innocent civilians. This is not an isolated incident; soldiers of Your County Regiment put themselves in danger daily in the pursuit of peace in this country. And as always try to live up to the Regiments motto:

“STAND FIRM STRIKE HARD”

Well readers that’s it for this week’s blog, I hope to write again soon but until we speak again take care and be safe.

NATO : Roughing IT

This story looks at the living conditions of soldiers who work in a small, beleaguered outpost in Nawa, Helmand.

Highway to Helmand: British troops in action - ITN

Hundreds of British soldiers recently launched an offensive to secure a strategic road in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Shot through my trews - The Sun

A BRITISH soldier escaped with just a graze when a Taliban bullet ripped right through his TROUSERS.

Cpl James Price, 27, was hit as he manned a machine-gun on an armed Land Rover during an ambush in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He later found the bullet inside a radio in the vehicle.

Mercian Regiment comrade, dad-of-three Pte Leon Wilson, 32, cheated death last month when a bullet pierced his helmet but missed his head by 2mm.

Cpl Price said: “We’ve joked that with Wilson’s helmet, a set of Osprey armour and my lucky trousers, you’d be indestructible!”

U.S. Soldier Caught in Pink Shorts Battling Taliban

A Texas mom says she's proud of her soldier son who appears on the cover of the New York Times wearing boxer shorts while in battle.

Sheree Boyd of Fort Worth, Texas smiled when she saw the picture of her son in the paper for the first time.

"You can see it says I love New York all across his rear end there," she said while examining the picture.

Her son Zachary made the front page of the Times wearing pink boxer shorts and flip flops during a fight against the Taliban.

The 19-year-old is a member of the Army's 1st Battalion 26th Infantry.

Zachary's infantry is on a peacekeeping mission in the mountains of Afghanistan. His area is a hot spot for violence. "When he came home in March in his break, he said he had been in over 200 fire fights," Sheree said.

The photographer took the picture on Monday, May 11, according to Zachary's mother.

Zachary called his parents at midnight on Tuesday, before the paper hit stores, and told them what to expect. He explained to his parents that he was getting ready for bed when gunfire rang out.

"He was resting and then he said they just started getting shot at, so instead of taking the time to pull his pants on and everything, he just put his helmet on, his body armor on, grabbed his gun and went out," Zachary's father, Tommy Boyd, told CBS affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston.

The boxers came from a stop in New York City. His shirt came from Zachary's favorite ice cream shop, Woolley's Frozen Custard in his home town.

People often have their picture taken in exotic places wearing a Woolley's Ice Cream Parlor shirt - this is a first from a war zone.

Zach has a year and a half left to serve in the Army. He left for Afghanistan last year, barely 19 years old, according to KHOU.

The Boyds say their son wanted to join the Army after watching reports of the September 11th attacks as a little boy.

His mom said he felt a duty to serve and he's doing it with a sense of humor.

Photographs of Combat Logistic Patrol - 19 Combat Service Support Battalion

Combat Logistic Patrol - 19 Combat Service Support Battalion
Originally uploaded by Helmandblog

Soldiers from 4, 10 and 31 Close Support Squadrons, 19 Combat Service Support Battalion, Royal Logistic Corps along with TA soldiers from 152 (Ulster) Transport Regiment (Volunteers) deliver supplies to Forward Operating Bases (Gibraltar, Nolay and Sangin) in the Helmand river valley.

The Force Protection Platoon is provided by Ava Platoon, C Company, 2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment. These convoys are known as a Combat Logistic Patrols.

Together these soldiers form the Combat Support Logistic Regiment, providing the vital supply function in the Helmand region.