September 2006 [email home]
Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army
Sorry I haven't been in touch for a bit but I'm sure you've
heard there have been quite a lot of deaths/serious injuries
out here, and so Op Minimize has been on ... constantly. Plus
there's been a bit of a siege mentality in camp ... We had
reports of hordes of Taliban on the horizon getting ready to
surge into Lashkar Gah, so everything stopped while we
waited to be attacked ... I admit I didn't sleep very well for
a few days. My body armour is SO heavy. I don't think I'd be
able to run very fast or very far in it.
So life's been eventful since I got here 2 weeks ago. We had
our first 'incident' on camp on my first night here ... having
had no sleep the night before I was pretty knackered, but was
woken up at midnight by my new boss dressed in full
webbing and helmet, etc, complete fighting order, telling me
the camp was under deliberate attack and could I please get
dressed!!! Plus we had a casualty. The medical room is down
the hall from my room, and I recognized that strong smell of
disinfectant. So I got up, got dressed, and then basically we
all spent a few hours hanging around in the corridors wondering
what was going on ... Mainly I was worrying about
my lack of ammunition, because having just arrived I'd only
been issued one magazine [more magazines were due the
next day]. Eventually we were all sent back to bed. I slept in
my clothes, just in case.
The next morning, we were told the ANA in town had
decided to shoot a group of stray dogs. The ANP or some
other ANA thought they were being attacked and returned
fire in the general direction of our camp – and some bullets
came over the wall, went through one of the tents and hit a
captain in the leg. Apparently he'd jumped up when he heard
firing, but if he'd stayed in his bed he would've been okay!
Workwise, there is so much to do and everything takes so
long. Plus we're a bit short-staffed, most of my PsyOps
section were sent down to Garmsir with about 17 other Brits
and a few Estonians helping about 100 local Afghan forces
beat off a Taliban advance. Constant fighting for 6 days. And
I mean constant fighting. One of the Royal Marine corporals
from my team got sent down there (I rather hopefully gave
him a video camera, but he didn't get it out of his bag). He
manned a 50-cal gun and fired 1,600 rounds. And a sgt major
from my battalion got shot in the arm. Garmsir is incredibly
strategically important because it's the furthest south ISAF
[International Security Assistance Force] have been and it's
the main crossing point down there over the Helmand river.
We had a visit on camp from a woman from a Canadian
NGO, who told us about the state of the IDP [internally displaced
people] camps on the outskirts of town ... children
starving, people being recruited to the Taliban for the price of
a day's food, the usual desperate plight of those displaced by
war. The politics, though, is phenomenally complicated in
that we as ISAF troops cannot be seen to help these people
unless they become a military threat. We can't just go and
give them food, because they can't become dependent on us.
It's up to the Helmand governor to do that, to help his own
people. But nobody seems to be doing much about it. Aid,
when it's given, often ends up being sold in the bazaars – still
in its UN wrappers. We see it as we drive by. What can you
do in a country which blocks your efforts to help at every
turn? It's very frustrating.
September 2006
Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal
Engineers
Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal Engineers, is
thirty-two, He was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. The son of a sales
rep for an agricultural feed company, he has an older brother.
Both his grandfathers served in the Army during the Second
World War. Gasgarth left school at sixteen to start an
apprenticeship in mechanical engineering but, after completing
the five-year course, gave it up to travel around the world
Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army
Sorry I haven't been in touch for a bit but I'm sure you've
heard there have been quite a lot of deaths/serious injuries
out here, and so Op Minimize has been on ... constantly. Plus
there's been a bit of a siege mentality in camp ... We had
reports of hordes of Taliban on the horizon getting ready to
surge into Lashkar Gah, so everything stopped while we
waited to be attacked ... I admit I didn't sleep very well for
a few days. My body armour is SO heavy. I don't think I'd be
able to run very fast or very far in it.
So life's been eventful since I got here 2 weeks ago. We had
our first 'incident' on camp on my first night here ... having
had no sleep the night before I was pretty knackered, but was
woken up at midnight by my new boss dressed in full
webbing and helmet, etc, complete fighting order, telling me
the camp was under deliberate attack and could I please get
dressed!!! Plus we had a casualty. The medical room is down
the hall from my room, and I recognized that strong smell of
disinfectant. So I got up, got dressed, and then basically we
all spent a few hours hanging around in the corridors wondering
what was going on ... Mainly I was worrying about
my lack of ammunition, because having just arrived I'd only
been issued one magazine [more magazines were due the
next day]. Eventually we were all sent back to bed. I slept in
my clothes, just in case.
The next morning, we were told the ANA in town had
decided to shoot a group of stray dogs. The ANP or some
other ANA thought they were being attacked and returned
fire in the general direction of our camp – and some bullets
came over the wall, went through one of the tents and hit a
captain in the leg. Apparently he'd jumped up when he heard
firing, but if he'd stayed in his bed he would've been okay!
Workwise, there is so much to do and everything takes so
long. Plus we're a bit short-staffed, most of my PsyOps
section were sent down to Garmsir with about 17 other Brits
and a few Estonians helping about 100 local Afghan forces
beat off a Taliban advance. Constant fighting for 6 days. And
I mean constant fighting. One of the Royal Marine corporals
from my team got sent down there (I rather hopefully gave
him a video camera, but he didn't get it out of his bag). He
manned a 50-cal gun and fired 1,600 rounds. And a sgt major
from my battalion got shot in the arm. Garmsir is incredibly
strategically important because it's the furthest south ISAF
[International Security Assistance Force] have been and it's
the main crossing point down there over the Helmand river.
We had a visit on camp from a woman from a Canadian
NGO, who told us about the state of the IDP [internally displaced
people] camps on the outskirts of town ... children
starving, people being recruited to the Taliban for the price of
a day's food, the usual desperate plight of those displaced by
war. The politics, though, is phenomenally complicated in
that we as ISAF troops cannot be seen to help these people
unless they become a military threat. We can't just go and
give them food, because they can't become dependent on us.
It's up to the Helmand governor to do that, to help his own
people. But nobody seems to be doing much about it. Aid,
when it's given, often ends up being sold in the bazaars – still
in its UN wrappers. We see it as we drive by. What can you
do in a country which blocks your efforts to help at every
turn? It's very frustrating.
September 2006
Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal
Engineers
Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal Engineers, is
thirty-two, He was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. The son of a sales
rep for an agricultural feed company, he has an older brother.
Both his grandfathers served in the Army during the Second
World War. Gasgarth left school at sixteen to start an
apprenticeship in mechanical engineering but, after completing
the five-year course, gave it up to travel around the world
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