for
four months. On his return, he made award-winning cheese
while his application to join the Army was considered. He
eventually went into the Royal Engineers in 1999, aged twenty-two.
During his time in the Army, he went on tours to Northern
Ireland and Iraq, before being sent to Afghanistan in September
2006. Gasgarth, who is engaged, is based at RMB Chivenor in
Devon. He got his nickname from comrades and was named
after Mad 'Frankie' Fraser, the gangster – because he was
always volunteering to do crazy tasks.
My arrival in Afghanistan was relatively straightforward –
and was, without doubt, considerably less dramatic than an
incident shortly after I had first arrived in Iraq, just after the
start of the Second Gulf War in 2003. Now that was an
adventure: the day two of us accidentally took a wrong turn
and ended up being repeatedly shot at as we mistakenly
headed towards Basra, Iraq's second city.
In contrast to Iraq, my first few days in Afghanistan were a
piece of cake. We went out as a full squadron – as 59
Commando Squadron – and took over from the Paras out
there. Our role was to support 3 Commando Brigade. My job
was as a fitter section commander, responsible for maintaining
and fixing plant kit. I took over twenty-eight bits of kit
and, out of that, one bit was 'roadworthy' meaning – back in
the UK – you could take it on the road, one piece was
'taskworthy' – you couldn't drive it onto the road but could
take it onto site. The rest was 'U/S': unserviceable. Yet we
had to get it all up and running. The kit consisted of everything
from JCB diggers, medium-wheel tractors (which have
a massive bucket on the front), excavators and graders. A lot
of the kit gets sent to out-stations and is used for fortification.
All the kit would be used for things like putting up Hesco
[bastion] walls, building protections for the [Afghan
National] police and building new forward operating bases.
I was primarily based in [Camp] Bastion but we went
anywhere – on a road-move – where plant went with us.
Perhaps you would build a temporary FOB. From there, the
Royal Marines would disappear and do strike attacks but
they would have a base to come back to in the desert. As soon
as they had finished, we would collapse it all and take it with
us. In Bastion, we would have fitters in every out-station and
they would look after kit in each plant station. Kajaki was
where I spent most of my time – two months in all – and that
was where the 'hypothermia incident' happened. But that's
another story ...
September 2006
Major Maria Holliday, QGM, Royal Military Police (RMP)
I'm a bit of an animal lover. There was a cat in Lashkar Gah
that we adopted. She became pregnant and had four kittens.
The rumour was that she'd had some during the last tour and
they'd all died. Anyway, she gave birth in a cardboard box in
the Brigade Headquarters but we had to move them out of
there. We moved them into an area where there was an
Afghan gardener and he kept an eye on them. She got really
bad flu symptoms and she was so weak she couldn't feed
them. I was trying to give the kittens some dried milk powder
made up. Of course, it wasn't the right thing but that was all
we had. I also used a bit of cod liver oil but kittens are
notoriously hard to hand rear. I was on the phone to the UK
vets to get some guidance on what to do with these kittens
but, unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, because I
couldn't get any proper stuff for them, they all died one
by one. The longest one lasted ten days. The gardener
buried them all in the little garden in Lashkar Gah. I felt
very sad. They had a harsh existence but that's just life in
Afghanistan.
The mother eventually pulled through. I managed to get
her some human antibiotics from a local who claimed to be a
vet, but I was having to guess on the dosages. She later
became pregnant again. She was a skinny little ginger cat. She
was quite feisty. She used to chase the search dogs. There was
a
four months. On his return, he made award-winning cheese
while his application to join the Army was considered. He
eventually went into the Royal Engineers in 1999, aged twenty-two.
During his time in the Army, he went on tours to Northern
Ireland and Iraq, before being sent to Afghanistan in September
2006. Gasgarth, who is engaged, is based at RMB Chivenor in
Devon. He got his nickname from comrades and was named
after Mad 'Frankie' Fraser, the gangster – because he was
always volunteering to do crazy tasks.
My arrival in Afghanistan was relatively straightforward –
and was, without doubt, considerably less dramatic than an
incident shortly after I had first arrived in Iraq, just after the
start of the Second Gulf War in 2003. Now that was an
adventure: the day two of us accidentally took a wrong turn
and ended up being repeatedly shot at as we mistakenly
headed towards Basra, Iraq's second city.
In contrast to Iraq, my first few days in Afghanistan were a
piece of cake. We went out as a full squadron – as 59
Commando Squadron – and took over from the Paras out
there. Our role was to support 3 Commando Brigade. My job
was as a fitter section commander, responsible for maintaining
and fixing plant kit. I took over twenty-eight bits of kit
and, out of that, one bit was 'roadworthy' meaning – back in
the UK – you could take it on the road, one piece was
'taskworthy' – you couldn't drive it onto the road but could
take it onto site. The rest was 'U/S': unserviceable. Yet we
had to get it all up and running. The kit consisted of everything
from JCB diggers, medium-wheel tractors (which have
a massive bucket on the front), excavators and graders. A lot
of the kit gets sent to out-stations and is used for fortification.
All the kit would be used for things like putting up Hesco
[bastion] walls, building protections for the [Afghan
National] police and building new forward operating bases.
I was primarily based in [Camp] Bastion but we went
anywhere – on a road-move – where plant went with us.
Perhaps you would build a temporary FOB. From there, the
Royal Marines would disappear and do strike attacks but
they would have a base to come back to in the desert. As soon
as they had finished, we would collapse it all and take it with
us. In Bastion, we would have fitters in every out-station and
they would look after kit in each plant station. Kajaki was
where I spent most of my time – two months in all – and that
was where the 'hypothermia incident' happened. But that's
another story ...
September 2006
Major Maria Holliday, QGM, Royal Military Police (RMP)
I'm a bit of an animal lover. There was a cat in Lashkar Gah
that we adopted. She became pregnant and had four kittens.
The rumour was that she'd had some during the last tour and
they'd all died. Anyway, she gave birth in a cardboard box in
the Brigade Headquarters but we had to move them out of
there. We moved them into an area where there was an
Afghan gardener and he kept an eye on them. She got really
bad flu symptoms and she was so weak she couldn't feed
them. I was trying to give the kittens some dried milk powder
made up. Of course, it wasn't the right thing but that was all
we had. I also used a bit of cod liver oil but kittens are
notoriously hard to hand rear. I was on the phone to the UK
vets to get some guidance on what to do with these kittens
but, unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, because I
couldn't get any proper stuff for them, they all died one
by one. The longest one lasted ten days. The gardener
buried them all in the little garden in Lashkar Gah. I felt
very sad. They had a harsh existence but that's just life in
Afghanistan.
The mother eventually pulled through. I managed to get
her some human antibiotics from a local who claimed to be a
vet, but I was having to guess on the dosages. She later
became pregnant again. She was a skinny little ginger cat. She
was quite feisty. She used to chase the search dogs. There was
a
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