Photography in the Midlands and Shropshire including Shrewsbury

So what are we doing here….? As I mentioned before I’m here as part of 120 soldiers making Cambrai Company, made up from four cap badges, The light Infantry, Fusiliers, The Staffordshire Regiment and The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters. These four cap badges make the West Midland Regiment, a TA regiment that where asked to provide a Company of infantry soldiers for OPTELIC 7, Iraq, leading to Cambrai company being formed. Cambrai Company has been tasked as Force Protection for MND (SE) Basra APOD (Airport). The lay out of the Airport, it has one large perimeter with a front Gate manned by IPS (Iraqi police service) and RAF Police, this is known as Alpha Gate, this gate controls access to the civilian part of the airport and access to a second perimeter which surrounds the military enclave. The gate to the Military enclave known as Ritz gate is manned by us as one of our tasks. Within the military enclave there is the MND (SE) HQ this is the hub of all multinational forces within the South East of Iraq so its a very important location, this is also guarded by us. Also within the military enclave you have the military airport, all the RAF helicopters/planes, Iraqi Air Force and allot of separate camps for all nationalities including the Iraqi army. An example of one camp is our accommodation and company HQ, Allenby Lines; Allenby lines provides accommodation to 100’s of soldiers and civilian contractors from all different nationality’s, this camp also has its own perimeter fence and gate within the military enclave as do all camps within the enclave. Allenby is also guarded by us as another of our tasks. The APOD is a very busy place, with allot of people coming and going, armed forces from all nationalities, flights in and out bringing more people in and taking others home.

Cambrai company has 4 platoons and the HQ element, the HQ element stay “at the rear with the gear” otherwise known jokingly as REMFS (Rear Echelon Mother FuckerS). The 4 platoons then use and break every thing supplied to them by HQ, then moan that HQ can’t replace it but that’s our prerogative as soldiers to bitch and moan about everything! I’m a member of 1 Platoon and the platoon is broken down into 2 multiples then broken down into 3 teams of 4 men within each multiple. The best way to give you a picture of what we’re doing is to walk you through a full rotation; we work on a 12 day rotation and at the end of the 12 days start the rotation again….

Starting with Mobiles 1, on our last rotation we went out on 3 taskings. The first being an AO (area of operations) patrol, our AO covers most of the Al Basrah province(Al Basra’s main city is Basra), Iraq is broken up into provinces, you could look at it as states like in the US. Al Basrah borders the Iraqi provinces of Di Qha, Al Mathana and Maysan. Also Al Basrah province borders Iran and Kuwait. Our tasking was to tie in with the RAF regiment as there main job is the defense of the Airport and part of that is AO patrols. We joined up with the RAF regiment and broke down into 3 vehicles and two 8 man foot sections. The 3 vehicles we took were, one snatch; a snatch is a Kevlar armored land rover with a hatch in the top for 2 guys to provide top cover by standing with the heads and weapons poking out the top. One wolf, this is a stripped down land rover with an open back and roll cage, the top cover still stand up but just lean on the roll cage and hope we don’t get shot at! The 3rd vehicle was an RAF wimic/pinky this is also a stripped down land rover with no sides but 2 two 7.62mm General purpose machine guns bolted on so what it lacks in protection it makes up for with fire power! The 2 foot sections were heli born on a Merlin Helicopter. I was the driver in the Wolf, the 3 vehicles had 4 men in each including driver, commander and 2 top cover. We moved of into a local village and secured a helicopter landing site on a road junction by using the vehicles and dismounts to block the roads and stop pedestrians form entering the landing site. Whilst doing this its inevitable you’ll get loads of children flocking round you “MR! MR!” asking for money, water, chocolate and trying to talk to you, mind you the surprising thing is the young kids speak better English than allot of the adults. It becomes difficult to do your job when you’ve got kids every were! You’re trying to watch out for any potential threats, you’re keeping an eye on them, each other, your kit and your vehicle because they’re thieving buggers! If it’s not tied down they’ll have it! You find a way though because you have no option as the threat is very real. On this particular patrol we had one of the clerks come out with us so she could get a bit of time on the ground and she ended up with a swarm round her so we had to keep a watch full eye on her as well, a high risk out here at the moment is kidnapping. When your in a populated area static in the same place for a period of time you run the risk of getting dicked (a spotter for the insurgents reports your location so an attack of some sort can be mounted) so its always best not to hang round in the same place for to long but when you blocking of a road to land a Merlin you’ve got no choice and your presence won’t be missed! For me personally this was a first I’d never cleared an area for a chopper to land. The kids soon fucked of once the chopper came into land as the combination of down draft, sand and no goggles is a very bad combination! Sand blasted eye balls!! Once the foot patrol was on the ground the vehicles satellite the pre determined area of the foot patrol to provide a quick response force for the patrol, so if they got in the shit and needed help to extract there’d be no serious dramas. Also it adds to the visual presence on the ground if the locals see foot patrols and vehicles patrolling. Once the foot patrol had finished we did the same again blocked the road off and the Merlin came in to extract the foot patrols. This finished late evening, we then had to get back to camp get all the kit of the vehicles and then we were briefed on the mornings tasking, prepared the vehicles and equipment for the morning. We got to bed late probably about 11pm then up at 4am to commence the next task.

The day’s task starting at 4am was to provide an armed escort for some officers British and American to 3 forts on the Iraq/Iran border. This was set to be a long day, we had a fair distance to cover and that’s not including any hold ups due to coming across suspicious devices/objects by or in the road etc that need closer inspection to make sure we’re not going to become the victim of an IED attack and get blown up. The platoon commander’s navigation skills were put to the test as the maps we use don’t mark all roads and tracks and for the ones that are marked on the map a large proportion of them are blocked of or destroyed so the initial route he had planned soon went out the window! The roads over here aren’t maintained and really put your driving to the test some times. Think of the farm tracks you end up on when you’ve gone the wrong way in England its just hard mud baked in the sun with dips and ruts bouncing you round all over the place but imagine that to the degree that you couldn’t even take a car down it, those sort of tracks are the roads here for miles and miles. The problem is in a snatch its top heavy any way kevelar and they’re very heavy much taller than a normal land rover and then you’ve got 2 blokes standing out the top. It sways and leans all over the place, since we’ve been here one snatch tipped over on a motorway slid sideways and one of out lads on top cover had to have his spleen removed (he was sent home after the operation). This task was a good though we got to see allot more of Iraq, we got out into the marshes or were the marshes were before Sadam drained them turning them into baron wastelands with man made irrigation systems made by the locals to try and grow crops and provide water. The tracks used to lead through expanses of water filled marsh but now they’re just mud tracks with a 6 foot drop either side leading into baron dust bowels. It’s amazing to see how people live still so basic in mud huts, fishing and farming for food, no comprehension of modern technology like digital cameras, things we take for granted. We eventually found the first fort, the officers went of to do whatever it was they were there for once we’d made sure it was all secure. Security wasn’t a major drama as the fort was manned by Iraqi army and Iraqi border police and relations with them are relatively good.
Then there we were, stood on the fort by a river, the other side of the river a fence that went for miles and miles either way following the river, watch towers dotted along it, the Iranian border. After seeing so much on TV and reading about all the western tension with Iran in the news it was quite strange to think we were a stones throw away. Looking through our telescopic sights we could see the Iranian guards in the watch towers. If they looked over to the roof of this fort through they’re binoculars all they’d see would be a group of British soldiers having there photo’s taken pointing at the border or maneuvering a confused Iraqi soldier into a pose for a photo. We saw the funny side….

After 8 weeks pre training we’ve finally arrived in theatre… Sat in Basra now it still feels very surreal! We’re based at Basra air station 10 minutes drive from Basra’s busy centre, our role as Cambrai Company is force protection for MND (se) which is the multi national division (south east of Iraq) what this role consists of I’ll explain thoroughly later.

Leaving the UK was an experience, on leaving my mind was full of visions, questions and thoughts of what it would be like? What will happen when we get there? What will happen while we’re there? But I suppose more importantly what will it really be like there will it be as I imagined….. The flight was a bit different! I’ve been on planes lots of times before but when you board an RAF plane carrying body armour, helmet and wearing a desert cam uniform your brain starts ticking, especially getting on the plane as part of a full company of 120 Infantry soldiers heading for Iraq; probably the most dangerous place on earth or so we kept getting told all the way through our training.
When we were getting on the plane the reality started to hit home “you’re actually doing this, there’s no going back the next 6 months are going to be spent in Iraq, away from Beth, friends, family…. What’s going to happen in the next 6 months? Anything is possible!”
If you’re scared of flying then you would have had a heart attack on this flight! The take of and flight itself was fine, a 4 hour journey on tri star which is similar to a commercial flight with in-flight meal provided by stewards. How ever about 20 minutes before we landed we were told to don our body armour and helmets for our final approach. Looking round the plane was a most surreal experience, imagine a normal passenger flight to Majorca for example or were ever you go on your holidays, the planes rammed to the rafters every one is sat in there rows but they’ve all got Kevlar helmets on and body armour. The reason we wore body armour and helmet is because there’s a risk of being shot at from the ground on the final approach. Moments after we’d put our body armour and helmets on the blinds on the windows are all rolled down, it was dark outside any way but we now couldn’t see any lights on the ground just the blind. Then all the lights inside and outside the plane were turned off plunging the plane into darkness I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face…. The last 15 minutes of the flight I was just guessing using my senses to try and tell where we were, the plane suddenly banked steeply and then bounced up, while this was happening we were loosing altitude very quickly and my ears felt like they needed to pop but wouldn’t so they started squealing, I was in agony! I wanted the plane to land so me ears could sort themselves out but it felt like we were going all over the place quickly and downwards, a few times I thought the plane had landed but actually it was still in the air! This went on for what seemed like an eternity with my ears screaming and the darkness rocking me around and around… eventually we landed but my ears didn’t return to normal instead it sounded like I was listening to the world through a shell of the beach…

Once on the ground and at the airport my mind was ticking over, we were finally in Iraq, started thinking about mortar drills and wondering if we’re going to get attacked by mortars what to do if we did? How safe is the airport? Now I’m settled in and know what’s what it’s different that’s just really unlikely and I know not to worry but in the same breath I’m not switching off and becoming complacent. I know my drills and I know the threat is very real but also realise that it’s not an everyday occurrence, it will happen in our time here but deal with it when it happens. The company of soldiers we took over from (the rifle volunteers) had 6 mortar attacks in 6 months so as we’ve been here a month we should be due one. I suppose the reason my mind was racing when we first got here is because in reality before you get here all you do is train for mortars, small arms attacks, how to defend your selves and how to attack your attackers, watch the news and see bombings, hear about soldiers being killed but in reality over here its totally different to how you expect it to be. The reality is the insurgents are here and they are killing troops, detonating bombs and mortaring multi national forces but once you here it becomes day to day and the edge is taken of it, the drama and I suppose media/movies driven excitement is removed and it becomes life. We don’t see any news over here papers are few and far between. The risk is in a sense as day to day as when I used to get up in the morning jump in my car and drive to work I had to stay alert and watch out for other maniacs on the road who could kill you with head on smash or a pedestrian that could walk out in front of you. Obviously it’s dangerous over here and there is a extremely higher possibility of ending up in a situation but the point I’m trying to make is it’s very different to how I imagined it because everyone is dealing with the same problem the threat is more manageable, so in turn the threat to us out here psychologically is not as intense and stressful as I first imagined. The best phrase to use is “We’re just doing our job and the risk is a large part of that job”

Reality, we spent the first and the second week doing more training based round what the guys we’re taking over from were doing and how they did it and if it was different to the way we planned to do it. However the training wasn’t excessive so we had quite a bit of time to sort our selves out and get settled in, mind you if it was planned like that I’m unsure… We had chance every night to get in the camp bar and indulge in our 2 cans of beer, phone friends and family. Every one had started to feel safe and snug in this little world that actually wasn’t all that bad. Almost forgetting where we were…. Until a patrol going through Basra got hit by an IED (improvised explosive device, bomb) the device used was an EFP (explosively formed projectile). EFP’s are basically big molten lumps of copper that blast from the explosion through the armour of the vehicle and out the other side, currently the subject of hot debate in the press and showing through political strains with Iran, as the source of these EFP devices seems to be Iran but if we remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq they were never found, hence the media debates at the moment. Sadly a fusilier from Birmingham lost his life in the IED attack. The first we new about this incident was moments after it happened as part of our force protection role is to provide an Incident response team which is a 4 man team who go out with the medics on sea king helicopter to any incidents like this. The 4 man team then provide protection to the medics on the ground and assist with medical treatment and in some cases picking bits of people up and popping them into evidence bags. So in this case the IRT team were crashed and went out to this bombing. A British soldier being killed in our back yard using a route that some of our guys were going to take that afternoon was a wake up call for everyone. It brings on a moment of reflection you sit back and think SHIT! We’re in Iraq and people are dying! The reality of what we’re doing and the risks suddenly became real again, you could see that everyone had received a reality injection, seeing some of the guys round camp it was obvious….

A couple of videos from pre tour training:

OPTAG – Public order training before Iraq deployment from Mike Hubbard on Vimeo.

Driving Cadre – Iraq Pre deployment driver training! from Mike Hubbard on Vimeo.

The papers have arrived the mobilisation has suddenly become official and very real. I’m glad its official at work now so I can get the financial ball rolling, one of my major concerns has been how does the whole pay situation work. I know we get our wages paid by the Army to the same level we earn normally but I have share plan deductions, my pension, payments on a laptop I purchased from BT and others. All those payments are direct from my salary so I’ve got to sort all them out so when I return I haven’t lost out on future benefits and savings.
Time however is ticking by extremely quickly, I feel as though I can see the time disappearing like sand from an hour glass. The annoying thing is, as with the sand from an hour-glass, you can watch each day go by and each day seems more important as departure gets ever closer and the sand becomes less. Why am I becoming concerned about the lack of time before departure? Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? It’s never been a concern before in fact even the opposite wishing the time away… Of course as I have always said this is something I desperately want to experience and it is the ultimate life challenge I have dreamed of. But life is a beast and creates paths and obstacles you least expect. With Beth in my life now I have to contend with the inevitable emotions and longing to be with some one, knowing time is now your enemy. This has added the edge I was once to be spared, it was quite straight forward when I had no one to love in my life, “when its time to go leave” but now it’s not quite so easy.
I’ve been using all my leave up from work as when I come back it will be a new year and a new allocation of leave. During the time off me and Beth went up to Scotland for 3 nights and stayed in a nice hotel near Fort William. We then spent 4 days at the V festival and the other days just being together. The time me and Beth have together seems more precious every day and that forces the emotions and inner feelings towards one another to morph constantly higher and deeper making every moment count.

As the time passes by the essential focus seems to be on creating memories to be shared and looked back on in the coming months…