Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Charity Dinner Raises £127,000
HAC Dinner: on 6 September 2010, the Trust ran a Charity Dinner for 310 guests, hosted by 35 members of the Regiment who had experienced tours in Afghanistan. The event was held in the Prince Regent Hall, The Honourable Artillery Company, City Road, London. The evening started off with a Champagne reception outside the hall where guests were able to visit weapons and equipment stands and talk to members of the Regiment. They were also treated to a Beating of the Retreat by the Regimental Band, sadly the Red Devils were unable to jump but the guests did get to see an RAF Chinook landing and taking off on the outfield of the cricket pitch!
The aim of the evening was to raise funds for the Trust and we were not disappointed, during the course of the dinner a Silent Auction was held, then following a stirring presentation by Col Stuart Tootal the Main Auction swung into action and the guests made some amazingly generous bids. Roger Dakin, the Auctioneer and MC for the night, kept the momentum going with a game of the Higher/Lower and guests bid on their own tables for bronze paratrooper statuettes.
The event was sponsored by ACM Shipping, Boeing and Knightsbridge Guarding who helped pay for some of the costs. In all, together with the fundraising activities, the Trust made just under £127k net on the night, which is a spectacular amount of money and our thanks goes to all who attended.
The aim of the evening was to raise funds for the Trust and we were not disappointed, during the course of the dinner a Silent Auction was held, then following a stirring presentation by Col Stuart Tootal the Main Auction swung into action and the guests made some amazingly generous bids. Roger Dakin, the Auctioneer and MC for the night, kept the momentum going with a game of the Higher/Lower and guests bid on their own tables for bronze paratrooper statuettes.
The event was sponsored by ACM Shipping, Boeing and Knightsbridge Guarding who helped pay for some of the costs. In all, together with the fundraising activities, the Trust made just under £127k net on the night, which is a spectacular amount of money and our thanks goes to all who attended.
Monday, November 22, 2010
News from the Front - November
Remembrance Reflections by Lt Col Andy Harrison, CO 2 PARA.
On the eve of Remembrance Day I sit behind the ubiquitous Hesco bastion and write. These colourless, stone-filled, wire and cloth baskets enclose almost every British base in this blighted country; they have become synonymous with this prolonged conflict.
Three of the five companies of soldiers I command are fighting for their lives at this very second. The clear autumn sun of Afghanistan is still hot, and my sweaty, dust-encrusted combat uniform bears the white, tidal salt stains of a day’s perspiration.
A day in the Green Zone of the River Helmand’s fertile flood plain.
The sweat-tide clearly traces the outline of the heavy, cumbersome body armour that I’ve just discarded. In the distance the deep staccato beat of an Apache helicopter firing its 30mm shells mixes with the occasional crump of a Rocket Propelled Grenade. At over a kilometre away, the higher frequency fire from my soldiers’ rifles cannot be heard. But each of them are fighting for their lives. In deep, cloying irrigation ditches and on the flat, vulnerable tabletop surfaces of fields recently hand-harvested, young men on both sides of the insurgency will be clawing at the ground; the crack and thump of bullets splitting the air around them. Again
It has been the same almost every day.
We’re just approaching the end of the first two weeks of this tour. The almost thousand men (and nine women) I’m responsible for have the unenviable, complex and desperately dangerous task of dragging an inherently corrupt, feudal population away from the tempting short-term Taliban offer of poppy and guns. We offer them a dangerous and potentially bloody avenue out of over three decades of privation and pain. These people know war better than probably any people on earth. They exist within it. It is so hard to break the cycle of violence amongst a people who know only violence.
Yesterday I sat strapped into the rear seat of a gargantuan armoured vehicle codenamed Mastiff. We slowly halted to check for a potential bomb at a particularly vulnerable point on a road. Our surveillance systems had noticed disturbed earth, an ominous indication that an Improvised Explosive Device may have been dug in. The search team disgorged from the vehicle in front and as the engine idled, I had a few moments of dusty peace. Cocooned in my vehicle, shadows appeared through the tiny, dirty armoured rear window. I saw young children playing around the back of the vehicle. I started to peel away the multiple layers of protection. Those layers that both prevent me being vaporised but also prevent me communicating with the locals, the people I’m here to help, the people who might tell me where the bombs are. I undid the four point harness that securely locked me into my seat, opened the heavy, inch-thick armoured door, removed my protective glasses, lowered my weapon, pulled off my helmet and at last presented a sweat-soaked human face. In front of me were six children, aged five to fifteen. All had the obvious cheek of any confident, fun-loving kid anywhere in the world. My thoughts turned fleetingly to my three girls back home,
Pippa, Izzy and Evie, almost identical ages. How the accident of birth geography can be so kind, or so cruel.
My interpreter translated the words but anyone could have read the smiles, the mimics, the optimistic begging; “Kalam, Kalam” - pen pen. We talked for 15 minutes, they rapidly earned a cylume glow-stick for their energetic efforts, and soon a greater barter began. The boy had part of one of our “tanks”. Would I buy it? He disappeared. Within minutes he was back with a heavy, space-aged looking infra-red light of one of our vehicles. Negotiations could begin.
The crack of the bullet came from nowhere obvious. Shouts immediately followed, soldiers sprinted into the cover of the armoured vehicles, the turret span around, the huge Grenade Machine Gun now pointing directly at the nearest mud compound, in the general direction of the threat. But amongst the adrenaline-soaked drills of a dozen soldiers, crouching behind cover, scanning arcs with laser sights and barking fire control orders, one thing was totally incongruous; the children.
The report of the rifle, so obviously familiar to these tiny kids, had caused an instinctive reaction. As one they ducked. But as one they also recovered their composure. They knew this was not serious; there was no machine gun, no RPG, no grenades, no immediate escalation.
And so in the lives of these young kids, bred in the short term survivalism of Helmand, their most important issue changed in a literal heartbeat.
Instantly their focus returned from the bullet to the barter.
From under my body armour I clumsily pulled five dollars from my pocket. He looked at the note disdainfully. At fifteen he would already give Lord Sugar a run for his money. He started to haggle but a second crack reverberated over our heads.
Enough.
The troops sprinted back to the vehicles and in a cloud of dust and gravel we were off again. I had the light, he had the dollars. We were all safe.
Life in Afghanistan; simply survival.
Ten minutes later we were in Patrol Base 1.
Nameless but infamous.
The previous occupants, Malta Company, had ground out a small area of “protected community” around the base.
But at what price?
When I had first visited PB1 six months ago it was occupied by a vibrant, confident Rifle Company, optimistic and full of the buzz of escaping a dozen “contacts”, our euphemism for battles. No-one had been killed, their luck had held. But now the tiny memorial at the front of the small base was overflowing with names. Seven of that Company had subsequently died, 49 had been wounded. All from the less than a hundred who started.
Five bullet cases welded together into a cross.
The cross on a simple, rough stone cairn in memoriam.
It represents the greatest of ironies; the crucifix memorial to the Prince of Peace constructed with the weapons of war; a memorial to friends shot and blown apart, commemorated by the soulless instruments of violence.
A dust-beaten plank of wood lay against the memorial with words childishly scribbled upon it by a friend. By a friend who will now be enduring the reality of the loss back in England, probably living in the raw, visceral aftermath of crushingly painful meetings with grieving family or friends.
The words, accompanied by a felt-tip drawing of a helmet resting on an upturned rifle, read:
“Do not call me hero,
When you see the medals that I wear,
Medals maketh not the hero,
They just prove that I was there.
Do not call me hero,
Now that I am old and grey,
I left a lad, returned a man,
They stole my youth that day.
Do not call me hero,
When we ran the wall of hail,
The blood, the fears, the cries, the tears
We left them where they fell.
Do not call me hero,
Each night I stop and pray,
For all the friends I knew and lost,
I survived my longest day.
Do not call me hero,
In the years that pass,
For all the real true heroes,
Have crosses, lined up on the grass.”
That anonymous friend did not make up those words, but he wrote them. He wrote them for Daz.
Daz who died on the third of May, 2010.
Daz, who would have been full of life, optimism and hope on the eleventh of November 2009.
Rest In Peace Daz, and may your sacrifice help the children. I pray our luck holds better than yours.
On the eve of Remembrance Day I sit behind the ubiquitous Hesco bastion and write. These colourless, stone-filled, wire and cloth baskets enclose almost every British base in this blighted country; they have become synonymous with this prolonged conflict.
Three of the five companies of soldiers I command are fighting for their lives at this very second. The clear autumn sun of Afghanistan is still hot, and my sweaty, dust-encrusted combat uniform bears the white, tidal salt stains of a day’s perspiration.
A day in the Green Zone of the River Helmand’s fertile flood plain.
The sweat-tide clearly traces the outline of the heavy, cumbersome body armour that I’ve just discarded. In the distance the deep staccato beat of an Apache helicopter firing its 30mm shells mixes with the occasional crump of a Rocket Propelled Grenade. At over a kilometre away, the higher frequency fire from my soldiers’ rifles cannot be heard. But each of them are fighting for their lives. In deep, cloying irrigation ditches and on the flat, vulnerable tabletop surfaces of fields recently hand-harvested, young men on both sides of the insurgency will be clawing at the ground; the crack and thump of bullets splitting the air around them. Again
It has been the same almost every day.
We’re just approaching the end of the first two weeks of this tour. The almost thousand men (and nine women) I’m responsible for have the unenviable, complex and desperately dangerous task of dragging an inherently corrupt, feudal population away from the tempting short-term Taliban offer of poppy and guns. We offer them a dangerous and potentially bloody avenue out of over three decades of privation and pain. These people know war better than probably any people on earth. They exist within it. It is so hard to break the cycle of violence amongst a people who know only violence.
Yesterday I sat strapped into the rear seat of a gargantuan armoured vehicle codenamed Mastiff. We slowly halted to check for a potential bomb at a particularly vulnerable point on a road. Our surveillance systems had noticed disturbed earth, an ominous indication that an Improvised Explosive Device may have been dug in. The search team disgorged from the vehicle in front and as the engine idled, I had a few moments of dusty peace. Cocooned in my vehicle, shadows appeared through the tiny, dirty armoured rear window. I saw young children playing around the back of the vehicle. I started to peel away the multiple layers of protection. Those layers that both prevent me being vaporised but also prevent me communicating with the locals, the people I’m here to help, the people who might tell me where the bombs are. I undid the four point harness that securely locked me into my seat, opened the heavy, inch-thick armoured door, removed my protective glasses, lowered my weapon, pulled off my helmet and at last presented a sweat-soaked human face. In front of me were six children, aged five to fifteen. All had the obvious cheek of any confident, fun-loving kid anywhere in the world. My thoughts turned fleetingly to my three girls back home,
Pippa, Izzy and Evie, almost identical ages. How the accident of birth geography can be so kind, or so cruel.
My interpreter translated the words but anyone could have read the smiles, the mimics, the optimistic begging; “Kalam, Kalam” - pen pen. We talked for 15 minutes, they rapidly earned a cylume glow-stick for their energetic efforts, and soon a greater barter began. The boy had part of one of our “tanks”. Would I buy it? He disappeared. Within minutes he was back with a heavy, space-aged looking infra-red light of one of our vehicles. Negotiations could begin.
The crack of the bullet came from nowhere obvious. Shouts immediately followed, soldiers sprinted into the cover of the armoured vehicles, the turret span around, the huge Grenade Machine Gun now pointing directly at the nearest mud compound, in the general direction of the threat. But amongst the adrenaline-soaked drills of a dozen soldiers, crouching behind cover, scanning arcs with laser sights and barking fire control orders, one thing was totally incongruous; the children.
The report of the rifle, so obviously familiar to these tiny kids, had caused an instinctive reaction. As one they ducked. But as one they also recovered their composure. They knew this was not serious; there was no machine gun, no RPG, no grenades, no immediate escalation.
And so in the lives of these young kids, bred in the short term survivalism of Helmand, their most important issue changed in a literal heartbeat.
Instantly their focus returned from the bullet to the barter.
From under my body armour I clumsily pulled five dollars from my pocket. He looked at the note disdainfully. At fifteen he would already give Lord Sugar a run for his money. He started to haggle but a second crack reverberated over our heads.
Enough.
The troops sprinted back to the vehicles and in a cloud of dust and gravel we were off again. I had the light, he had the dollars. We were all safe.
Life in Afghanistan; simply survival.
Ten minutes later we were in Patrol Base 1.
Nameless but infamous.
The previous occupants, Malta Company, had ground out a small area of “protected community” around the base.
But at what price?
When I had first visited PB1 six months ago it was occupied by a vibrant, confident Rifle Company, optimistic and full of the buzz of escaping a dozen “contacts”, our euphemism for battles. No-one had been killed, their luck had held. But now the tiny memorial at the front of the small base was overflowing with names. Seven of that Company had subsequently died, 49 had been wounded. All from the less than a hundred who started.
Five bullet cases welded together into a cross.
The cross on a simple, rough stone cairn in memoriam.
It represents the greatest of ironies; the crucifix memorial to the Prince of Peace constructed with the weapons of war; a memorial to friends shot and blown apart, commemorated by the soulless instruments of violence.
A dust-beaten plank of wood lay against the memorial with words childishly scribbled upon it by a friend. By a friend who will now be enduring the reality of the loss back in England, probably living in the raw, visceral aftermath of crushingly painful meetings with grieving family or friends.
The words, accompanied by a felt-tip drawing of a helmet resting on an upturned rifle, read:
“Do not call me hero,
When you see the medals that I wear,
Medals maketh not the hero,
They just prove that I was there.
Do not call me hero,
Now that I am old and grey,
I left a lad, returned a man,
They stole my youth that day.
Do not call me hero,
When we ran the wall of hail,
The blood, the fears, the cries, the tears
We left them where they fell.
Do not call me hero,
Each night I stop and pray,
For all the friends I knew and lost,
I survived my longest day.
Do not call me hero,
In the years that pass,
For all the real true heroes,
Have crosses, lined up on the grass.”
That anonymous friend did not make up those words, but he wrote them. He wrote them for Daz.
Daz who died on the third of May, 2010.
Daz, who would have been full of life, optimism and hope on the eleventh of November 2009.
Rest In Peace Daz, and may your sacrifice help the children. I pray our luck holds better than yours.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Family of Dale Hopkins Raise Over £24,000
Pictured: Some of a great fundraising team: Claire, Emma, Sue, Sara and Dee. With Gary Featherstone behind the camera!
