12th November

What does it mean to people back at home, what we are doing out there? To me it’s just my job and I love doing it, it’s just what I do, you might pick up a pen, I pick up a weapon system and fight Taliban. I do this for the bloke’s that are on patrol with me, not for recognition or anything. Went on Facebook for the first time in month’s tonight and the messages from people were just amazing, ‘Keep safe’, ‘Keep your head down’, that’s the best one, fat chance of that happening!

One thing that keep’s going through my head was a quote I read in a book about when the British that tried to fight through Afghanistan in the 1800’s, can’t remember the officer’s name, book’s back in Qudrat, but it went like this, ‘I find it amazing what the men will do to earn a little strip of ribbon’. I never really thought of what that meant until I’ve just sat down and read back through some of the things that we have already done in Qudrat only after a few weeks, and I look at it and think that officer had it wrong, it’s not for ribbon not for anything other than the paratrooper to the left and to the right.