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Parwich.org has received this message and the latest post from Major Benjamin Ingham of the Royal Artillery.

It was great to receive so many positive comments from my last post and I have been in touch with another Parwich member who has recently arrived in Afghanistan, we are hoping to meet up in the near future. The offer to send through parcels is exceptionally kind but we are well catered for and the main support that we, in the Armed Forces, value more is the continued support from family, friends and acquaintances.

The cold winter nights have been quickly replaced by the dry heat of the Afghan summer, there is no transition as one would expect in the UK, and in the course of a week the snow has melted leading to a dusty smog filled atmosphere that sits within the Kabul basin.  Due to a lack of consistent electricity, the local population has scourged the landscape of all trees for firewood and thus the slightest breeze creates billowing clouds of dust.  With Kabul being located 6000ft above mean sea level within a bowl at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountain range, effectively the start of the Himalayas, the air is trapped and develops into a polluted smog. 

The last opportunity to make use of the clear winter mornings came a few weeks ago and 140 personnel stationed at the Kabul Airbase turned out to take part in the Kabul ½ Marathon.  The course was set to follow the camp and airfield perimeter and, although considerably flatter than the Parwich Annual Hill Race, the distance more than made up for the lack of topography.  

A three week persistent cough, brought on by the afore-mentioned appalling air quality, was still lingering but I managed to motivate myself to complete the route at the end of a 12 hour working night shift.  All that kept me going was the thought of getting a good day’s rest and I finished in a modest time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.  Post race and a small earth tremor followed by a faulty fire alarm brought a hasty end to any sleep I was hoping to get and therefore the only option was to head back to the office for another night shift. 

As I have mentioned previously, The NATO Headquarters, where I work, is a 24 hour, 7 day a week machine.  There is no delineation between day and night and we actually work off 2 different time zones, ZULU time, aligned to UK winter time, and Afghan or LOCAL time referred to as D* time.  Whilst my office works in ZULU time those next door work in D* time, leading to the confusing situation whereby I can be chatting to friend in the same room but actually existing in a different time zone and working on a different calendar day! 

Despite a busy few months in Afghanistan the work load continues to build as the tempo of operations increases across the country.  During this period the insurgent networks are rearming and regrouping prior to their summer offences.  Increasing amounts of weapons and explosive materials are being smuggled across the porous borders and one of my roles is to prevent them from being put to use against coalition forces.  One of the main threats to ground troops is improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that are designed to maim an individual.  There are sophisticated assets in Afghanistan that enable us to monitor known insurgent ingress routes into and across Afghanistan.  We are then able to plan operations, which interdict and disrupt the insurgent networks, however, despite our best efforts it is impossible to prevent the insurgents from using IEDs against coalition troops.  It is an unrelenting game of cat and mouse.

On a lighter note, there are now two ‘villagers’ serving in Afghanistan and if I can track him down I hope to get a picture of Nettle and me for the next article.