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Blackanthem Military News
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Last Updated:
Jan 5, 2009 - 8:24:33 PM |
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Blackanthem Military News
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| British Army Lance Cpl. Matthew Rees-Hall briefs a group of British soldiers who were about to be transported to Camp Julien in West Kabul at the Movement Control pick up site at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters. (ISAF photo) |
KABUL, Afghanistan - To the naked eye it's just a map. Squiggly lines, square city blocks, roads, twists and turns. But not this map.
This map of Kabul has meaning. Each color-coded route and each highlighted road symbolizes months, and in some cases, years, of reconnaissance, planning, lives lost, and immeasurable hard work to map out safe routes for members of the British Movement Control teams that work out of Force Protection and Transport Company at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul.
Running his finger along a highlighted road, British Army Lance Corporal Matthew Rees-Hall briefs a group of British Soldiers, who required transport to the Afghanistan National Army Training Center at Camp Julien in west Kabul on the route that will be taken.
"It's important to explain the destination because everyone needs to know where we will be at all times," Corporal Rees-Hall, a 32-year-old native of East Sussex, England, said. "It's just routine safety to know the hotspots to anticipate anything that may go wrong on a trip."
Such is a danger Corporal Rees-Hall and the other three members of Team Foxtrot are ready to face. The team is one of six that falls under the 7th Transport Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps and makes routine trips outside the ISAF operating area. Their main function is to safely transport personnel around Kabul on an as-needed basis with an array of armored hard and soft -shell vehicles.
Leading Team Foxtrot is Corporal Dave Greaves, a 33-year-old native of Newcastle, England. Having been deployed to ISAF since August, Greaves said he feels more than 100 percent confident that his team can handle anything that may pose a danger.
"It's all part of the process from the start of our seven-to-eight month training track," Greaves explained. "Each team has four members that have been together since the start of training so by the time we're deployed not only do we know how each person works, we've really become something of a family."
Corporal Rees-considers his "family" away from home the best of all the teams, emphasizing the importance of camaraderie amongst his teammates and using their driving as a means of maintaining a light-hearted spirit of competition amongst the themselves.
"It's all in good fun, but it has an underlying purpose," he said. "A little competition helps people perform better, and it also keeps our morale up as we work these deployments. It's good to have the competitive mentality as we perform these assignments."
The assignments are handed down from requests submitted to the MOVCON dispatch office with as little notice as 24 hours. Each team rotates assignments making anywhere from two to four trips a day at almost any hour as required.
"We're all happy to do it," Corporal Greaves said. "If even one person requires a trip in our area of operation, we'll suit up and go, it's just what we do."
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