Trip to Camp Bastion For a Sugar Rush and a Cheryl Crush

Capt. Sam Branston, 2IC C Company
22nd September 2011

Wk ending 17th September 2011... Cobra 31A were briefed on an important operation this week. This operation would take them away from the comforts of PB2 for a couple of days. Their mission: to go to Bastion and meet pop star Cheryl Cole. Never have a group of Riflemen been so openly excited. It would even be worth the two hour ride to bastion in the cramped back of the Mastiff (air conditioning broken as standard), an experience that has come closer to snapping the mental health of the multiple than anything the insurgents could rustle up.

A trip to Bastion generally means three things to Riflemen from the CP line. Good food and lots of it, the kitchens in Bastion are amazing and generally they can easily feed you more than you can eat. Fizzy drinks and sweets, the absence of alcohol means that everyone tends to revert to their inner ten year old and goes slightly mental on Irn-Bru and Haribo. Finally it is a chance to gawp at the nurses, the single lads running around high on Fanta trying to impress the girls with their war stories. All in all a good way to wind down for a period and topped off with a very thick layer of icing that would be meeting Ms Girls Aloud.

The whole idea of bringing Cobra 31A to Bastion was to show Cheryl (and Royal) how a patrol in Afghanistan is conducted. The day before she arrived we talked through what we would do and tried to throw as much into the short patrol as we could. This included Grand Nationaling - climbing over the walls of compounds to avoid using alleys and streets, a VP 360 drill - a method to check there are no IEDs on certain areas as well as a shura with local nationals. This would be finished off by calling in a helicopter to evacuate a casualty. The main concern of the multiple was that Rfn Richie Wall would drink so much Monster energy drink that night he would be found body popping in a storm drain and miss the demo.

We were ready to go straight out when Cheryl arrived. She was given a quick brief on the patrol and then we stepped off, Cheryl under the capable direction of Mne Kyle Noblett. After a couple of hundred metres, including a few ditch jumps, Rfn George Bridewell took over the explanation of the VP 360. Cheryl by this stage was starting to understand the hardships endured by Riflemen on a day to day basis. Rfn Josh Gratton was given the responsibility of ensuring that Cheryl got up the ladder correctly, a job he seemed to be keen to perform to the highest standard. We finally arrived at the objective, a compound where local elders had gathered to hold a shura with ISAF, Lt Marcus Denison sat with Cheryl and the locals and they talked about problems in the local area and how Afghan society worked. Cheryl seemed to be over awed at the work that the Riflemen did and I wish that she could come out on every patrol as I have never seen the guys work and act so professionally. She genuinely understood the day to day hardships, the heat, the dust, the funny tasting water. After Royal had finished showing her how not to clear a compound, and taking a (mock) casualty in the process, 1 Rifles came to the rescue by securing the landing site for a helicopter to evacuate the casualty. Cheryl then experienced a brown out as the Chinook turned the entire world brown with all of the dust it blew up. The Riflemen particularly enjoyed the horror on the media peoples faces who had failed to heed the warnings and had decided to get a little too close!

After the demo there was time for photos and each Rifleman managed a one on one shot with Cheryl as well as the group / grope photo. Cheryl was given a commando dagger and a t-shirt by 42 Commando. 31A’s gift was much more appreciated, an ice cold Diet Coke. Now the blokes just had to endure another two hours in the Mastiff and they’d be back in PB2 and ready for a ‘real-deal’ heli strike operation with the rest of the company in the early hours of the morning.

Souvenirs…..? Rfn Josh Gratton still has the water bottle that she drank from, he picked it up off the floor.