for in full by the British army.
As it was Christmas, I bumped into many old friends over that two-week period and it was during those encounters that I discovered just how much I had changed. Many people had commented on the change in my physical appearance, but it was the change in me as a person that I now noticed. I was no longer interested in village life, local politics, who was seeing who, and the usual local scandals. It wasn’t that I felt above it, just different. I had an itch that needed to be scratched. I was so anxious to get going that two days before my leave was due to end I took an early flight back to Heathrow and on to the next stage of my British army career at the Royal School of Signals in Blandford, Dorset.
The telecommunications course I had chosen was one of the best trades in the Royal Signals, reflected in the fact that at the end of the course you were promoted to lance corporal and the highest pay grade in the army. It was thus, not surprisingly, also one of the longest training programmes.
I spent just over a year at Blandford learning my trade. In the beginning, the course was just like any other college electronics course. We studied applied maths, physics, electronic principles, analogue and digital circuits and transmission systems. It was when we moved on to the practical phase of the course that things got more interesting. We would be met every morning at the entrance to the secure wing of one of the dozens of training buildings on the vast camp. Once signed in, we would be escorted at all times until we were signed out again in the evening. It was in those secure wings that we learned how to test and repair every radio and communications system in the British army, everything from Manpack radios to tank-borne systems. We also learned to deal with the most precious of all systems, cryptography. Technicians had a unique insight into this vital component of British army communications because not only did we need to be able to use it but also to repair it.
As you’d expect in the army, we had the odd parade, but in general we were there to learn the trade. We worked Monday to Friday but had most weekends off. I took up boxing and cross-country running to make the most of my spare time. I stayed fit and firmly focused on my career throughout. Our moto, after all, was Certa Cito, Swift and Sure.
At the end of the training, the issue of which army unit I would join had to be decided. I submitted a list of my top three choices with no guarantee I would get any of them. Most of my mates went for postings like Cyprus, Germany and London, where they could enjoy extra money and a great social life and little chance of seeing action. That approach wasn’t for me. I wanted a unit I could travel with and see the world, even if it was some hellhole. I reasoned that there were two things the army never went anywhere without, no matter how big or small the contingent: satellite communications (21st Signal Regiment) and an electronic warfare unit (14th Signal Regiment), so I put both on my list. I got 14th Signal Regiment, which wasn’t that surprising considering no one else wanted it.
Located at Brawdy army base in south-west Wales, 14th Signal Regiment wasn’t known for being a glamour posting. The isolated location of the base and the harsh Welsh weather made it uninviting, but it proved a great posting for me. First, we only worked a four-day week, which enabled me to pursue one of favourite hobbies: hillwalking. With the Brecon Beacons less than an hour’s drive away, I spent most weekends there with a few mates, crisscrossing the peaks, and following it up with a few well-earned pints. I kept up boxing, and I was able to take an advanced course in jamming technology (used to disable enemy communications) so as to improve my chances of being deployed: jammers are often deployed in support of other units.
All in all, I wasn’t complaining about Brawdy, but by mid2000 I was getting a little bored with the predictable life of the base. I wanted some adventure. The opportunity came sooner than I’d expected.
4 SIERRA LEONE
While all the fighting was going on, back at our operations room we listened in to the very controlled and professional communications of the assault force, and what a contrast that was to what we heard from the rebel ranks. As they tried desperately to defend themselves and communicate what was going on across their network, our jammers did their thing and rendered the attempts at communication useless. This generated further panic and helped significantly in the success of the mission.
*
In May 2000, 226 Squadron’s Light Electronic Warfare Troop (LEWT) was readying for a deployment to Sierra Leone, which was in the grips of a vicious ten-year civil war. Despite having vast mineral wealth, the country remained one of the poorest on the planet thanks to decades of war and corruption. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA) and government was led by President Kabbah. The antigovernment rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by ‘Brigadier’ Foday Sankoh, were marching on the capital, Freetown. Trying to keep the two sides apart was the UN peacekeeping force, UNAMSIL, but it was far too under-resourced to be able to hold back the rebels. Tony Blair decided to dispatch a rescue force to extract British and other foreign nationals to safety. The mission, codenamed Operation Palliser, involved 800 men from the Parachute Regiment, led by the force commander brigadier, David Richards, and was meant to last between seven and ten days. Fifteen years later, there are still British troops in Sierra Leone.
The LEWT was a small troop, composed of about a dozen men from my regiment, 14th Signals, and they were mainly deployed with British Special Forces to provide communications, direction-finding, interception and jamming capabilities. Everyone in the LEWT was airborne-trained, and on this mission they would be deploying with the Parachute Regiment. As the rest of our regiment watched in envy, the LEWT guys moved about Brawdy camp in their stripped-down Landrovers fitted with 50mm heavy machine guns (HMG) and 7.76mm GPMGs. Kitted out in tropical warfare uniforms and jungle boots, they looked the part, and we envied them.
LEWT lacked only one thing: a communications and electronic warfare technician. However, before I could even throw my hat in for selection to join the mission, my mate Susan was chosen to deploy with them. I was gutted, of course, but quickly put it to the back of my mind and got on with my normal duties.
A few weeks after LEWT’s initial deployment, our sergeant major appeared at the door of the tech workshop.
‘We’ve received a further warning order for Sierra Leone,’ he said, addressing Jock the tech sergeant. I was in like a shot, cocky as hell, immediately listing off the reasons why I should be part of the next deployment. He stood there, expressionless, until I finally stopped talking.
‘Save your breath Paddy,’ he said, ‘you’ve already been picked. Get your ass down to the medical centre and sort out your jabs.’ A warning order didn’t necessarily mean that I would be going anywhere, just that we had to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. No one knew for sure where the mission was headed at that point, and I knew it could well be over before I got a chance to deploy. Selfishly, I was probably one of the few people hoping that the British army presence in Sierra Leone would continue.
Over the next few weeks I watched anxiously and enthusiastically as Brigadier Richards stretched his initial rules of engagement (ROE) to push the RUF back into the jungle. On 26 May, 600 men from 42nd Commando took over from the Parachute Regiment, and on 15 June Operation Palliser officially came to an end, succeeded by Operation Basilica which aimed to train and support the SLA in defeating the rebel forces. I was overjoyed at the news as it would mean a long-term commitment to Sierra Leone. I was now certain of being deployed.
Within a few days I had begun training for my first overseas deployment to a combat zone as a British soldier. This involved everything from advanced weapon training and mine clearance to jungle warfare. We were given the general background to the conflict in Sierra Leone: how Sankoh’s war effort was funded by the smuggling of unregulated diamonds, known as blood diamonds, across the border to neighbouring Liberia. Liberia was under the control of President Charles Taylor, who took the diamonds in exchange for drugs and weapons, which in turn fuelled the war.
There
