The Ritz and Mr Blair.....

Next we have Ritz gate…. This is the first of the staging on tasks (stag is guard). When the my platoon come of mobiles 1 onto the Ritz gate we have normally been on a tasking in the day or early in the morning so it’s been a long day already. What do we do at Ritz gate? Ritz gate as I explained earlier is the only entrance to the military enclave for military personnel and any civilian employees/contractors. We have to search all locally employed civilians (LEC’s) that need to gain access to the enclave. A large amount of LEC’s work on the camp 100’s in fact so there’s allot of people to search in and out and all ID’s have to be checked. Ritz isn’t that bad as we have a fast change around from position to position so you get a change of scenery and I different face to chat with, well its going to be a different one out of the two possibilities! The only down side is it can get tiring depending what you’ve been doing with Mobiles 1 if you’ve been on the go for 3 days up at sparrow fart every day then out all day jumping straight into Ritz and staging on till the early hours of the morning then up again for the morning searching surge as the LEC’s pile into work. Bus loads come through and searching 52 LEC’s between 2 of you is a task some times, generally they are all cooperative but then you get some that aren’t so happy to help. I prime example is one guy yesterday I searched a whole bus load myself and then once I’d finished and Warner had given the inside of the bus a once over I told them all to get back on but then I clocked one guy sat on the bus pretending to be sleeping, leaning his head against his arms resting on the chair in front, I saw him look up and then get his head down again. So I stopped everyone getting on and gave the window a bang and beckoned him of the bus. He strolled of the bus his body language resembling something of Harry Enfields Kevin and Perry! I new he was trying to avoid the search probably because he couldn’t be bothered with it but at the same time in the whole scheme of things he could be avoiding it for a reason. I gave him the once over with the hoodlum (a hand held metal detector) and half way through that he tried to walk of so I grabbed him by the arm and turned him round and told him to pack it in! At the same time an English speaking LEC was telling him to pack it in, you can always tell the general gist of what’s being said by international language of body language. Because he was being awkward I then moved into a more thorough search which he wasn’t happy about and by this point I was happy he didn’t have any metal objects on him but I thoroughly padded him down to fuck him around and make sure, I then said to him and the guy who was speaking to him who I new spoke English, “If you cooperate with us we will get on and things will not take as long but if not things will just get more difficult each time you come through here!” I then let him and every one else on the bus and on there way after being delayed longer than necessary. I figured that he’d get a rifting of every one else on his bus for making them all stand outside in the rain longer than necessary and yes its been raining! We had a visit from Tony Blaire yesterday and apparently it was on the news so if you saw him at the HQ in Basrah that’s the DIV HQ we guard. The funny anecdote of the day was from one of the news reports, “Mr Blaire’s visit lifted the moral of the troops in Basrah” yeah right! Our first full day of rest for about 14 – 16 days, our first lie in!....... 9AM!!!! BANG BANG BLEEDING BANG!!! On opening the door, Sergeant Green is stood there “enjoying your lie in lads? Well it finished now!” they needed extra men down at DIV HQ because the PM was coming and we ended up stood in the DIV HQ car park on the side of the road he was coming down making sure no cars left the car park when he was on his way through and that also involved looking smart and coming to attention as he drove past…. So this paved the way for standing in the same place for 3 – 4 hours instead of chilling out writing letters or watching a film, generally relaxing…. So reviewing the news report moral was definitely not lifted, especially when you’ve got numerous officers running round flapping because the PM’s coming! Chucking orders and bone taskings at every spare soldier they can find it’s definitely not a moral boosting experience but hey that’s the military… Mind you I was stood on the car park right by the front door to HQ were they got in and out of the vehicles so at least I was right by all the action and ended up about 10m’s away from him.