Sleep depravation and rocket attacks....

Well Christmas and new year are now over and to be honest I’m glad… very bah humbug I know but New years eve ended up being a repeat of Christmas day, the same patrol, same time and no beer but hey that’s life… I’m not saying I didn’t have a laugh and feel a bit festive but in all fairness I’m glad its over so we can get back into getting on with the job and getting the months down, all the festivities did was slow down time and get every one pissed of all the time for one reason or another half the time relating round being tasked for a job when every one else is getting a beer that evening. Then inevitably with any job that mood then cascades into everything you do for the whole day and the whole team at least now with no more special days when its tradition to be with you family’s, be merry and drink large quantity’s of alcohol everyone won’t have a reason to be annoyed that they’re being tasked to a certain job and we can get on with it and be happy…. Since the new year we’ve been relatively busy there’ve been several IED and Arms finds also a couple of IED attacks so sadly they weren’t found before they detonated.. And yesterday we had our first rocket attack luckily the rocket didn’t hit any thing of importance in the camp and more importantly there were no injuries. When the attack actually happened we were all in the cook house eating tea and in all fairness I was starving and tired… I was just tucking into my profiter roles and Chris said “Look at that tit over there he’s just walked in, he’s got his helmet and body armor on and washing his hands at the wash point” (for hygiene before you eat everyone has to wash there hands at set wash points) a point to note when your walking around Allenby lines you don’t have to have your helmet and body armor worn just a couple of minutes away so you can leave it in your accommodation when you go to the cook house. Then the bloke in question turns round, he was a naval officer, above the roar of talking in the cook house he bellowed out “I think it would be advisable for you all to don your body armor and helmets!” when he said that we then new shit he wasn’t just wearing it for the sake of it we were under attack, it was comical because the entire cook house then stampeded out the doors to grab there body armor and helmets they had left in there rooms and the Naval officer was then the only one left in the cook house and he just strolled up to the service and got his dinner. It tickled me that he’d calmly wandered in washed his hands then made his announcement and cleared the cook house and the queue for scoff! Since writing about the first attack we’ve been rocketed again so that’s twice in three days! The last one was closer than the first but still nothing to worry about as in the 6 months prior to us being here they had at least one a month and nothing was hit and nobody hurt, the rockets they use are just propped up against something pointing in our general direction and triggered so they just fly any were really then land some were near. When the latest attack happened I was in bed, I’d just got in as we’d just finished 3 days guard and I had about 14hrs sleep over the 3 day according to my driver’s hour’s record!! I was tired and we were going out on an escort 5 hours after we finished so I was getting as much sleep as possible! Be it only a couple of hours.. any way back on to the rocket, I was just settling to go to sleep and there was a deep boom and the room shook at first I thought it was some one knocking something over next door but it was followed by the clattering of crap landing on our mortar cover (a massive metal cover over all the accommodation and paths so if a mortar ever did come on target it would detonate on that rather than us) then about a minute later the whining of the mortar alarm. The rocket had landed directly in line with our accommodation but no where near enough to cause any dramas. I stayed in bed as I felt sleep was more important than donning my body armor and helmet and standing round waiting for the all clear, it’s landed, and it’s gone off nothing I can do about it now…. And SLEEP!! We’ve really felt the squeeze as the R and R (we all get 2 weeks home leave) has started this rotation. It’s the first time we’ve done 3 days of guard down a team due to them being at home for 2 weeks on R&R. It was hard going as I mentioned before basically sleep was none existent and if we’re going to be doing this amount of tasks for the next 4.5 months then something will end up giving as we’re all knackered after just one 3 day rotation! We’re straight into mobiles now and as we’re down a team there’s going to be no let up on this either… the pattern is set now and the grafting really has begun!