Hi all,

Well as you can see thats me back safe and sound from Afghan, unfortunately the lads are still out there, Pebs and his boys are returning on the 13th April and Fitzy and his lads are returning on the 25th April.

The six months has gone extremely well, the lads have been coming into contact with the Taliban on many occassions, on one occassion Scott Fitzgerald was commanding the point section, he received effective enemy fire from only 30 metres away, he got pinned down in open grouund, we called for mortor fire, the MFC done an extremely good job with calling for fire within minutes, overall they fired 385 bombs onto 2 enemy positions which enabled scott and his section to extract into cover, thereafter we hammered the position with every gun available to us and that was a good sight.

The camp attacks became interesting, with an RPG missing Lsgt Chris Parker narrowly and the Super Sanger getting direct hits from small arms fire, the drummers were engaging within minutes on the sf guns and that again was very good sight to see.

 The accommodation to start off with was interesting, starting of with ponchos then upgrading to a thermal sheet and then finally moving into proper overhead protection which was a god send.

Weather was extremely harsh through the winter months, from rain, frost and snow and on many occassions experiencing all three in one day. But now the hot weather is arriving, alot of tanning is being done before the lads return.

Overall it has been an extremely successful tour, I am very proud to say that I am the Drum Major of this very fine Corps of Drums, the drummers and commanders on many occassions have demonstrated like all the drummers have done through the many years, that they can operate as a highly effective machine gun platoon and also carry out a Gdsm job to a very high standard as well.

I expect that you have all heard of the Drummers re-union on sat 26th july 08 at victoria bks windsor so i am really looking forward to seeing you all there and doing some catching up and then getting oiled up in the mess in the evening.

Hopefully i shall be putting some piccies on the album section over the next couple of days, so feel free to have a good look at them.

take care all
Ben Roberts
Drum Major