It’s a Wrap
F/S Trigger Adams, IS-OP gives a view of life in Bamyan as part of Task Group Crib 11th deployment.
F/S Adams at work in Bamyan. (WN-08-0037-31-tn).
Having previously done a land-based deployment before, I thought I knew what to expect from a tour in Afghanistan…Well I was somewhat surprised, when I attended the first week of Pre-Deployment Training (PDT), for Air and Navy to ‘get up to speed’ for when the Army turn up. In the first couple of days I had used up more Ammo than I had in my years in the Air Force. Training to do foot and mounted patrols with contact drills and live ammo was most certainly an eye opener. I do remember thinking – what the hell am I doing? CMS will be a breeze after doing your Annual Weapons Qualification (AWQ) on a 300 meter range. As part of PDT, we had language lessons in Dari – well we really could have done with lessons from the other Services as well, learning two other languages prior to leaving New Zealand was challenging and I’m still getting stuck on some new acronyms. Luckily my trade, Communications and Information Systems (CIS), works regularly with the other Services and working in HQJFNZ before the deployment had exposed me to a lot of their way of doing things. Every Service has a different way of looking at situations and applying their training to it, and I believe this is an advantage for New Zealanders in a deployment situation as we should accept that there are other ways of approaching things. The S6 Cell works with a US team of communication personnel, which is great fun and certainly adds another perspective to our environment. Talk about doing stuff differently? It is the first time I have worked with them and give them every respect as they had all done a tour in Iraq, just three years previously, and they had been in Afghanistan for 12 months when we arrived! I am certainly glad I did this deployment and will take home some great memories. I have made some good friends, we have had a very busy and eventful six months and we have ticked quite a few firsts for Task Group (TG) CRIB deployments. Hopefully the diversity that the three Services brought together has helped us survive and overcome the events of TG CRIB XI. Been there, done that, couldn’t fit the story on a T-Shirt.