1) Honour: In January 2007 in Afghanistan, three tough-as-nails Royal Marines and a Royal Engineer strapped themselves to Apaches to go in search of a comrade. The scene was after an assault on a Taleban fortress, during which Lance Corporal Mathew Ford was shot. Having regrouped in the face of heavy Taleban resistance, the commanding officers realised one of their number was missing. The men tied themselves to the helicopters using harnesses and, dodging heavy fire, the Apaches flew across a river and landed so the marines could detach themselves and recover his body.
2) Courage: In July 2005 in Iraq, the then Captain Peter Allen Norton went to assist a US military patrol that had been hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). He was checking for more IEDs at the site when a second one went off. In spite of serious injuries he continued to lead his team and refused evacuation until he was sure all his colleagues in the area were aware of the threat. One of many fearless British counter-IED operatives, he received a George Cross for his exploits.
3) Resilience: In the summer of 2003 in Iraq, Lance Corporal of Horse Michael Flynn was commanding a Scimitar reconnaissance vehicle and came up against an enemy equipped with some serious armour. He used his top class recce skills to spot an enemy tank battalion and its supporting artillery. Undeterred by heavy enemy fire he called in our artillery and air support with awesome accuracy, destroying the enemy units and with it their morale.
4) Resistance: August 2004 saw the longest defensive stand by British troops since WW2. The CIMIC-House, centre of the British Army-led Multinational Division’s Civil-Military Co-operation activities, was situated in Al Amarah in Iraq. And the militia of the Shia Mahdi Army wanted it back. Typifying the toughness of our troops was the First Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, the most attacked company in the entire theatre of Iraqi operations. They fired some 33,000 rounds and the enemy never got nearer than 30 metres to British lines.
5) Assault: Operation Houghton was an attack in 2003 by Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade on the strategically significant Al Faw peninsula that marked the start of the Second Gulf War to topple Saddam. It was a case of precision co-operation as the Royal Air Force as well as Royal Navy planes and ships all contributed. While fighting was raging Lance Corporal Justin Thomas manned a machine gun for fifteen minutes under heavy enemy fire while his comrades regrouped, earning a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.
6) Rescue: In Boscastle in Cornwall back in 2004, there was a battle of a different type: against the weather. The devastating flash flood there was the most extreme ever seen in Britain. Cars were swept away, bridges torn down and people clung on for their lives in torrential rain. RAF, Royal Navy and Coastguard search and rescue crews worked tirelessly to rescue people from the treacherous swirling waters. Miraculously their actions saved over a hundred people from the flood waters in appalling conditions.
7) Gallantry: Corporal Wayne Mills from First Battalion The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment received the first ever Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for his service in the Balkans in 1994. On patrol as part of UN peacekeeping duties in Bosnia, he and his men were fired upon by a group of Bosnian Serbs. Realising his group would be vulnerable in the open wood clearing where they found themselves, Corporal Mills selflessly turned round to engage in fire with the hostile group and give his fellow soldiers time to reach cover.
8) Flexibility: In 2000, the initiative shown by the British Armed Forces in Sierra Leone brought about a decisive intervention in the country’s civil war. Operation Palliser started out as a mission to evacuate non-combatants. But when 800 British paratroopers arrived at Freetown airport in the context of an imminent rebel takeover of the country’s capital, a quick-thinking group of staff officers took control of the government’s war effort and engineered the defeat of rebel forces. It was a decisive step on the path to peace in Sierra Leone.
9) Reassurance: Sometimes being a sign of security is as important as any fighting. When Kosovo was handed from United Nations control to the majority ethnic Albanian government in 2008, British troops deployed by NATO were on hand to oversee the transition. Their presence was vital to protect locals, be a visible security presence and deter violence. The troops were part of a quick-reaction force which could be dispatched anywhere in Kosovo in case of ethnic tensions resurfacing.
10) Protection: Most recently, in March 2011 the UK Armed Forces joined NATO’s Operation Unified Protector, a military operation in Libya to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and protect civilians from Colonel Gaddafi’s forces. All three of the Services have participated in the mission, including Royal Navy vessels, as well as Royal Air Force Tornado and Typhoon fighters. To ratchet up the pressure on Gaddafi, British Army Apache helicopters have recently flown successful missions from the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean.
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