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What was your reaction when you heard you would be going?

“A bit of excitement, a bit of: 'Phew, finally get the chance to actually do the soldiering I wanted to do from ever since I joined’.”

What will you be doing?

“It’s still slightly unclear. Anyone who goes out to Afghanistan at the moment on operations at the moment is almost multi-tasking.

“You’ve got one job that you go out there for but when you actually get out there you are being pulled left right and centre helping out people.

“Essentially I’m going to be ‘TACP’ which is Tactical Air Control Party which is linked in with the RAF and fast jets and supply drops and all these bits and pieces I’ve still yet to find out all the details of what I’ll actually be doing.”

Is that like Air Traffic Control?

It is, there’s a few courses that I’ve done and that other people do to get to this stage. And now in Afghanistan especially, because of the importance of ‘air assets’ in all senses of the word, FACs (Forward Air Control) and TACPs essentially do become air traffic controllers, which is a somewhat different role I never thought I would see myself doing in the army.

“I have been trained for it, I haven’t spent a day at Heathrow or anything like that but to the extent that the army can train you for air traffic controlling I have been trained for it.

It’s very different from what we first knew you were doing – reconnaissance work, 'eyes and ears’.

“This job is … it’s still linked in with the same thing and it’s just on a bigger scale. Rather than being the troop leader you are who is sort of - not necessarily at the bottom of the pile but you are the eyes and ears in a different area – compared to where I will be at this point, I will be with the higher-up people, hopefully trying to advise them on how to use ‘air’ etc. But I’m sure they won’t take my advice.” (laughs)

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