News
HRH visits the Mercian Regiment on Salisbury Plain
1st February 2010
The Prince of Wales has paid troops in Wiltshire a morale-boosting visit as they prepared to deploy to Afghanistan.
The Prince shared a joke with many of the 2,000 troops taking part in exercises on Salisbury Plain.
His Royal Highness visited a forward operating base (FOB), a camp set up to imitate conditions in Afghanistan, and met soldiers and officers from The Mercian Regiment, part of the 4th Mechanized Brigade, known as The Black Rats.
Sgt Mark Lomas, 38, of Sniper Platoon 1 Mercian, said: "He is the figurehead of the UK public.
“For someone of his stature to come and visit us gives us quite a warm feeling. It makes you realise the people of the UK are looking at us as well."
He added: "We do realise there's a lot of support and believe it makes such a massive difference when you are out there. It's a big morale boost."
Around 4,500 soldiers will be deployed from now until April when they will take over taskforce Helmand headquarters in Afghanistan.
Their extensive mission rehearsal exercises are to prepare them for the deployment with small arms fire combat scenarios, strikes into improvised explosive device (IED) compounds, routine patrols and attacks, and shuras, meetings held between tribal elders in Afghanistan, which prepares troops for Afghan culture and customs.
The FOB's role is to protect and support battle groups on the ground in Afghanistan or for evacuating casualties.
The Prince, dressed in his military combats, went inside a sangar, which is an observation and gun post aimed at protecting the base.
He had already met one soldier, Sgt Andy Hawkins, 31, of 1 Mercian, in 2000 when Sgt Hawkins was recovering from injuries from a car accident during a posting to Cyprus.
The Prince of Wales sent him a bottle of whisky to aid his recovery and then met him a year later during training for Northern Ireland.
"He remembered me and I spoke about the whisky," said Sgt Hawkins. "It was good to see him. It's a good feeling knowing we are going to Afghanistan with the backing of The Prince and the country."
As Colonel-in-Chief, The Prince also met soldiers from the Royal Dragoon Guards during the visit.
Major Mark Ellwood, commanding officer of A Company, 1 Mercian, said: "Morale is high, this is just the icing on the cake to get a visit from our Colonel-in-Chief.
”Of course we are all apprehensive but we are all professional soldiers.
”The conditions we are going to face out there, the operational tempo out there is high but this is what we do and we are all looking forward to it."