Do you remember what you did on the 19 March 2003?
Take a moment to read Major Douglas Icke memories of this time.
Memories of Op TELIC (Jan-May 2003) – SSgt Dougie Icke, 2 Sig Regt (now Maj Dougie Icke, 14 Sig Regt (EW))
When the Twin Towers fell in 2001, I was a Troop Sergeant at Bassingbourn. I was in the barber shop and watched it unfold on television; from that moment it felt inevitable that the British Army would deploy.
Over the next few months, the tempo of training really increased. We knew Saddam Hussein has used chemical weapons before and so my role as unit NBC (now CBRN) instructor became very busy.
In early 2003 we were deployed to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Basic kit was in really short supply, with no desert clothing, limited ammunition and even respirator filters hard to find. I wasn’t impressed, but happy to be there as I’d missed out on the Gulf War of 1991. Then, I was chosen to deploy with the forward Battlegroups into the desert about 30km from the Iraqi border.
When the invasion started on 19th March 2003, the chemical threat was still very real and we seemed to be always carrying out the immediate action drill. British troops took Umm Qasr, and then things calmed down for a while and I was even able to borrow a mobile phone from a journalist and ring my girlfriend (now wife) back in the UK, the first time I’d spoken to her in weeks.
Memories of our time in the desert are fond ones. We dealt with sandstorms, worked with many different units and helped set up a headquarters and accommodation centre in a huge warehouse. I carried a teddy called ‘Doddy’ from my daughter’s primary school wherever I went and it is in loads of photos, including one with Kate Adie.
At the end of it, we genuinely felt sorry for the troops who took over from us, as we thought they’d missed everything. Little did we know that within a year they would be fighting hard again.
All that was 20 years ago but it feels much less. At the time, we genuinely thought we were there for all the right reasons and I personally feel proud of deploying to Iraq.
