Humbled by Afghan experience: TA medics come home

Amid emotional scenes last night, Monday 22 October 2007, proud families, friends and supporters welcomed home the bulk of the men and women of 208 Field Hospital to their HQ in Liverpool with some returning to the two additional squadron locations in Ellesmere Port and Blackpool.

208 Field Hospital ran a first-class medical facility – a true "hospital in the field" – at Camp Bastion, in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan. The unit sent 78 personnel to provide high standards of medical care for the sick and wounded in the main British hospital in Afghanistan. The hospital treated UK military personnel, coalition soldiers from all the ISAF contributing countries and Afghan national security forces.

Although it is a tented facility the field hospital at Camp Bastion boasts much of the modern equipment to be found in an NHS hospital – from an accident and emergency department and operating theatres to physiotherapy and X-ray.

As a TA unit, manned by soldiers that combine their part-time military training commitments with everyday civilian life and ‘day jobs’, most of the soldiers of 208 Field Hospital work in hospitals and other medical practices across the North West of England.

Their homecoming comes more than a year after they began preparing for their deployment, the first time that this field hospital had been deployed as a unit on operations since the Second World War.

208 Field Hospital arrived in theatre on 13 July 2007 and were immediately put to the test when a mass casualty situation was called with numerous wounded admitted into the hospital.

Speaking last night the unit's Commanding Officer, Colonel Andrew Whitton, from Lancaster, said:

"It has been a busy time for everybody but we have done a great job. The temperature was up there right from the start, about 45 degrees every day and never cooler than 25 degrees at night. It was fatiguing and people got very tired, but we are a great unit, with a lot of camaraderie, and we did a thoroughly professional job. I am very proud of what this unit has done. It’s been a privilege to lead them."

Captain Georgina Myles, from Standish, near Wigan, was welcomed home to Liverpool by her son Hal, aged 13, and her mother Jean. In civilian life, Capt Myles works as a sister on the intensive care wards of North Manchester General Hospital. She said:

"The best way I can describe the tour is to say I was humbled by what the lads are doing out there. They work really hard in such extreme conditions but just accept it and get on with it. I have come home with a definite sense of achievement. I am really glad that I went out there. The lads are doing a great job out there and deserve the best medical facilities. I am now going to have a good rest!"