City patrol

Most of the 450 soldiers of the 1st Batallion of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment have spent their tour of Afghanistan patrolling the streets of Kabul.

The soldiers of the Regiment's own Kabul Patrol Company are the only members of the multinational International Security Assistance Force who walk the busy streets.

Surrounded on all sides by jagged peaks, Kabul sits in a bowl that helps trap the city's thick smog for hours on end.

For L/Cpl Chris Chamberlain, aged 21, a former pupil of Kidderminster's King Charles I High School, the rapid change in the weather is hard to take.

"It's hard to believe that just a week ago this whole place was covered in snow," he says.

While the thaw has removed the threat of black ice on Kabul's streets, it has coated the dusty roads with a thick layer of grey slime, obscuring the numerous potholes and ditches which toss the Land Rovers and their crews around like ships on heavy seas.

L/Cpl Chamberlain added: "The hardest thing is the traffic - the drivers are all mad."

On reaching a culvert which acts as rubbish dump and sewer for the locals, the British unveil one of their key weapons in the battle against terrorists - Jake.

Jake is one of three specialist sniffer dogs in Afghanistan. As Jake starts his search around the culvert - an ideal place for a bomb as it is close to the British base at Camp Souter - the local children stop calling on the troops for chocolate and watch the dog.

This time, however, Jake can't find any trace and the patrol returns to base to prepare for another mission.

Rural patrol

Northern Afghanistan feels like a completely different country from the capital.

But for the soldiers of the 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters it was still an area they needed to patrol.

During their six-month tour of Afghanistan, troops spent half of their time operating in some of the remotest areas in the world.

The city of Mazar-e-Sherif is just 45 minutes by plane from Kabul but thanks to the mountains of the Hindu Kush, unmarked minefields, poor roads and weather that can change from tropical heat to blizzards, the journey by car can take nine to 36 hours.

The province is home to the battalion's forward operating base, where up to 100 soldiers are ready to fly out to anywhere in Northern Afghanistan to assist the International Security Assistance Force keep the peace.

It is also where one of the battalion's two Provincial Reconstruction Teams are based, close to one of Islam's most important sites, the Blue Mosque.

These teams mediate between communities and sources of international money to help them fund projects such as wells.

The PRTs help to oversee the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of the various militias who still serve the warlords clinging to power in the remoter areas.

Over the past six months, warlords have started bringing in their weapons, which range from 100-year-old British rifles to tanks first used by the Russians when they invaded.

A key tool in the PRT arsenal are small eight-man teams who patrol some of the remoter areas of the country. These Military Observation Teams have spent the past six months living among the rural communities gaining the trust, support and friendship of the Afghans.

As a member of one of the MOTs, L/Cpl Robert Cedgetey, 21, from Bewdley, has been responsible for patrolling around the remote town of Aybak.

He and his team have spent all weathers driving through the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountain range which dominates the views around Afghanistan.

During the winter months, when the snow makes the roads impassable, the team has used donkeys to get out into the communities.

Should the MOTs get into trouble they know that help is a long way off. If they need support they can call in their comrades from the forward opening base but they are at least an hour's helicopter ride away.

So the team know that they have to rely on themselves and a small team of Afghan soldiers who guard their small safe house.

A former pupil from Bewdley High School, L/Cpl Cedgetey said: "The Afghan soldiers who guard us are very loyal. But out on patrol we have to do everything ourselves.

"At first the locals didn't know what to make of us but now they will come up to us and talk.

"We are invited into their homes but most of the time we are in tents and in winter that can be bitterly cold."

The changes in the weather has been one of the hardest things the troops have had to deal with.

"When we first arrived it was quite warm then suddenly we had deep snow everywhere. Now that we are going home it is getting warm again," said former Worcester man L/Cpl Mark Brooks, 22, a former Elgar High School pupil.

One of L/Cpl Cedgetey's comrades said that during winter the temperature inside his Army-issue

sleeping bag dropped to minus six.