The task of constructing a bridge of 210 meters across the Shatt-al-Arab River fell to SSgt Raine of 2 Troop and attached personnel from the Regiment.  The amount of equipment alone proved this was going to be a huge task.

We arrived on mass during the early hours of Thursday morning with a convoy of vehicles carrying plant and the usual engineer stores.

The first task was to unload the civilian trucks; this was carried out with the minimum amount of noise. This meant the other occupants of the Shat Al Arab Base had something to talk about at breakfast when they realised a large part of their camp had been adopted by engineers.

Day light Thursday morning came around too soon for everyone’s liking, it also meant the first load of containers arrived and the task began in earnest.

The calming influence of SSgt “Geordie Raine” ensured we managed to get the containers on camp with LCpl Green and LCpl Patterson organising the routes into the construction site.

As soon as the ISO containers were grounded the contents were emptied with help from Cpl Young and Spr Carter who were operating the forks loaned to us by 7 Headquarters Squadron.

The bridging stores were checked off against the manifest lists as Cpl “Chad” Chadwick moved the ISO’s to a corner of our little Empire. Cpl “Paul” Ansell started organising the yard layout placing specific parts in designated positions for easy access during the construction. Cpl Young and Spr Carter ferried the stores around with the forks. This allowed the construction teams to get on with the task immediately.

SSgt Raine consoling the men

Friday began in a frenzy of activity, which would not have happened without everybody’s favourite crane operator LCpl Oldham. The panels weigh over 1.5 Tonnes so there were two options for LCpl Green and LCpl Patterson, physically lifting up the panels or LCpl Oldham’s crane, luckily the crane worked. There was obvious competition between the teams, LCpl Patterson’s team consisting of Spr’s Tansley and Chapman and  LCpl Greens team consisting of LCpl Nash, Spr’s Clark and Jennings. The panel construction race between left and right side of bridge was very one sided early on however LCpl Green has managed to pull the deficit back with some interesting words of encouragement.

On Sunday our final load of containers arrived. It was another busy day for CPL “Paul” Ansell organising another seven container loads of bridge stores onto the yard.

At the moment we are building approximately 10 sections of bridge a day which takes some doing, and the lads are pretty tired at the end of the day. We are working six and half days a week so that we can get the bridge parts ready for the construction on time.

The bridge cost something like 3.5 million Dollars and they have not sent out the detailed plans, but that’s all part of the fun. Anyway it will soon be time for the construction across the Shatt-Al-Arab this is when it will get really different. More on that next time Happy Christmas to you all.

Story by LCpl Skivington

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