Argylls home from Helmand as Borderers ordered back to Afghanistan after only twelve months

The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, now the 5th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland (or 5Scots) are returning home from a tour of duty in Afganistan’s Helmand Province as part of 16 Air Assault Brigade. The Royal Highland Fusiliers (2Scots), on the same tour, will be coming back with them. They belong to 52nd Lowland Brigade but were attached to 16 Air Assault to provide it with an extra battlegroup.

These two battalions have first been in Cyprus for ‘decompression’ – the army lingo for building a bridge between the experience of war and the brief return to domestic life. There is no link between such worlds apart from the soldier himself. Moving between them – in either direction – is hard for the rest of us to imagine.

As these battalions leave, three more Scots battalions are in training to go to Afghanistan for a six month tour in 2009. They are the Royal Scots Borderers (1Scots), the Black Watch (3Scots), and 40 Regiment, Royal Artillery (Lowland Gunners).

The Borderers are being sent out again in spite of just having been home for twelve months. The Ministry of Defence’s own guidelines recommend twenty four months between operations. The Argylls know all about this abuse. In an earlier report we noted that the Argylls had been given no more than eight months between tours on one occasion, only one third of the required respite.