Female soldiers forced to fight

Michael Smith & , : {}

FEMALE soldiers in Afghanistan are being left with small preference but to quarrel the Taliban on the front line.

Senior officers have shut off steady efforts by ministers to put women in frontline combat. A uninformed review, due after this year, is approaching to contend the ban. But one womanlike infantryman has described how she regularly dismissed her purloin during fighting with the Taliban prior to being wounded.

The realities of the front line leave womanlike soldiers small alternative, pronounced Private Kerry Smith, a 25-year-old medic who took piece in the extreme fight in Helmand last summer.

The fighting was so heated around the design that infrequently I had no preference but to make make make use of of of the weapon, she said. It could have been dangerous for all of us if Id refused to make make make use of of of it.

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Smith pronounced the initial time she non-stop glow was as piece of a nine-person Welsh Guards feet unit five miles northeast of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. We were ambushed by Taliban, who surrounded the unit and dismissed on us from 4 or five positions, she said.

The unit commander in chief was screaming for suppressing fire. The rivalry banishment point was right in front of me. I didnt think twice about it. I proposed banishment on the rivalry position, expending about fifteen rounds.

Smith, who still has a turn embedded in her leg, pronounced she had been forced to stick on the frontline fighting on a series of occasions. It was regularly as a last resort, she said. As a medic Im a non-combatant. That said, I lift a purloin for a reason. Im lerned to make make make use of of of it to the same standards as the men.

• The ultimate infantryman to be killed in Operation Moshtarak was declared as Lance-Sergeant David Walker, 36, of 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards. Walker, from Glasgow, was killed whilst streamer a unit in an area of Nad-e-Ali.

Special forces in Falklands

A small group of special forces planners has been sent to the Falklands to safeguard that the islands defences are up to date, contend troops sources.

The group was finished with progressing this month as a precaution, among protests from Argentina about oil training around the islands by British firms. A North Sea oil supply arrived in the area on Friday after Buenos Aires pronounced ships streamer by the waters to the Falkland Islands indispensable permission.