Op Haven 1991
by Mne PW Cosgrove

'LCpl Whitelam, Cosgrave, Warham, get your kit packed, you are off to the hospital.' 'But Boss, there's nothing wrong with us.' 'That's debatable . . . get rigged.  And so off we went, bergans in hand, on an MK headed for Begova, Northern Iraq.

We arrived and were escorted through a deserted village by some of the hard core Peshmerga; they had remained at the village after the mass exodus to the mountains by the original occupants. They showed us to a building with three rooms and a blocked toilet. The word hospital was coincidental. We were met there by some civilian aid workers from all over the globe, from New Zealand to Germany and Korea to Britain. We had a right bundle of Viz characters, wide eyed and ready to go. But their hearts were in the right place

Why were we here? Well, as members of 40 Cdo RM AQM's department, we had been called in for our expertise in the field of Cordon Bleu cookery! From feeding the children of 40 Cdo RM we found ourselves feeding the children of the Kurdish nation. It was different to anything we had experienced before; totally unlike standing behind the hot plate at Norton Manor. We had a small room in which we were actively involved with mothers and children. This brought the paternal instinct out in us!

There was plenty to do even for the Dento

We were involved in creating a type of Arnold Schwarzenegger crash weight gain formula, high in nutrients and vitamins. It had been designed for the severely undernourished but with ingredients that were easily available to the Kurds themselves such as wheat, flour, sugar and milk. Over the first few days we saw a few sights that opened our eyes and affected our hearts. A few of the babies we saw were beyond help and died over the first week. This was inevitable, due to the trauma they had experienced over the preceding year.

The majority began to improve over a matter of hours due to the medicine and care provided by the civilian aid workers. It took us a while to get it across to the mothers that it was better to boil the water to kill the germs in it. It also took a while to get them to use the formula we had made for them. Eventually the feeding programme took off and is still running smoothly with the help of the aid agencies. Over the first week we saw a deserted village come back to life and the original occupants return in there hundreds. The village was alive again!

Our stay at the hospital was rewarding and pleasant, one of the more positive aspects of Operation Haven. It also gave us a brief insight into parenthood and brought up a question to ourselves: are we ready for it?