Summary
FUSILIER Garry Watt bounces his baby daughter Leah on his knee as she reaches up towards the distinctive white hackle on his cap. At just six months old, Leah does not know that this feathery plume marks her 26-year-old father out as a member of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. Nor does she realise that he is about to disappear from her life until next March. Her mother Yvonne, however - also 26 - understands only too well.
"You don't know how you're going to feel until it does happen," she says, looking at her husband while their six-year-old son Taylor cuddles into her. "I'm dreading it to be honest, left with two kids back home. But that's part of his job."See the full content of this document
Extract
Tour of Duty
Over the next three weeks, while the rest of us settle into the rain and wind of a Scottish autumn, Watt and more than 450 other soldiers will leave Glencorse Barracks in Penicuik, Midlothian, for the heat, dust and clatter of Afghanistan. As part of 16 Air Assault Brigade they will, along with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders 5 Scots, who are based in Kent, make up among approximately 1,200 Scots soldiers embarking on a six-month tour of the world's most dangerous war zone. It is the largest number of Scots to...
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