Badge of Honor

As an Army wife I am very proud of the work my husband does - I support his job despite our disagreements on the legality of western involvement in the middle east. Naturally I have a bias opinion but I believe his work is vital to saving lives of civilians in conflict areas and our own deployed troops. As a searcher he is trained as an integral part of the British armies Counter-IED Task Force. In this modern warfare it is a risky job, we have lost friends and neighbours and many more have been badly wounded - their lives changed forever. Unfortunately unlike EOD specialists and ATO searchers they do not get any extra danger money or recognition for the high risk work they do, but today we had a step in the right direction.

Carver Barracks hosted a parade to award searchers with their own badge, the symbol of the "all seeing eye" aflame will be awarded today with pride. News reports can be found at British forces news and Cambridge news. Despite being 5 days overdue with our first child I attended the parade with satisfaction (and smugness) that our guys are getting at least a little of what they deserve. The new patches are just in-time for the new issue uniforms too! It was really nice to have a parade to celebrate, so often they are memorials or remembrance parades which are understandably rather sombre affairs.

Whilst over 100 of our friends and neighbours are currently on tour, at home participating in the parade were 250 of our own Searchers who either have recently been or are preparing to deploy. We also had some visitors from 61regiment: Private Alex Stringer (who stepped on an IED and lost 3 limbs earlier this year) attended the service to receive his badge. Stringer is part of a documentary "The Bomb Squad" which happens to coincide with our parade about the IED task force in Afghanistan. It is on BBC1 tonight at 10.35pm and is well worth a watch to learn more about EOD and the work our searchers do.

DH receives his badge