British Soldier Guarding the Desert Border

Nov. 3, 2006 — -- He looks the part. He's a dashing-looking British lieutenant colonel in the desert. David Labouchere has turned his men into desert rats. They patrol and live on the sand of southeastern Iraq.

The 42-year-old father of two speaks a bit of Arabic and sometimes wears a traditional Bedouin scarf. That has led some of his colleagues to compare him to another British soldier known as Lawrence of Arabia.

Labouchere scoffs at the comparison. "No, I don't think so. He had some fairly strange habits that I don't share," he said.But Labouchere does admit he has picked up some of the local habits, but added, "Everything about me is British army." And that's true. His grandfather also commanded the queen's Royal Hussars.

The current commander of the Royal Hussars is borrowing a page from history. Labouchere has turned his back on armored vehicles and his base in the provincial capital. For five months, these British troops were mortared 281 times at their base. But Labouchere said he left the base, which was stripped bare by armed militias after the exit, to allow him and his men to do their job.

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"We've taken ourselves away from a fixed base and allowed ourselves to move freely throughout the country. And this has also had the added benefit of making it harder for the enemy to target us and made it easier for us to get on with the job without all the trappings of sitting in one place," said the 25-year army veteran.

So every couple of nights, these troops move to another spot in the desert to hide. A convoy of about a dozen vehicles carrying food, water and parts joins the soldiers at camp. Sleeping, eating, bathing and working in the desert is a harder life than being in camp. But, as Lance Cpl. Chris Jones says, "I like it. It's actually me doing the soldiering business."

That business is security for the province of Maysan, and it's nearly 200 miles of border with Iran. Maysan is home to the Iraqi marshes and spectacular desert landscapes. The border area is where many battles were fought during the Iran-Iraq War. We drive slowly through the battlefields where thousands of unexploded mortars, shells and land mines cover the ground. Arriving at the border, we drive up to one of 28 "border forts" built by the coalition in the past three years.