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Campaign Medals For Air Med Evacuation Teams

There are some people who go into politics hoping to change the world. I guess a few are successful- Churchill, Thatcher, Obama, Roosevelt, Disraeli…. But if that’s your political motivation, then most of we political mortals are likely to be frustrated and disappointed. It is surely better to accept that at most we can try to make a few things better here and there - “round the edges” as it were.

When I visited our troops in Afghanistan last weekend, I was lucky enough to see the RAF Air Medical evacuation teams in action – both on a converted C-17 returning wounded soldiers to hospital in Birmingham, and working in the state of the art hospital in Camp Bastion. What a brilliant job they do. Soldiers injured on the very front line are whisked by Chinook to Bastion Hospital, then by Hercules or C-17 either direct or via Kandahar to Selly Oak Hospital. It often takes 24 hours from wounding to operating table, all thanks to the teams which, I am proud to say, are based in RAF Lyneham.

But you can imagine my horror both when I met them all last year, and again when they came to a reception in Speaker’s House in London in the autumn to hear that because of the technicality that their presence in Afghanistan is not constant (how can it be – they are bringing their patients home), they are not eligible for the Afghan Campaign medal. They are not, of course, doing it for the medal.  But the task which they are carrying out is just as – often very much more – dangerous than the jobs done by many soldiers who are in theatre without a break. So I lobbied quite hard on this one. Spoke to ministers on several occasions, wrote to the Secretary of State and generally made myself a bit of a nuisance.

Well I was very glad when I saw some of them at the weekend to be able to tell them that in an informal chat with an MOD Minister just before I had left, he was hinting that he had listened to their complaint, and that he was hopeful of righting what is by any standards a demonstrable wrong. No guarantees yet, but I am hopeful that the MOD may decide to offer the campaign medal not on the strength of continuous service in theatre of war, but on the basis of the total number of days served in a certain period, thereby making the Air Evacuation teams from Lyneham eligible for it. If so, it cannot come too soon.

Trips to visit the troops such as that last weekend are hard work- and hard work for our hosts who lay on such interesting visits. But they are well worth it in terms of finding out the problems and triumphs of conducting a high intensity war in as distant and inhospitable land as Afghanistan. Only by being out there on the ground can politicians hope to gain some kind of an idea about what it is actually like for our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen and women.

And if on return I can help sort out a few details –like medals for Lyneham’s RAF medics – I may not change the course of the war, nor make history, but maybe I can be personally satisfied that I have helped just a little bit around the edges.

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