Diary – 1 August 2019

I begin the week in Bamako, Mali, with a crackly telephone call to Commodore Dean Bassett, UK Maritime Component Commander in the Gulf. He informs me that HMS Montrose and the Maritime Trade Operation has seen 30 ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz. These ships had been given 24 hours’ notice for their transit. Another, Stena Impero, had not made it through. Montrose was given only 60 minutes notice for her transit. Despite increasing to flank speed, she was 20 minutes too late and steamed into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The anger and disappointment is evident in the Commodore’s voice as he professionally delivers his report. I thank him and his team for their efforts.

After breakfast, I travel by C-17 to Gao to visit our counter-terrorism operations and a UN peacekeeping mission. I break off to make further calls back to London regarding the Gulf. Lunch is courtesy of the French and it is spectacular. They fly all their scran in from home, although there is something profoundly wrong about eating a mini eclair in the Sahel. After lunch, I meet some of the women serving in the peacekeeping mission as both soldiers and police officers. Some want to go on to command or become police chiefs. There’s a light in their eyes when they detect a woman under the flak jacket and helmet. I head back to the C-17 and on to Blighty. Dusk falls over Brighton as we drop through the cloud. To my right, through the metre-high cockpit windows, I spy the pewter ribbon of the Thames. To my left, the sombre lights of Portsmouth glow against the petrol blue sky. There are purple fields below a neon orange sunset. A sign of a glad confident morning to come? The cockpit is calm with quiet patriotism, pride and purpose.