The south: 'We're eating chocolate and waiting to be bombed. It's mad'

When Corporal Carl Vickers and his fellow soldiers feel homesick, they cheer themselves up by speaking in Australian accents.

In the harsh reality of the British camps in southern Iraq, where life alternates between work and chores, and light relief is non-existent, this is just one of the ways the troops find to raise morale.

Corp Vickers, of Chester, enlisted to join the Army Air Corps at 16. Since then, life has been a series of tours: Bosnia, Belize, Northern Ireland and Germany.

Five weeks ago, the newly married 30-year-old was transferred to Kuwait in anticipation of the war against Iraq.

Now based in the Rumaila oil fields, he is with a team of communications specialists with the 3 Regiment Army Air Corps. "Life is a routine. We have little to do with the outside world. All we hear about what is going on is over our radios. Unfortunately, most of my war is going to be seen under canvas. I wouldn't mind venturing out and seeing a bit," he explained.

Working an average 12-hour shift, Corp Vickers spends most of his free time cleaning sand out of his clothes in the pitch black of a camp where only a tiny red light is allowed for fear of giving away their position. Luxury is their own jar of Nescafé coffee and biscuits.

He expresses little fear of his surroundings, despite British troops being put on alert with sporadic pockets of resistance continuing to attack. Constant training seems to have left many soldiers with a familiar sense of security. Corp Vickers has, like many others, become accustomed to donning his mask after a chemical and biological attack warning or diving into sand dugouts upon Scud alert.

"The other day we were sitting in a hole, having a chat. It was madness. We were passing round the chocolate and waiting to get bombed," he said with wry smile. "I thought I should be feeling a bit nervous now. But it feels like I am going out on a normal exercise. Everyone feels the same. It just doesn't feel real."

When peace finally returns to Iraq – or, heaven forbid, his tour of duty ends first – Corp Vickers will return to the newly built redbrick army home in Ipswich he shares with Anja, his wife of eight months. He will finally be able to take her on honeymoon to Cancun, Mexico, and see the video she made of his one-year-old son, Lucas, walking for the first time. He plans to take his nine-year-old daughter, Mandy, swimming.

But he holds out little hope of that happening in the near future. "I just want to do the job and go home, but I never thought this was going to be the 100-hour war that it was last time."