Fin Visit 3

I got up at 0630 and went to the gym. I had nearly managed to finish my one-hour routine, when I was interrupted by a message about an American colleague having been involved in a traffic accident. It was only about 35 kilometres away, so of course we sent two teams to assist. Only one ISAF-soldier had been injured, and fortunately his injuries were not serious. For the other vehicle, however, the consequences were far more dramatic. The armoured TLC (That's Toyota Land Cruiser, not tender loving care like in the U.K.) had crushed the Corolla badly. Three of the four passengers did not survive, and one was taken to hospital with minor injuries. This kind of fatal accidents happen daily between local vehicles and we see wrecks of vehicles on the roadside almost every time we go out on patrol. The only thing that made this morning exeptional, was that the accident happened to someone we know.

As soon as that situation was taken care of, a transport containing 10 media reporters from Finland arrived. We took them to the OCCP and even let them have a little walk around town, which was of course nothing short of insane. They seemed to like it very much, though, and we did our best in trying to manage the risks involved. Then we took them back to the safe house for some lunch, which was salmon soup. After lunch it was time for my brief, and then they wanted to interview some people. For some reason the reporters from all TV-channels wanted to interview me, so if you don't want to see me on television, don't turn on your set at all in the near future.

In the evening we had backbrief about the incident in the morning, the aim of which was to point out what we could do better the next time something unexpected like that comes up. And of course everyone expressed their condolences to our Polish counterparts for todays tragedy.