Yet again it is the morning after the night before, more specifically Burns Night which we failed to observe on the actual date, Thursday, what with it being a school night.  It was decided that it would be celebrated on the earliest following Saturday and, with all the good taste that you have come to expect, it was re-named Napalm Night, that being more gender neutral.

The usual suspects met at Campaign HQ, my house, for a pre-match sharpener, the table not being available until 6.00 and the pre-sortie nerves to be calmed.  There had been talk of wearing Vietnamese Dress but nothing came of it.  Not the easiest style to source in West London in January it transpires.

Having donned lashings of suitable camouflage make-up the patrol made its way under cover of darkness across the mighty Mekong/Thames and into downtown Hanoi/Richmond.  Very little action on the bridge.

There followed an extremely pleasant evening at our favourite eaterie where the staff now know me well enough not to keep pestering about food orders but set up a chain of tireless waiters to pass bottles from the bar to the table.  Planning, logistics, supplies – these matter even more than raw courage when you’re on the front line, men.  Make a note of that.

Now obviously a D Notice and a surplus of the local bamboo brandy prevents me from relating most of what followed but I do recall one joke.  ‘A woman is standing by a river when she sees her husband and her divorce lawyer swept by a fierce gust of wind into the churning water.  What does she do next?  She must choose one.  Lunch or shop?’

Both of course, just decide in what order.  Simples.

Following slavishly in the footsteps of tradition we decided that only a visit to the local nightclub would round off the evening which mercifully we were dissuaded from doing by the kindly doorman who could clearly see that we were suffering from combat fatigue, possibly shell-shocked and urgently needing to be airlifted to a place of safety.  I have to report that we lost two men/women re-crossing the bridge.  They will be remembered, certainly by the rest of the travellers on the night bus to Hounslow.

Back to HQ for a quick de-briefing, in the military sense, and a final emptying of the hip flasks before retiring to our quarters for a few hours of well earned rest.  I was woken at 0530 by Miss Saigon, the regimental cat, performing her daily trampoline practice on my bed, her secret code for breakfast time.  I promise I will get up and feed her as soon as those helicopters stop making that infernal racket inside my unfortunate head.