Desert divers train in Afghanistan 08.07.11
10A bone-dry desert is probably the last place you'd expect to find people in wet suits. But in Afghanistan that's exactly where a team of 21 military Engineer divers do their training and have a seventy thousand-litre water tank to train in. Every two weeks Marine and Royal Engineer divers from across Helmand come to the 3 metre deep pool. The aim: to practice underwater some of the manual work they do on land. There are always four divers on standby - the job: to find lost equipment and sometimes bodies. The last callout a fortnight ago followed a blast that threw an Afghan Army vehicle into a canal. In the four months Task Force Helmand's current contingent of divers have been in Afghanistan they've been called out only once. It's a record they're happy to keep.