“The deployment of Op Palliser happened in May of 2000, nobody knew it was coming, I remember being at work, it was a Friday, it was the end of the week, the telephone rang and it was the Ops Officer from 1 Para, he phoned up and said “there’s been a situation in Sierra Leone”, I didn’t even know where it was, I couldn’t have pointed to it on a map, anyway “there’s been a situation and at the moment there’s orders to move 1 Para as a whole taskforce to Sierra Leone”.
