The recruiting material tells us that the TA soldier is ready at a moment's notice. Accountant one day - highly trained killer the next. But for all the bravado, few who took the oath reasonably expected that their training will ever be called into practice.

So when the brown paper envelopes dropped onto mats in mid January 2003, Britain set in motion the largest mobilisation of her reserve forces since the Second World War, establishing a precedent which changes absolutely the nature and character of the TA - and left most WDs stunned.

The WDs left the half-way house of the part-time soldier at the old munitions works at Chilwell, reincarnated as a

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mobilisation centre and possessed of that cheery sort of atmosphere that only 30 years of lethal weapons manufacture can bring. It was there that W and A Squadron, with attachments from the Royal Logistic Corps, became Y Squadron. Bodies were probed, kit was issued and freedom was signed away in a series of evolutionary steps that saw the WDs transition from Volunteer to Regular.

But it was with a resolute heart that the 140-ish men and women of Y Sqn puffed up with that air of confidence that only a full set of temperate climate combats for use in the desert can bring, boarded the bus and headed for Grantham.