The wife of a soldier belonging to a Colchester Garrison regiment has branded the regiment's lack of leave before being deployed in the Gulf as "extremely unfair".

A wife of a member of the 16 Close Support Medical Regiment said the regiment is getting less leave than other units at the Garrison.

But a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said it is trying to give soldiers as much leave as possible before deployment, but added different regiments had different pressures.

She said: "Because of the nature of what this regiment does they need to get large medical equipment into the area before other troops arrive.

"Because moving this equipment is time consuming and the regiment is quite small they are possibly under more time pressure than other groups."

But she said efforts were being made to give as much leave as possible to individuals within the regiment before they are deployed.

The wife of one of the soldiers affected, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "Basically all regiments due to go to the Gulf get leave and every other regiment besides ours has been given more pre-deployment cover. It's extremely unfair."

Published Thursday, February 6, 2003

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