Arctic Warrior

The 1960’s and 1970’s was probably the height of the ‘Cold War’ between the USSR and the Western nations, divided by Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’. The threat to world peace felt real and the West, in the form of NATO, needed a high-profile quick reaction force to address this threat to any NATO country with a common border with the USSR. The result was the formation, in 1960 of a new Force, the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force, Land or AMF(L). In 1967, the Royal Corps of Signals added its first unit to support this force and this commitment continued until the disbandment of AMF(L) in 2003. AMF(L) was intended as a multinational, brigade-sized quick reaction force that could be quickly dispatched to any part of ACE's command area to demonstrate the solidarity of the alliance and its ability to resist all forms of aggression from the USSR against any member state. For over four decades AMF(L) supported a variety of NATO deployments, including frequent deployments to Arctic Norway, Turkey, Greece and other areas. This book is a collection of individual soldiers experiences and memories of training and serving with AMF(L), sometimes in very inhospitable climates.