An impression of Christmas with a ' Forgotten Army '.
For almost a year now the army and air force have been sweating it out in the swamps and jungles of perhaps the least desirable chunk of the old British Empire - Belize (ex-British Honduras), our last toehold in the Americas.
The army is there to repel the Guatemalans, who claim Belize is theirs according to a certain interpretation of the small print of a treaty signed in 1859. There are no heroics in Belize, no medals, no campaigns to discuss over pepperpots - just boredom and a philosophical acceptance of service life for some 2,000 men condemned by an Imperial Echo to endure the tropical rain and frightful humidity of a country few had even heard of.