IN THE LINE OF DUTY FEATURE: Lt Col Nick Welch, the commanding officer of the RGBW, is a man who is both popular and well respected by the soldiers he commands.

He also likes to lead from the front and, five years ago, when the regiment had soldiers in Kosovo he regularly led round-the-clock patrols through troubled ethnic communities.

He told me at the time: "Our intensive patrolling has resulted in a drop in the level of violence and intimidation.

"The men have done an extremely difficult job very well, making important, instant judgements on the ground with an absolute sense of fair play."

As well as keeping the peace, the soldiers had to create a safe environment for refugees, who had been driven from their homes, to come back to and this will form part of their current brief.

They had to deal with a legacy of mines, mass graves and extensive destruction of property.

Weapons had to be confiscated from often dangerous men and there were some fairly tense stand-offs involving tough negotiating.

The Albanian mafia also caused a lot of problems when their gangs moved across the border after Serbian forces pulled out.

They flooded the drugs market and local people were afraid to speak out against them. And all the time the soldiers had to respond to calls for help.

Not all of them were emergency calls either.

Because the soldiers were so well known and friendly to the local people at times they tended to treat them as always-on-call odd-job men.

While I was there soldiers were asked to help mend a leak in a washing machine, change a punctured tyre, sort out problems with damp on a wall and even tow a broken-down vehicle.