Goodbye gunfire, hello family and Christmas

Fourteen-year-old Briar Collins was both excited and nervous to see her mum - Squadron Leader Tracy Collins step out of a Hercules after six months deployed in the Middle East.

‘‘I’m nervous because I don’t know what she’s going to be like - I do expect she’s changed,’’ Briar said.

Collins on Thursday arrived back from a sixmonth stint with the Australian Defence Force as part of the New Zealand Defence Force air transport team.

She was the only one out of a 32-member New Zealand detachment to spend so long over there; her peers worked in three-month rotations.

The team touched down at Whenuapai airbase, their mission flying freight and troops to Iraq and Afghanistan complete. Eager family members awaited them, tears and grins emerging as their loved ones filed out of the Hercules that brought them home from a war zone.

They have transported 3200 military personnel and 771 tonnes of vital supplies over 640 flying hours - 82 missions in total, with a 96 per cent success rate.

The team played a noncombat role. Their brief was to support defence force personnel who were on the ground, training local troops to fight ISIS.

They were based in an undisclosed town in the United Arab Emirates, flying by night into Iraq or Afghanistan as required.

Squadron Leader Blair Oldershaw described conditions at the multinational base as ‘‘relatively austere’’.

He said most people took up a new hobby to pass free time while there. He spent hours at the gym - others learned languages, the guitar, or read their way through a mountain of books.

‘‘But you also spend a lot of time looking forward to coming home and seeing your family,’’ he said.

What Oldershaw remembered most fondly from his three-month stint in the desert was the camaraderie between Kiwi and Australian troops.

‘‘It sounds a bit corny, but the best thing was just how well we worked beside and got along with the Aussies,’’ he said.

Also memorable were the ‘‘pretty spectacular’’ flights through black skies in nightvision goggles, Oldershaw said.

‘‘You could see battles and gunfire from a really long distance - we were able to see a lot of conflict happening in the Middle East over the horizon.

‘‘That really brought home the reason we’re over there and the people we’re trying to help.’’

Tracy Collins agreed that being away from family was the hardest part, aside from the phenomenal heat, and said that ‘‘while I’m grateful to have had the experience, I’m not keen to be away that long again’’. - Fairfax NZ