With Britain, most of mainland Europe and much of the rest of the world going into shut-down as a result of COVID-19 we are following the advice of Cpl Jones, writes Bob Morrison.
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COVID-19 is, of course, no laughing matter but, as every soldier, medic and police officer knows, in times of crisis a little humour can often lighten an otherwise gloomy atmosphere. That sterling advice not to panic, frequently given to Captain Mainwaring throughout the classic Dad’s Army television series by veteran Lance Corporal Jack Jones, is in our book right up there on a par with the official UK NHS advice on dealing with the Corona Virus outbreak, so we will be following both.
Carl Schulze and myself were abroad on assignment last week covering exercises subsequently effectively cancelled by COVID-19, namely COLD RESPONSE 20 and DEFENDER-Europe 20 respectively, but over the weekend we managed to safely make our way back to our bases in Germany and England. We both had very busy forward schedules planned to cover military exercises, deployments, defence expos and other events of interest to JOINT-FORCES.com readers, but unfortunately most of these have now been binned. However don’t panic! We both have plenty of material already on file for features, as has Mike Gormley for his Gormley’s Gear section, so although Defence Equipment News and Exercise News sections might be a bit thin on the ground as employees work from home and troops head back to barracks, we intend running as normal a service as usual….. insha’Allah, as our Muslim friends say. Our team all work from home offices so we are already pretty-much self-isolating and with a little bit of luck we might see this thing through.
Good luck, good health and watch this space.
