'Good morning Afghanistan'

CAMP BASTION, HELMAND - The equipment, red "on air" light and the DJs' patter are no different from those at any radio station.

But step out of the studio and you are greeted by sandstorms, attack helicopters and armoured vehicles bearing machineguns.

At a time when most of us were slumbering happily at 6.30am Helmand time, the words "Good morning, Afghanistan" boomed from the country's first British Forces radio station.

More than 9000 troops fighting in the southern province's war zone were greeted with the upbeat sounds of The Boo Radleys' Wake Up Boo! - a track selected by British soldiers around the world to be the first broadcast from the new British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) station at Camp Bastion.

"There may be a touch of irony in this choice: 'Wake up it's a beautiful morning,"' conceded Nicky Ness, the controller of BFBS.

DJ Dusty Miller, who mimicked Robin Williams' Vietnam movie greeting, added: "Mindful of the very particular brand of humour among our listeners, we were worried what they might foist on us - but we were braced to play whatever they asked for. The first song played on the ground in any operational theatre tends to get a bit of an iconic status."

British Forces' radio has been following the troops around the world since an experimental station was sent up in an Algiers harem during World War II.

It has been there through the Aden crisis, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Falklands conflict, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Balkans conflicts, the handover of Hong Kong and the two Iraq wars, with presenters as diverse as Sir Roger Moore and Kenny Everett.

In Iraq, the team prided itself that it continued to broadcast through mortar attacks and went off-air only once when the building had to be evacuated to clear a rocket that had landed nearby.

The move to Afghanistan has been a long time coming. BFBS originally built and shipped a radio studio to Afghanistan in 2007, but it took two years to finally get a site for the equipment and months more for engineers to restore it from buffeting by harsh desert conditions.

But a new chapter in radio history opened on Monday when Miller and fellow DJ Dave Simon began broadcasting to troops in Helmand and to their families back home. Ironies were more than evident in the tracks troops voted to be the first broadcast.

The Boo Radleys' track beat competition from such songs as The Sound of Music sung by Julie Andrews, which includes the famous line: "The hills are alive."

Other favourites included Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, It Bites' Calling All the Heroes and Iron Maiden's epic, Run to the Hills.

- INDEPENDENT