At the end of March, British soldiers took up the challenge to sort and pack 84,000 surplus helmets bound for the Ukrainian military.

Thirty members of the Midlands' based "Poachers" from 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, have been hard at work packing up all the helmets in just two weeks.

Working from morning until night, the Cottesmore based troops were ensconced in a huge stores warehouse at MOD Donnington in Shropshire, where the surplus supplies were shipped from military store from across the UK.

The Royal Anglian Regiment packing helmets (image courtesy of the Crown)

The task includes physically stripping the helmets of any British Army webbing or identifying badges and packaging them into crates each holding 100 of the life-saving pieces of head gear.

Sergeant Oliver Church, a platoon Sgt from A Company who is co-ordinating the mission on the ground to sort, pack and dispatch the helmets on time said: "The lads are more than happy to help the cause - hopefully what we are doing will be going to help our military counterparts in Ukraine providing them with the vital protection the really need at the moment."

The slick logistic operation saw the helmets collated and processed by Team Lidos staff employed under the Defence Equipment and Support's Logistics and Services Transformation programme.

The soldiers processed up to 12,000 helmets a day, packing 100 helmets into giant cardboard boxes ready for Team Leidos to transport to Poland for onward distribution to the Ukrainian military.

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Helmets sorted, packed and ready to send to Ukraine (image courtesy of the Crown)

Due to a lack of adequate protection for members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the war in Eastern Europe in 2014, hundreds of Mk7 helmets were purchased in the UK and used by the Ukrainian service personnel.

The 2nd Royal Anglian troops are a Light Mechanised Infantry Battalion, who are recruited from across the counties of the East of England and East Midlands including Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Northampton, Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire.

The local community have also been making a huge effort to support Ukraine, holding fundraisers and collecting goods to send out to Ukrainian refugees. 

On top of this, excess fire equipment from local stations is also in the process of being gathered and shipped out to Ukraine as a response to the intentional bombing of the life-saving fire stations by the Russian military. 

Upwards of 20 families in the local area are expected to be taking in Ukrainian refugees in the next weeks. To keep up to date with this and other local news, sign up for our Newsletter at the top of the News page.