are soldiers allowed to have phones on them?

[MunteoirMajella]

I've been watching Our Girl and I'm sure there are massive, glaring errors throughout but they all seem to have their phones with them, especially Maisie.

Is that allowed?

My son is a serving soldier. He said there are many flaws in Our Girl and are not factually representative of the real actions. However he stated phones are allowed but it depends where they're serving and what the job entails.

It would depend on the nature of the operation but often, yes. I haven't seen the programme so it don't know the situations.

Forgot to add. They have to change their sims on certain jobs and even discard sims at times. He has had to do this and had to rely on the available wifi, if any.

Ooooh I honestly thought it'd be a flat no, although that might only be down to the number of times Georgie gets captured in a two year period!

Yes, DS (in Army) replies to my msgs in middle of his workday. Times and places they are not allowed, and not allowed during training hours or on expeditions, I'm sure, but normal duties I think yes, most typically.

Wave @Seeleyboo, omg another MNer with soldier son. I think we're a very rare breed!

Off to find out what Our Girl is.

I am pretty sure though he can't whip his phone out as often as Georie given that he takes an age to respond to my messages when he's on tour. Or maybe he's ignoring his old mum

You must worry dreadfully about them both.

lljkk

Wave back. I watched season one and I liked it but it seemed to go down hill in season 2. Primarily the disrespect of higher ranking officers. That just wouldn't happen.

You do worry, all the time but sadly you do adjust and it becomes the norm. Shockingly.

It all depends where you are and what you're doing. Some offices ban them for security and some operations ban them for the same reason.

Same as above, some places they can and some they can't. My OH sometimes can't answer his phone, what's even better is when he calls me and then is like 'look I can't really talk at the moment' well why did you call ME then, I didn't know you were about to walk into a no phones area because YOU were the one who called me! LOL

DH went to Afghanistan when we first got together- he had to take his SIM card out and hand it over, only communication was over email and video messaging from their "Internet cafe". He was in Iraq last year for six months and whilst he still wasn't allowed his phone there was excellent WiFi around camp so we were able to WhatsApp message and call constantly. It was great, I think I would've found it much harder had we not had that. Might be different in a proper "war" scenario though.

DS has been in Army almost 2 yrs & not even gone abroad. When he does go (soon), it will be a NATO (EU country) deployment. That Our Girl programme, plotlines, every year she's off somewhere furrin & dangerous exciting (pah, rubbish fictional nonsense).

I worry about DS's politics, and his liver coz squaddies drink like fish but not his job hazards. I was afraid he'd start smoking, so many of the other enlisted do smoke, but so far he hasn't. Not even got a tattoo, yet. He was in hospital one night for quinsy, I suppose.

Thanks all :)