Country music keeping fuel tanker driver going during major Nato exercise
Lance corporal Lee Moulton, 30, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, is taking part in Steadfast Dart, Nato’s largest training exercise in 2025.
Country music has helped a fuel tanker driver from Northamptonshire tackle a thousand-mile journey from the UK to Romania as part of a major Nato training exercise.
Around 2,500 British personnel, along with hundreds of vehicles, are moving across Europe by land, air and sea to take part in Steadfast Dart, Nato’s largest exercise in 2025.
Lance corporal Lee Moulton, 30, from Kettering, has described the 1,400-mile journey to Romania as a “long drive” with country music helping keep him going.
Speaking to the PA news agency, he said: “Nothing has happened out of the ordinary, but it’s been different to driving in the UK.
“It’s been an experience, I’ve deployed to a few countries before and this road move is definitely something different.
“Luckily, we all know each other, we’ve worked with each other back in the UK.
“So when it comes to listening to music or playing games, you find ways to entertain yourself when you’re on the road, it’s just the two of you, no comms.”
Steadfast Dart comes ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday, with much of the exercise taking place in Romania, which borders Ukraine.
The exercise is the first major deployment of Nato’s Allied Reaction Force (ARF), which replaced the Nato Response Force last year, and is intended to test Nato’s ability to deploy under pressure.
“Working with the Hungarians and other militaries has been really good,” LCpl Moulton, who is based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire said.
“There’s been a language barrier, but you get that wherever you go, even if you go on holiday you’ll get that language barrier, but you always find the way around it.”
He is part of a group of British troops that arrived at a Hungarian military base in Szentes on Tuesday morning, where their vehicles were checked over following their mammoth journey and prepared for their time on exercise in Romania.
British troops set off from Marchwood in Hampshire last week, with around 730 vehicles, including Foxhound patrol and Jackal high mobility weapons platform vehicles, Mastiff armoured patrol vehicles as well as fuel tankers and forklift trucks, fitted on to three ferries at the Sea Mounting Centre.
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the 4th Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland have been deployed for the exercise in Romania.
The two regiments, part of 7 Light Mechanised Brigade – known as The Desert Rats – will form the main battlegroup supported by other UK forces and representatives from other Nato nations.
