What can you tell about 'demonstrating presence?’ We liked it very much, I really liked it. You drive through those villages in a vehicle, and at some stage, the commander of the team said to me "throw a stun grenade." The middle of the night, in the village, to show "we're here." You make your presence felt on routes, there are all sorts [of ways].

Were there activities that you would carry out as part of demonstrating presence? Sometimes we would take over houses as part of [dealing with] riots, or 'widows' (straw widows, an ambush or observation point from within a house), or something just now developed and a commander on the ground says "we're entering a house." Once there was a riot that developed, we wanted to enter a house that looked over the road. There was just a girl there, we shouted "open up," asked her if she had a key, and our machine gunner left a few nice signs on the door with the barrel of his weapon. There were bars, and we couldn't [get in]. One of the guys just broke the window with his barrel, just like that. It really stressed out the girl inside the house.

How old was she? Young, I don't know, eight. "Open the door, army, Jayesh (the word for ‘army’ in Arabic)."