LYING on the borders of Mexico and Guatemala and the shores of the warm Caribbean sea lies the tropical paradise of Belize.

But why, more than 5,000 miles from rain-soaked Blighty, would you find young men parading in the football shirts of almost every North West team?

Welcome to BATSUB, the British Army training Support Unit Belize, and their latest guests to Mosquito heaven, the First Battalion the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

I had been invited on an Exercise Native Trail, which conjured up pictures of strolls along sandy shores picking coconuts off palms.

What a shock when I discovered Native Trail was army jargon for jungle training.

The talk of scorpions, tarantulas, cobras, and big cats even had some of Her Majesty's finest looking worried.

I clutched my camera and eyed their guns - five frames a second did not seem as reassuring as 60 rounds a minute.

At 5.30am we wearily set off on our six-hour journey into the jungle.

My companions - around 50 QLR soldiers - started to tell me of maggot-laying mosquitos which had put one unfortunate squaddie back in barracks on a previous visit to Belize.

With night closing, warfare instructors warned us again of the dangers that lay all around and said if we wanted the toilet - a small hole in the ground - we should always go in twos which did not pose a problem for the girls but had the rest of us wondering if things were really that bad.

At 4am I began to fear the worst. The "toilet" was only 50 yards away but the sound of something big moving less than ten feet away from my hammock in the pitch black undergrowth persuaded me to wait until day break.

The paw print I found the next morning convinced me my decision had been correct.

With tales of things that go growl in the night, we made our plans for the river crossing.

Keeping an eye out for an eight-foot crocodile swimming the river, the troops made their way across stream in full kit, reaching the far bank thankful but exhausted.

I started to look at army life in a different way. The basic training may not be easy but three square meals a day and the chance to travel the world has a certain appeal.

But commanding officer Major Andy Rix revealed I was too old at ... 30!

Never mind. World travel will just have to be booked through holiday brochures and the defence of the realm left to the young men and women of the QLR.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.