PN POLICY CELL
Medical Care
Dependents’ Registration Process. Dependents should register with a Doctor’ s Surgery when they move into the area. A list of surgeries nearest to your SFA is noted in the SFA Area Information Booklet in the Welcome Pack. To register, complete the online registration form or call the surgery directly for assistance with the process. Full information and details can be found on a surgery’ s website.
When registering, dependents should take their immunisation record, translated where possible. They should also provide 2 forms of evidence to confirm their identities and address( e. g. passport, driving licence, National Insurance card, NHS card, recent bank statement, utility invoice, correspondence from a Government Dept).
Dependents’ Deregistration Process. Dependents should inform the surgery( or dental practice / hospital department if appropriate) when moving from the area, providing the date of departure. To ensure you retrieve family medical records prior to departure, complete a Subject Access Report( SAR) form obtainable from the surgery. Deregistering your family will ensure places are available for new families and will enable surgeries( practices / departments) to update their records.
Service Personnel( FN and PN). Service Personnel( SP) should register with the Innsworth Medical and Dental Centres at Imjin Barracks for all medical and dental care. The process involves QR registration and signature of the HQ ARRC Arrival Certificate. Imjin Med Centre will process the registration and connect with the National Health Service( NHS) to generate a NHS number. The NHS number is issued within a week and is recorded on the Med Centre’ s database.
At End of Tour, SP should deregister from the Innsworth Medical and Dental Centres and ensure their HQ ARRC Departure Certificate is signed-off prior to departure.
Contact details are: Medical Centre Reception + 44( 0) 1452 712612 ext 5999
Dental Centre Reception + 44( 0) 1452 712612 ext 5920
Padre Ben’ s Christmas Message
The Revd Ben Archibald
During this time exactly 12 years ago, I was at Sandhurst on Professionally Qualified Officers’ Course 132. There were many happy times there intertwined with many that weren’ t so happy! I remember, quite vividly, being sat in the lecture theatre in Victory Building awaiting news of Command Appointments for the final exercise. I wouldn’ t have minded being Section 2iC, even the Platoon Signaller; but no, my positioning on the course Order of Merit was to be predicated on my being the Platoon Commander. Anyway, all was going well, I thought, and I had delivered a slick set of orders, ensuring the one third, two third rule, of course.
My smug ambitions weren’ t too last long, however. It was around two-thirty in the morning when I desperately needed to spend a penny. Making my way tentatively out of the harbour area, which seemed to take a lifetime, I found myself at the portable loos which were all strategically placed around the Barossa Training Area. Now, it was owing to this next point which radically lowered my position on the final Order of Merit: I had become lost on my way back to the harbour, lost in Barossa( how embarrassing). Eventually, after about a two hour wait, I could see something in the distance; I headed towards the light, compellingly. The light was to be, my friends, my search party. I was lost, but now found, and was to be filled with much joy.
About two thousand years ago, some wise men – astrologists actually – headed also towards a light that would eventually fill them with great joy. The light they followed was the result of a phenomenon that occurs once-in-several-millennia: the alignment of the sun, Jupiter, the moon and Saturn. Having been lost also, travelling for many miles and many days, and following that bright alignment in the sky, they eventually found what they were looking for: the Christ child, laid in a feeding trough – a manger – in Bethlehem. The Bottom Line Up Front is this: to find that child was their Main Effort, the main culmination of the whole of their earthly life. They could depart this life with much joy in their hearts.
Many a military commander, in reference to plans or projects, makes reference to the‘ North Star’. The North Star remains static in position, a beacon for us both to focus on and be led by. It is enduring, and re-assuring. For many, myself included, the Christ-child is my North Star; he is the one that gives me meaning and purpose in life. Without faith, my life would make no sense at all. It is by no mistake that most Christian churches throughout the world are built facing East. We stand in church, facing East collectively, looking towards Jerusalem; that place of hope and joy, but also a place both currently, and forever in its history that is plagued by war. But we face East, also, in the most basic understanding of Christian theology, that, as the sun rises in the East reassuringly each morning, providing us with light, heat and warmth, it is the Christ child – as both fully human and fully God – that gives light to our darkened paths: he is that light that pierces all of the most darkened places in the universe.
So, dear colleagues, friends, perhaps this Christmas-tide you, also, are being invited on a journey. A journey to follow a new star. A journey to travel quietly, in the darkness of the night, to follow that light, to bend down, and to gaze into that crib and glimpse on the one who can provide us with light and love throughout the whole of our own earthly life and beyond.
Let us become like innocent children this Christmas, letting go of our baggage, our negative thoughts, our adult cynicism. Let us listen to the voice of the one who is our guiding star, the one who is speaking to us all, right now, whispering into our ears“ Follow me. Come, follow me”.
Your priest and friend, Fr Ben
34 WINTER 2025 the imjin Imjin Station Community