OUR latest delve into the Advertiser's archives features a Rosneath father who was called up for service in Iraq to help rebuild the country's water infrastructure, and ended up staying for much longer than initially planned.

Here's how we brought you the story in 2004.

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WHEN Scottish Water worker Douglas Smith was called up for service in Iraq last February, little did he realise he would still be there a year later.

Douglas, 42, spent eight months in Iraq as part of a TA contingent, in support of the regular army.

He was working to repair the water services of southern Iraq, which were in a chronic state.

But when it was time to return to his family and job in Scotland, the authorities in Iraq decided the Rosneath dad-of-two was still needed to help rebuild the country’s water infrastructure.

So now Douglas is on leave from Scottish Water, working with the water directorate and Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as a civilian worker.

In the desert climate of southern Iraq, much of the water sources are saline or heavily mineralised.

This, coupled with devastation left from years of underinvestment during Saddam Hussein’s regime and the after-effects of war, have left the people of Iraq desperately short of clean drinking water and decent sanitation.

Douglas, who works for Scottish Water Contracting based in Bellshill, was asked to go back to help in the regeneration before the formal handover of sovereignty later this year.

Working for the CPA, which is overseeing the reconstruction of the country and its return to self-government, Douglas is based in the southern port city of Basra.

Douglas said: “I was asked to come back and I felt I had to.

“There was so much still to be done when my time as a soldier was finished here, and I knew that I still had something to offer the people of Iraq.

“I had built up a lot of knowledge of the systems over here as well as a good working relationship with the Iraqi teams. I couldn’t just leave.”