OPERATION Nightingale has won the MoD Sanctuary Award for Heritage for the “Exercise Tally Ho!” project. The award was presented last week at MoD Main Building, London, by Minister for Service Personnel and Veterans, Anna Soubry MP, and Richard McCarthy CE DIO.

Operation Nightingale is the name for a series of projects that allow wounded, sick and injured soldiers to undertake archaeology projects as part of their rehabilitation and is supervised by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation Archaeologist for Salisbury Plain, Richard Osgood.

Exercise Tally Ho! was the excavation of a 609 Squadron Spitfire which crashed near Trenchard Lines at Upavon during the Battle of Britain in 1941.

Serving personnel and veterans, including several from Tedworth House, took part in the exercise.

The excavation, which uncovered an array of artefacts, provides a case study of best practice to English Heritage on how similar sites should be examined. Other professional archaeological field units attended the site to examine how this sort of modern archaeology should be handled and are now applying these techniques.