{"id":255,"date":"2010-04-26T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forcespenpals.net\/p=?255"},"modified":"2010-04-26T15:35:14","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:35:14","slug":"soldier-travels-4000-miles-to-meet-newborn-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forcespenpals.net\/us\/news\/soldier-travels-4000-miles-to-meet-newborn-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Soldier travels 4,000 miles to meet newborn son"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A solider of the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh has finally met his newborn son after completing a 4,000-mile trek which was delayed by the volcanic ash cloud.<br><br>Chris Whittaker of Kimmel Bay saw his son Alfie, who was born 20 days prematurely, four days after his birth following a five-day trek that involved flights from Camp Bastian in Afghanistan to Kandahar and then on to Cyprus, before arriving in the UK.<br><br>He has now finished his tour of Afghanistan and now has a month off before starting a two-year instructional job in Catterick, the Daily Post reported.<br><br>Describing the moment he met his first-born child, 28-year-old Chris admitted that both he and his wife were very emotional.<br><br>He said: &quot;I walked into the hospital. Clare was in a side room. As I was cuddling her, I looked over her shoulder and saw Alfie in a cot. I was really happy. You don&rsquo;t know how pleased I was.&quot;<br><br>Today (April 26th), A Company of the 4th Battalion also returned to the UK after the start of a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan was held up by the volcanic ash cloud.<br><br>Posted by Mark Wilkins<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ADNFCR-2867-ID-19741973-ADNFCR\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.directnews.co.uk\/feedtrack\/justcopyright.gif?feedid=2867&amp;itemid=19741973\"\/><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Whittaker embarked on a five-day, 4,000-mile trip last week to welcome the arrival of his son Alfie to the world.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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