We Will Remember: PC Carroll's Story of Service

Protecting the Town He Calls Home

PC Carroll is an Authorised Firearms Officer Counter Terrorism (AFO CT) with the Ministry of Defence Police, based in Barrow-in-Furness, the town he's always called home, and where he protects today.

As an AFO CT, his days are spent on armed patrols and frontline response across the Defence estate at Barrow. It's a role built on purpose: every patrol, every check, every decision contributes directly to the safety of the nation.

It's not just the years that have shaped him, but what he's lived through in them: a childhood in Barrow, a tour of duty overseas, and a career spent protecting the country he once fought for.

To understand why he does the job he does now, you need to go back further, to a desert in Afghanistan, where a man left as a soldier and returned carrying memories he'd spend a lifetime honouring.

From Lance Corporal to Constable

Before the uniform he wears now, PC Carroll wore another.

Between 2006 and 2017, he served as an Infantry Soldier with the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, training at Catterick and rising to Lance Corporal.

"I wanted to serve the country and learn life skills," he says simply.

He'd tried another path first, a computer science degree at university, but it never felt like his – but the Army did. He joined as a reservist and would end his service as one too. In between, though, came a tour that would mark him for the rest of his life.

Looking back now, PC Carroll is clear about the impact those years had. "It shaped the person I am," he says. "I wouldn't have ended up in MDP without it."

The Tour That Changed Everything

In 2010, PC Carroll boarded a plane for the first time in his life – only this one took him to Afghanistan.

What followed was a tour defined by courage, and by loss. He lost friends and colleagues, one had been his next-door neighbour on camp in Colchester, a friend he'd lived alongside, and then lost on tour.

"If you don't remember them, nobody will," he says.

It is, perhaps, the truest thing anyone could say about Remembrance. Not duty, not tradition, but a promise: that the people who gave everything will never simply become names on a list, forgotten with time.

For PC Carroll, keeping that promise is personal.

Among Thousands, Never Alone

That promise took PC Carroll to Whitehall in 2024, where he stood among thousands at the National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph. Surrounded by veterans, families and strangers bound together by shared loss, he paid tribute to those who never returned, including the friends from his own tour.

"Standing there, you realise you're not remembering alone," he reflects. "Everyone around you has someone. It makes you feel connected to something much bigger than yourself."

A Family Tradition

For PC Carroll, Remembrance isn't something that comes around once a year, it's something woven into who he is.

His dad took him to Remembrance events as a boy, continuing a tradition passed down from his grandad and great-grandad, both of whom served.

It is, he says, his favourite day of the year, not because it is easy, but because it matters.

For Those Who Never Came Home

This November, PC Carroll will remember the friends he lost in Afghanistan and everyone touched by conflict, whether they stood on the front line or waited anxiously for news back home.

For him, Remembrance is about honouring service to the nation in every form it takes and making sure that sacrifice is never allowed to fade into silence.