I was also aware of fundamental changes in the way in which we were allowed to conduct training. Our deployment ‘had been a unique theatre-entry operation. We were part of the first task force into Helmand and there had been no rule book. We adapted and adjusted to circumstances as we found them on the ground.
By the end of 2007 three other larger brigades had served in Helmand and the red tape surrounding the conduct of operations had grown significantly and a different approach to risk was being enforced. Heavy body armour and standard-issue infantry helmets became compulsory and we were not allowed to train wearing the lighter armour and Para helmets we had previously worn. The standard-issue kit offered better ballistic protection, but it was heavy, ill-fitting and impeded mobility. Troops couldn’t adopt proper fire positions wearing it, and it also slowed them down and reduced their endurance: all critical factors in avoiding enemy fire and killing your opponent before he can kill you. However, the policymakers were adamant that we should wear it and banned soldiers from wearing lighter improved ballistic protection even though they were prepared to buy it themselves. The MOD was also unwilling to provide small sonic earplugs to protect my men’s hearing from the high-frequency deafness caused by gunfire. Many of them had already suffered irreparable damage in Afghanistan where mortars, RPG blasts and the hammering of machine guns had stripped away their hearing. The system claimed that they should have been wearing the large cumbersome issued ear muff protectors that made wearing a helmet or hearing a radio order impossible. As a result many would be medically downgraded, some risked being medically discharged and all would suffer significantly in later life. The issue of provisioning inexpensive but appropriate ear defence was only addressed in early 2009.
There was a severe shortage too of critical equipment to train on. The battalion had deployed to Helmand with thirty-two WMIKs, the workhorse vehicle of the Battle Group, but all of them had been left behind in Afghanistan. All the battalion’s heavy machine guns and night-vision goggles had to be handed over to the receiving unit too. After continual lobbying for WMIKs to train with, two were provided for a two-week period in September to train thirty-odd crews. Eventually, we overcame bureaucratic health and safety concerns and were allowed to adapt some of the battalion’s general standard Land-Rovers which shared the same chassis and enabled us to simulate some of the WMIK driver training. It was a skewed approach to risk-taking considering that the MOD was prepared to accept the implications of equipment shortages and send undermanned units into combat, but at the same time it was reluctant to allow commanders the latitude to come up with prudent alternative training methods or allow people to wear decent kit which we already had or they were prepared to buy themselves.
I would not be going back to Afghanistan with the battalion, as I had been selected for promotion and would relinquish command of the battalion in November. But I was sufficiently concerned about the approach to training to raise it publicly with CGS at a conference he held for his commanding officers three weeks before I handed over as CO of 3 PARA.
I stood up among the audience and asked the first question after CGS had finished speaking. I reiterated the things that bothered both me and my soldiers most: the poor treatment of the wounded, the poor accommodation for our families and the lack of decent pay. But I emphasized that what particularly angered them was the complete lack of proper equipment to train with prior to imminent operations in Afghanistan. I made the comment that CGS had put a rather ‘positive spin’ on his overview of the Army’s current equipment programme. I acknowledged that some better equipment was being made available for operations, yet hardly any of it was available for training. Use of the word spin provoked an angry response. I stood my ground, making the point that I was not making a pejorative accusation, but that ‘the kit my men didn’t have to train on today could result in some of them being killed tomorrow.’ CGS’s evident irritation with my question wasn’t really remarkable given that he already understood the concerns and had taken personal career damage in speaking out publicly about the Army’s lack of resources. No doubt he felt as frustrated as I did. But what was remarkable was that none of the other sixty-odd regular commanding officers then asked one question about kit or concerns that they had. No doubt they saw me making a bad career move in attracting the head of the Army’s chagrin.
Little did they know that my resignation letter was already typed and was lying on my desk waiting for my signature when I got back to Colchester. I signed the letter the next morning. My reasons for bringing to an end twenty years as a soldier were many and varied. Although I had been selected for promotion and told I would progress further, I knew there was nothing else in the Army that came close to rivalling command of 3 PARA. In both peace and war my experience of being their commanding officer had been exceptional, but it was about to end and the closeness I had enjoyed with soldiers since being a twenty-one-year-old platoon commander was over. Continual cost-cutting and underfunding resulting in shortages of equipment for operations and training and the poor treatment of my wounded had also severely damaged my moral component of being a soldier. Consequently, I was less than sure that progression into the more senior ranks, which seemed to have become increasingly focused on managing the decline of the Army, was what I really wanted.
In the wake of 3 PARA’s experiences in Afghanistan and those of other units that followed us, I had also begun to reflect deeply on the level of rewards service personnel received for the risks they took. As well as being poorly looked after when injured, soldiers earn less than the minimum wage, much of their accommodation is sub-standard and their families fare little better. The housing estate my soldiers lived on was one of the worst I had seen. The houses were small and many were in a poor state of repair. The maintenance contract for the upkeep of the houses was subcontracted out and the support the contractors provided was routinely described as woeful. One wife had to wait for months for a boiler to be fixed despite having a small child. Another once told me how she had lived among rats whose urine ran down the walls. Her situation was not deemed an emergency and in the end she had to elicit the help of her husband’s fellow paratroopers to come and chase the rodents out.
These problems are compounded by the long absences of partners on operations or training and the fact that wives have to follow husbands when they move postings. As a result, the families were often last in the queue when it came to accessing local public services, such as an appointment with a doctor or a place on the waiting list of a decent school. Soldiers enjoy going on demanding operations and accept risk and loss as part of the business that they are in; retention rates actually improved in the wake of Afghanistan. But I also began to note that an increasing number of soldiers with families were leaving. To a man, they loved the regiment but the stress it was putting on their families was starting to tell and the fundamental problem was that there was little in it for those who kept the home fires burning.
I summed up my concerns surrounding my decision to resign in a personal letter to my brigade commander. I knew I was crossing the Rubicon in writing it, but had no idea of the storm that was about to break. The contents of that personal letter were leaked to the press, and there was a strong rumour that it had occurred at senior levels within the MOD. My resignation appeared as a headline story in a tabloid paper three days later, then featured in all the other national newspapers and on TV. The story ran in the media for most of the next week as it chimed with a leaked report on morale in the Army and public criticisms of the government’s handling of defence spending by former military chiefs in the House of Lords. I was genuinely staggered at the interest it generated, although it was unwanted attention as I was focused on handing over command of the battalion. It made for a difficult few days, as I fended off the press and tried to get the MOD press office to come up with some more meaningful and proactive lines, other than the ones that had only succeeded in giving away my private address to the press and dragging Karin into the story.
; The battalion was enormously supportive. Informed by the MOD press office that there was likely to be a leak thirty-six hours before the first article appeared, I had decided to speak to the battalion before they read it for themselves in the papers. In outlining my reasons for leaving, I majored on the fact that career progression meant that I could no longer be one of them. They took the point that if I had more 3 PARA time left in me I would not have been resigning. The best thing that anyone said to me during that whole period was when a young Tom came up to me and said: `Sir, the blokes think what you have done has shown real bollocks and is mega.’
Seven days later I spoke to the collective body of 3 PARA again for the last time. They formed up in the same place where I had first spoken to them when I took over command. It was an enormous effort to hold RSM John Hardy’s gaze as he called up the battalion to attention and reported them present and correct to me for the last time. I spoke of all that they had achieved. I told them that they should be rightly proud, that they were of the same stock as the men of Arnhem and Longdon and that they should walk tall and never forget who they were. I also thanked them for all that they had done, the sacrifices they and their families had made and the difficulties they had faced and overcome. I wished them every success on the next tour and started to tell them that my only regret was that I would not be returning to Afghanistan with them; then I faltered, and looked at the ground. They had been my life and soul for the past two years and I was acutely aware that within a few hours they would have a new commanding officer. I forced myself to breathe over a constricting lump in my throat and looked them in the eye for the final time. I took in a deep breath and said that I would look forward to hearing about their future exploits with pride and I hoped one day to see them again on the ground. I turned to return John Hardy’s final salute, although this time I couldn’t hold his gaze: I turned to my right and headed back to battalion headquarters to clear my desk.
The emotional farewell in Colchester was not to be the last time I saw the battalion before leaving the Army. I completed six months of the post I had been promoted into before becoming a civilian and was charged with delivering the final training exercise for 16 Brigade’s deployment back to Afghanistan. One crisp winter’s morning in 2008 I was up visiting the brigade training on Salisbury Plain. It was good to be out of my shared broom-cupboard of an office, where the phone didn’t work and my aged computer seemed to be continually on the blink. It was obvious who the group of soldiers were by the side of the road as I rounded the corner. Their distinctive appearance, different to others, radiated a sense of professional self-confidence of a body of men who know who they are and what they are about. I saw all this before I registered the distinctive green DZ flash and began to recognize faces. Corporal Stock waved enthusiastically and I stopped for a chat. It was good to be among 3 PARA again, albeit briefly. Although now a newly promoted full colonel, it was the best thing that had happened to me since leaving the battalion back in November. But it was also hard. They were training to go back to Afghanistan and I would not be going with them. They weren’t mine anymore and now rightly belonged to someone else. I knew that they were in good heart and good hands, but it was still something akin to seeing an old friend sleeping with your ex-wife.
I came across 3 PARA once more before I finally left the Army three months later. I heard the distinctive clatter of the twin-headed rotor blades of a helicopter and the voice of the reporter straining to be heard over the scream of the engines as I listened to my car radio. I heard him mention that he was on the back of a CH-47 with men of 3 PARA flying into an operation during their second tour in Afghanistan. I imagined the blokes in the back, tooled up and ready for action; feeling the lurch of the aircraft as it made its final approach. I thought of the tightening of their bellies as they readied themselves for combat. I was driving along the A303 on my way to my last day of work in the Army, but for a brief moment I was back in Afghanistan with 3 PARA. At the end of the report, I stopped the car on the edge of the road near the ancient stones of Stonehenge. There was a slight spring breeze in the air. As I lit a cigarette I watched the smoke curl over my right arm and cross my winged parachute badge and emerald-green DZ flash of my Para jump smock. Badges I had worn with immense pride for the last two and a half years, but which I would take off for ever at the end of the day. I thought of what it is to have once been a soldier. But mostly I thought of 3 PARA, the blokes, Afghanistan and the men we had lost.
Epilogue
Jim Berry continued to make a miraculous recovery and the last time I saw him he had rejoined his unit. Although suffering from some of the effects of the shrapnel wound to his arm, Captain Guy Lock also continued to serve in the Army, as did Fusilier Andy Barlow and Corporal Stu Pearson, despite having each lost a leg at Kajaki. Sergeant Paddy Caldwell still lives in his converted quarters with Mel, but is adamant that he will not marry her until he has recovered sufficient use of his limbs to stand at the altar. In between intensive physiotherapy sessions to help him realize his goal, he commutes the short distance from his home in his motorized wheelchair to work at the 3 PARA Families Office. Trooper Martyn Compton survived the horrific burns he received in the Household Cavalry ambush to marry the girl he left behind when he went to Afghanistan. The spirit and determination of the severely wounded are a remarkable testimony to those for whom the war they fought in Afghanistan will go on for ever. But for one the hardest hill he would have to climb would be back in Afghanistan.
The last time that Lance Corporal Stu Hale had clambered to the top of the Kajaki ridge he had two legs, but now he climbed with only one. His bandaged stump chafed against the plastic cup of the artificial limb as he laboured with each step. Unable to put his full weight on the bent prosthetic, he had to half hop and half drag it across the steep rocky ground. His mind had been numb as he flew back into the dam area on the back of the Chinook, but as he struggled upwards the recollections of the sniper patrol he led from the ridge two years earlier came flooding back. The dramatic relief of the high ground above the aqua-blue lake that fed the Helmand River began to unlock memories that had been blocked by the trauma of losing his leg and the long road to recovery. He remembered the feeling of dread and isolation after stepping on the mine as he waited for help to reach him and the Black Hawk helicopter that took an age to come. Cresting the top of the ridge he looked down to where the bloody events of that day of days had cost the life of Mark Wright and seriously wounded five other men. He saw Stu Pearson’s webbing still lying where it had been discarded after he too stepped on a mine.
But while the debris of that fateful day lay undisturbed, much had changed. Kajaki now had a complete company of soldiers stationed there and the dam had new turbines that 3 PARA had helped to deliver in the last few days of its second tour of duty in September 2008. Where 3 PARA had once operated as a single Battle Group, there were now four British units in Helmand as part of a total force of 8,300 British soldiers. It was a different tour with a different emphasis to the crazy times of the summer of 2006; 3 PARA had operated from Kandahar and, although involved in many engagements, this time they would be bringing all the boys back home again.
Each of the succeeding units had been given more troops and more sophisticated equipment to develop the foundations of the campaign in Afghanistan that 3 PARA laid down. The additional resources had made an impact. Frontal attacks against the district centres in places like Sangin and Musa Qaleh were now a thing of the past. Musa Qaleh had fallen to the Taliban a few months after Easy Company had left. The Taliban had strung up some of the tribal leaders who had negotiated with Adam Jowett, but the town was retaken by British and Afghan forces in December 2007. Like Sangin it is now secured with significantly more troops than the undermanned companies we had available. But while the intense stand-up firefights and mortar bombardments may have ended, they have been replaced by a more frequent use of roadside bombs and suicide bombers. There has been no corresponding increase in helicopters to match
the growth in troop numbers, forcing a greater reliance on the use of vehicles which the insurgents have exploited to lethal effect, and Helmand Province remains a deadly place. Over 100 British service personnel have lost their lives since 3 PARA’s first tour ended. During the second 16 Air Assault Brigade tour it was the regiment’s sister battalion 2 PARA that took the brunt of the casualties, losing fourteen soldiers killed in action with over fifty wounded.
Attitudes to the campaign have also changed. Some senior commanders now talk of unwinnable wars when ours never did. Despite the increase in the number of troops, the insurgency has continued to escalate in the southern and eastern provinces and security in Kabul has deteriorated significantly. However, the war is winnable and it is vitally important that NATO is not allowed to fail in bringing stability to Afghanistan. It is the cradle of 9/ 11 and remains intrinsically linked to the security of the international community at large. If extremists are not denied ungoverned spaces to operate from in places like Helmand, there will be an appreciable increase in the risk from those who wish to export terrorism to our own streets. Achieving success in Afghanistan is likely to take considerably longer than first envisaged, there will be setbacks and it will be a protracted affair; counterinsurgency campaigns always are. But success will require an even greater investment in troop levels and battle-winning equipment like helicopters. It will require an improved commitment from those NATO nations unwilling to participate in direct combat and a redoubling of effort to increase the capacity of the Afghans’ own security forces. The fledgling Afghan Army is a bright spot on the horizon, but it is a nascent force, and a five-year wait for it to increase from its current 68,000 to 13 4,000 troops is too long.
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