Ground Truth: 3 Para Return to Afghanistan

Among those sitting in the planning meetings was Major Ben Howell, of 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, who would be commanding the batteries providing fire support to the Paras. Howell was clever, well read and had a sceptical and enquiring mind. He thought he recognised the source of some of Carleton-Smith’s ideas. ‘He talked in Rupert Smith terms,’ he said, a reference to a recently retired and famously intellectual senior officer who had produced a mammoth study of modern warfare entitled The Utility of Force. ‘The people were the prize, the battleground was not the fields of the Green Zone. It was actually the minds of the Afghans. So that’s where we should be focusing our attention, and that pouring blood and treasure down the Helmand river really wasn’t the way forward.’

In his first statement after taking over Carleton-Smith made barely any mention of fighting. The task was, he said, ‘continuing to improve the sense of security for the people—not just physical security but their human security in the round. It’s all about effective governance, rule of law and the provision of the basic necessities of life.’

If he made no mention of war, it was because in his mind the army was not engaged in one. ‘What I wanted to avoid was this sense of 2006,’ he said later. The intensity of the fighting in Helmand, he felt, had caused people to lose sight of the nature of the campaign they were there to prosecute. There was an inevitable tendency among the soldiers to reason that ‘if it looked and smelt and sounded like war fighting, then for God’s sake, we must be fighting a war’. In his view, however, ‘we’re not fighting a war. We’re supporting a democratically elected government to prosecute a counter-insurgency campaign, the nature [of which] is much more political than it is military.’

From this perspective, the ‘core of the matter was not the Taliban’. It was ‘the Afghan people and what they thought was happening’. The prize was ‘the human security of the people. The Taliban were to be marginalised and isolated, not made the absolute focus of the operation.’

Carleton-Smith had more resources than any of his predecessors with which to carry out his plans. There had been about 3600 soldiers in the 3 Para Battlegroup. 16 Air Assault Brigade, with all its attachments and additions, numbered around 8,000. Nonetheless, this was still nowhere near enough to exert control over more than a fraction of Helmand. He decided to ‘recognise the relative limits of our resources on the locals, and [that] there was no point getting ahead of ourselves’. Rather than extend their area of operations beyond what they were able to hold, the intention was to ‘try and deepen the government’s control and influence and authority in those areas where we actually have the capacity to bloody well hold the ring, and not find ourselves stretched further’.

The British were now effectively fixed in four places, Lashkar Gah, Sangin, Musa Qaleh and Kajaki, with a presence in the outposts of Now Zad in the north and Garmsir in the south. Carleton-Smith had no intention of expanding out of these places or trying to join them up. To do so would simply mean displacing the Taliban to another location and spreading their contagion to a previously benign area. The intention was to deepen the mission in Helmand, not to broaden it.

Carleton-Smith also had a civilian plan to work to which laid out in fairly concrete terms what the British presence was hoping to achieve in Helmand. The overall framework for the UK’s efforts was set out in the ‘Helmand Roadmap’, which pledged support to programmes in seven ‘core’ fields: politics and reconciliation, governance, security, rule of law, economic development, counter-narcotics and strategic communications. The plan began with the idea that attention should focus on the few areas where there was some fragmentary infrastructure and the ghost of governance and laid down some milestones to mark progress over a two-year period. In that time, it was hoped, Lashkar Gah would develop into a centre of sound government and administration. Gereshk, 80 kilometres to the east, would be promoted as a financial centre. The focus would then switch northwards to Sangin and Musa Qaleh. If possible a fifth centre would be developed, either at Kajaki or Garmsir in the south. None of this thinking was new. The 3 Para Battlegroup had arrived in Helmand in 2006 with much the same ideas. But now these had solidified into a design for action. Coordinating the activities of the army, the Foreign Office and the DfID was to turn out to be complicated, however.

Huw Williams reinforced Carleton-Smith’s message as he prepared his men psychologically for the new deployment. He found that most of them were receptive to the constructive mood abroad in the brigade. The response may have surprised some observers of the regiment. The Paras’ reputation is based on their fighting prowess. It was won during the Second World War in Normandy and Arnhem, then reinforced at Suez and in the Falk-lands. The Paras genuinely believed themselves to be the best soldiers in the British Army, by which they meant the best in the world. Their exploits in Helmand appeared to justify that claim.

About four hundred of the six hundred men in the battalion had been in Afghanistan in 2006. The new members had arrived from other units or were raw young Toms’ straight out of training. Many of these eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds had been inspired to join up by what they had heard about the last operation and were, in their commander’s words, ‘keen to prove they were the same as the guys last time, that they matched their stature’.

But among the older men and the young veterans of 2006 the attitude was more considered. They knew the reality of combat. Many of them had relished the chance to test their skill and courage. But the thrill of fighting had faded. It was something you endured rather than enjoyed. Jamie Loden had taken over command of ‘A’ Company during the defence of Sangin in June 2006, one of the most intense passages of fighting of the tour. Now he was taking the company back again, supported by another veteran, Sergeant Major Steve Tidmarsh. Their attitude, according to Loden, was that although they were ‘more than happy to deal with whatever we came across, at the same time we weren’t going to go out of our way looking for trouble’.

It was shared by the ‘corporals and lance corporals and senior private soldiers who had been there before, who were very content with doing their job. They knew what they had to do, they had the right resources and equipment to do it, but equally there was an element of be careful what you wish for.’ The mixture of cautious veterans and newcomers determined to get their share of action, in Loden’s opinion, made for ‘a very balanced company group’.

Those who had served in the 2006 tour were pleased that this one would be different. It was not only because they did not relish the thought of another six months spent in static positions slogging it out with the Taliban. The Paras are more thoughtful than their public image, and the picture painted of them by their army rivals, might suggest. At every level of the unit there were those who felt that the concept of excellence embraced more than just fighting prowess. It meant demonstrating the ability to carry out the non-kinetic, ‘influence’ operations aimed at persuading local people of the soldiers’ good intentions that were vital for the ultimate success of the campaign.

‘I’m sure’, said Huw Williams, ‘that there were some people who thought, “Oh, 3 Para. They’re just going out there to see how many bullets they can fire. It’s all going to be kinetic.” But a lot of us wanted to prove we could do all sides of it…We were very keen to show we could do “influence,” we could do reconstruction, stabilisation, anything we were asked to do. We could bring security without wielding the big stick.’ Even so, it was clear to everyone that ‘at some stage during the six months we would still have to show that we carried the big stick’.

The Paras were setting off to war in a domestic political climate that was much altered from the one that existed at the start of 2006. Then, Iraq was the dominant issue in British foreign policy. Few Britons knew much about events in Afghanistan. Two years of conflict had changed that. Afghanistan replaced Iraq as a staple of the news bulletins and almost all the stories emerging from there were depressing. A perception was growing that going to Afghanistan was a bigger mistake than going to Iraq.

The government’s faith in the mission, though, remained, outwardly at least, unshaken. Ministers continued to claim progress was being made and was worth the cost in effort, expenditure and lives. On the death of the 100th British soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002, they reached for old-fashioned words to justify the losses. The soldiers, claimed the then Defence Secretary, Des Browne, were engaged in ‘the noble cause of the twenty-first century’.

As the Paras began boarding the buses at their barracks in Colchester for the drive to Brize Norton for the eight-hour flight to Kandahar their mood was very different from the excitement and anticipation that had gripped the battalion when they had set off two years previously. They were on their way to fight an unpopular war in a faraway place where progress was measured in centimetres, to face death, injury and constant discomfort. It seemed to some of them that the campaign had reached a point where real progress would have to be made or the enterprise would sink into a pointless and demoralising test of endurance. The next six months would answer the question that was echoing in many heads. Was it all worth it?

3 KAF (#u341fac4e-8716-5611-acc5-9d3865ec293d)

Kandahar airfield was the NATO capital of southern Afghanistan, a gigantic logistical hub that seemed to radiate both might and hubris. It was built by American contractors in the late 1950s, then taken over by the Soviet Air Force in 1989 soon after Russia invaded Afghanistan to go to the rescue of the communist government in Kabul. From the 3-kilometre-long runway Russian jets took off to pound the mujahedin fighters who harried the invaders on the ground. The disembodied tailplanes of two burnt-out transport aircraft lay in an unused corner of the camp, all that remained of the Soviet air fleet after the rebels captured the base.

‘KAF’, as everyone called it, lay 16 kilometres south-east of Kandahar city. The town was invisible, blocked from view by a range of mountains. The only signs of the local inhabitants were the gangs of labourers who arrived each morning and the merchants who turned up on Saturdays to sell carpets, knick-knacks and fake Rolex watches at a ramshackle bazaar. Visiting the base was a risky business. The Taliban regarded any commercial dealings with the foreigners as collaboration, a charge that could bring a sentence of death. A story went round that the insurgents had presented a stallholder with the severed head of one of his children, wrapped in a sack.

The base was scattered over bare desert, the flatness broken here and there by stands of spindly, grey-green pines. The accommodation blocks, workshops, warehouses, offices and compounds had grown with the mission, spreading out along a grid of gravel roads. A stream of heavy trucks, armoured vehicles, buses and four-by-fours trundled continuously along them, churning up a fog of fine dust that never settled.

The base was under British control. There were 14,000 people at KAF, from about forty different countries. The majority were not soldiers but civilians, working for international companies that supplied many of the base services. The managerial jobs were taken mostly by Britons. The next level down was filled by workers from Poland, Romania, Lithuania and other upwardly mobile European nations. At the lower levels, washing dishes, cleaning floors and emptying the Portaloos, were small, unobtrusive men from southern India, the Philippines and Bangladesh.

Great efforts had been made to make KAF comfortable. The inhabitants ate in big food halls which served pasta, curry, steak and vegetarian specials. There was a hamburger bar, ice cream and espresso machines and plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables and salad. The social life of the base centred on a square stretch of raised decking known as the boardwalk, which was lined with cafés and shops. At one corner sat a branch of Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee house chain founded by an ice-hockey star, where you queued for iced cappuccino, the house speciality. Near by were the Dutch and American PX stores selling electronic goods, paramilitary clothing and tobacco and confectionery. There was a chintzy Dutch café, the Green Bean, a Starbucks-style hangout which stayed open all night, and a NAAFI.

Coffee was the strongest drink available in KAF. The base, like everywhere in-theatre, was dry. Newcomers were surprised to find an establishment advertising itself as a massage parlour, staffed by ladies from former Soviet republics. But the sign over the door described accurately what went on inside. A story was told about a gullible British soldier who had been tipped off by his company sergeant major that extra services were available. He was shown into one of the cubicles by a masseuse. After stripping off and lying down he listed his requirements. The masseuse told him to wait a moment and slipped away. The next person through the cubicle door was a military policeman and the poor dupe was sent home on the next plane.

The enforced abstemiousness did not seem to dampen spirits. In the evenings, when the day’s work was done, the cafés filled up with men and women, soldiers and civilians who chatted, laughed, flirted and smoked. They were there because of a war, but for much of the time there was no charge of anxiety in the air. Occasionally the Taliban fired a rocket into the base, which usually exploded harmlessly in the wide open spaces between the buildings.

The Paras had mixed feelings about KAF. The normality of the place was unsettling. It should have been a relief to go back there after a spell ‘on the ground’. Instead, it could seem artificial and irritating, an affront to the sensitivities of those doing the fighting. Most of the inhabitants, soldier and civilian, never left the camp and had little idea of what life was like in the FOBs, the forward operating bases on the front line. The cushy existence of the KAF-dwellers could easily provoke feelings of contempt. ‘Have you noticed there are an awful lot of fat people around here?’ remarked a Para company commander as, returning from the helicopter landing site after a spell in the field, our Land Rover passed two stout Canadian female soldiers trundling along, each holding a supersized milkshake. Kandahar airfield did at times seem to exemplify flabbiness and waste. Modern armies inevitably trail long logistical tails behind them, but the ratio of ‘enablers’ to fighting soldiers in Afghanistan seemed absurdly high.

Now and again, however, the realities of the conflict intruded. During the summer came regular announcements that ‘Operation Minimise’ was now in force. This was the communications blackout imposed whenever a soldier was killed, shutting down Internet and phone cabins to prevent news of the death reaching the outside world until the victim’s next of kin had been informed. Some evenings, a ‘ramp ceremony’ was held on the runway before the body of a soldier was flown home. Hundreds of soldiers from dozens of nationalities would troop through the dusk to the aircraft carrying the dead man or woman home, and for a while everyone was touched by the gravity of the mission.

The Paras were quartered in Camp Roberts, named after Alexis Roberts, a major in the Gurkhas and mentor of Prince William during his Sandhurst days who had been blown up by an IED in October 2007. Officers and men lived in rows of air-conditioned tents. It was noisy, right next to the runway, and a twenty-minute walk away from the boardwalk and canteens. The location had one major advantage. It seemed to be blessedly sheltered from the stench of shit that drifted from the inefficient sewage farm in the south-west corner, polluting much of the base.

The battalion is the basic social block in the army edifice. It numbers about six hundred men, which is big enough for it to have a real identity in the wider organisation but small enough for everyone inside it to know everyone else. A battalion’s mood is to some extent set by its commanding officer. A change in leadership can alter the unit atmospherics. Officers and men agreed that under Huw Williams, 3 Para was more relaxed than it had been in the Tootal era. That did not mean that the essential character of 3 Para had changed. Williams had no intention of trying to alter it. Each of the three regular Para battalions liked to think they had their own clearly marked identity. 3 Para’s nickname was ‘Gungy Third’.

‘I would say we are more laid back, more relaxed, slightly scruffy, not too worried about army-bullshit-type stuff,’ said Williams. ‘The blokes take a genuine pride in being a little bit off the wall. Yet no matter what happens, they perform to the highest standards and because they do that the whole hierarchy of 3 Para and certainly myself give them a lot of leeway’

Williams was breezy, good natured and straightforward. He carried his authority lightly. A stranger watching him chatting with a bunch of fellow officers in the dining hall would not automatically assume that he was the boss. But when he spoke everyone listened. There was wisdom and shrewdness beneath the easy surface manner. He was born and brought up in Cardiff and joined the army at eighteen straight from school. He had been a soldier now for twenty-two years. He first heard of the Paras through a book on his father’s bookshelves on the 1942 Bruneval raid, an operation full of all the dash and daring that the regiment relished. A small airborne force had parachuted on to a clifftop near Le Havre, attacked a strongly defended German radar base, captured a top-secret new electronic detection device and escaped by boat.

During his career Williams had served in 3 Para as a platoon commander, intelligence officer, commander of ‘B’ Company and as the battalion’s second-in-command. Commanding a battalion on operations is regarded as the most challenging and stimulating job an officer can do. He is out with his men on the ground, putting his and their capabilities to the test. It is the peak of active soldiering and the promotions, if they come thereafter, will take him farther and farther away from the real action. Having served as number two was no guarantee that he would eventually take over as boss. Williams regarded his promotion as ‘a dream job…not just being made CO but the fact that I was going to get to spend another two years in the battalion’.

His deputy was Major John Boyd, a tall, thoughtful Ulsterman, who uncomplainingly accepted the role of enabler. ‘I’m the oil that makes the machine work,’ he said. ‘I take the burden off the CO and let him go out and command.’ He had grown up on a reading diet of ‘Commando magazine, War Picture Library, the Victor. I used to wait every Friday for the comics to come in. At the age of five I just knew I was going to join the army one day’

Many in 3 Para talk about a feeling of vocation when they examine their reasons for joining up. The army seemed to offer an identity and a sense of community that the civilian world could not provide. Boyd had grown up on the Loyalist streets of East Belfast. The Troubles were at their height and many of those around him had served with the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. ‘My first platoon sergeant was a Catholic from Belfast and in those days we would never have socialised,’ he said. ‘But we’ve gone on to become very firm, good friends. I thought it was amazing that one of the few places where Irishmen could sit together without trying to stab each other or shoot each other was the British Army. I love the army and I love the regiment.’

Boyd had been posted away from the battalion during Herrick 4 but there were many senior figures among the officers and NCOs to provide continuity. Two of the 2006 company commanders remained, though they were to move before the end of the tour. Major Jamie Loden, who had taken over ‘A’ Company when it was under constant attack from the Taliban in the district centre at Sangin, was still in-post. So too was Major Adam Jowett, who commanded the hard-pressed defenders of the outpost at Musa Qaleh. Paul ‘Paddy’ Blair, who had commanded ‘C’ Company, had gone off to lead the Red Devils, the Parachute Regiment skydiving team, and Giles Timms, who commanded ‘B’ Company, had moved on to another role outside the regiment.

Timms was replaced by Major Stuart McDonald, a pale, shaven-headed Scotsman, whose aggressive tactical approach was to make him stand out even within the Paras. He was to win a Military Cross for his courage and leadership. Stu McDonald had light blue eyes that sparkled with what some interpreted as a quasi-mystical light. They had inspired a visiting German journalist to compare him to Jesus Christ, which provided the battalion with many laughs.

He had become a soldier, almost on a whim, at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. ‘My friend and I were sat on the train one day and had this great romantic notion that we would join the Territorial Army and be sent out to the Gulf to fight,’ he remembered. ‘At the time I was incredibly ignorant. I knew nothing about the army…’

The idea took hold. He did some basic training with the TA. Then his parents showed him a newspaper ad seeking recruits for the Paras’ territorial battalion. He had seen a documentary describing the rigours of ‘P’ Company, the brutal physical and mental selection process through which all Parachute Regiment recruits have to pass, and decided that this was for him.

He joined the Para reserves before going to Edinburgh University to study commerce. ‘I had asked originally to join as an officer and was advised to spend a year as a private,’ he said. ‘At the end of that year I was offered promotion to lance corporal, which I took, and spent the next three years as a junior NCO. I absolutely loved it.’

At the end of the course he decided against a business career and that it was ‘definitely army all the way, or rather more specifically the Parachute Regiment’. He went through Sandhurst then joined 1 Para. Over the next dozen years he moved around the regiment, serving in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Iraq. There had been moments of excitement and satisfaction but no real exposure to full-on fighting. He regarded his command of ‘B’ Company as the high point of his career and the opportunity to get his ‘first experience of the sharp end’.

The battalion started the tour with the same regimental sergeant major who had shepherded it through some of its darkest hours in 2006. John Hardy was everything an RSM was supposed to be. He was tough but just, and the sternness that went with the job overlaid a paternal temperament. Hardy had the unusual distinction of serving in two successive operational tours with 3 Para in the post but was commissioned halfway through the tour, which obliged him to return home. He was replaced by Morgan ‘Moggy’ Bridge, who was good-natured, shrewd and funny.

The old and bold of 2006 were well represented throughout the battalion. Several of the senior NCOs had added a stripe to their sleeves and were now staff and colour sergeants and company sergeant majors, and the Toms of Herrick 4 had also moved up the ladder to become lance corporals and corporals.

There were many new faces among the CO’s staff. Williams was lucky in having as his operations officer one of the stars of the last show, Captain Mark Swann, who had led the Patrols Platoon through many alarms and adventures with skill and good humour. Among the staff officers was a man who had been a background presence in the ops room in 2006. In this tour, though, he was to play a far more significant role, and his opinion would be sought on virtually everything the battalion was engaged in.

Captain Steve Boardman did not fit the popular image of a soldier. He wore glasses, seemed shy and spoke with a soft Northern accent. At forty-nine years of age he was, in military terms, almost a geriatric. Boardman had been involved in civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) affairs in 2006, charged with coordinating reconstruction efforts. As it had turned out, there was very little of this work for him to do. The Paras were more engaged in smashing things down than building them up, and after the first few weeks there was no call for his expertise. Instead Boardman took the drudge job of head watchkeeper, spending long hours on duty in the ops room, overseeing all the incoming and outgoing communications.

He had begun his military career in the Royal Artillery, then left the army but maintained strong links by joining 4 Para, the regiment’s territorial unit. He founded a business specialising in print, design and reprographics. His work had taken him to India and the Far East and he had set up a joint venture in Sri Lanka. Visiting these places, he felt, ‘gave me a good insight into the process of how people operate in this part of the world, how they think, what their values are. It exposed me to massive cultural differences from what we are used to in the UK.’

Boardman managed to keep his business running while spending long periods in Iraq and Afghanistan attached to 3 Para. Stuart Tootal had asked him to stay on after the previous Afghan tour. His CIMIC background and his regional knowledge made him the obvious candidate for the role of ‘influence officer’ when the Paras went back. It was, he said with characteristic self-deprecation, ‘better for me to be doing the job than forcing a young captain in his mid to late twenties to do it, who would rather be out on the front line’. In fact Boardman spent as much time on the front line as anyone, taking part in almost every operation of the tour and tabbing out on scores of tense, dangerous and exhausting patrols, alongside men who were less than half his age.

Steve and his assistants formed the NKET, the non-kinetic effects team, or ‘Team Pink’ as they were known. They acted essentially as diplomats, representing the Paras to the tricky tribal leaders and mistrustful peasants of Helmand, explaining their mission and reassuring them of their good intentions. It was a task that required patience, fortitude and an underlying faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings. The last quality was hard to sustain in Afghanistan, especially when dealing with those who were supposed to represent authority. Boardman’s belief, however, never seemed to corrode in the ground mist of nihilism that sometimes appeared to hang over the place.

The essential purpose of the Paras’ existence, though, was fighting, and at all levels of the battalion there were men who were among the most experienced soldiers in the British Army. Their knowledge and skills would be passed on to the new boys, the young, green Toms who had been in training when the battles of 2006 were being fought. The tales that they heard from the veterans had only increased their thirst for action. Darren Little, from Lockerbie in Scotland, was only sixteen during Herrick 4. He had turned down a place in his father’s building company to enlist in the Paras and was now a private soldier in 4 Platoon, ‘B’ Company. Like all the newcomers he was going to southern Afghanistan ‘with big expectations because what the lads did last time was tremendous’.

As they settled in to Camp Roberts in the first weeks of March, it was unclear whether those high hopes would be fulfilled. It had taken some time for 3 Para’s precise role in the new deployment to be defined. Initially it appeared the battalion was going to be split in two. One half would go to Kabul for the unglamorous and boring job of guarding the airport while the other went to Kandahar to provide a rapid reaction force. By the end of 2007 their mission had been changed. They were designated the Regional Battlegroup for southern Afghanistan.

The task would give them many opportunities to demonstrate their versatility. Their duties meant they would be expected to roam all the provinces that fell under the control of Regional Command South of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. ISAF was the multinational military coalition that had evolved following the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The ‘assistance’ part of its name was a diplomatic nicety. ISAF troops in the spring of 2008 were doing most of the fighting, though Afghan units that had passed through training camps set up by the Allies increasingly accompanied them on operations. In the seven years since they had invaded, America and its allies had talked much about the need to create Afghan forces that were capable of guaranteeing their own nation’s security. Progress had been made but it was slow, and the Afghan army was still a long way from being able to plan and conduct major operations on its own.

ISAF had been set up under a UN Security Council mandate in December 2001 following a meeting with Afghan opposition leaders under UN auspices in Bonn which began the process of reconstituting the country post-Taliban. Britain led the negotiations to create the force, which initially operated with soldiers and assets from the UK and eighteen other countries, under the command of a British lieutenant general, John McColl. The coalition of nations willing to commit assets to the mission was to expand over the years so that by 2008 there were forty-one countries contributing about 50,000 troops. In August 2003 NATO took over the command and coordination of ISAF, and two months later the UN authorised it to operate everywhere in Afghanistan. The initial task had been to provide security in and around Kabul. There was a gradual expansion outwards into the more benign and pacified regions of Afghanistan where Taliban support had been lightest. In December 2005, a few months after the country held its first parliamentary elections in thirty years, the Afghan government and its foreign supporters agreed to extend ISAF’s operations to six provinces in the troublesome south.