comparemela.com

Started calling them started saying you are dead men risen and he was referring to the type of battalion the number nine company. That Company Since the end of the Second World War said he was trying to say you are a reincarnation of these men from the Second World War. You are their descendents. You are dead men risen and this was a way of unifying them but it also became a sort of a theme of the book really because the three main characters Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorne bowl and the Company Commander and a the platoon commander were all killed in action. It was the first time those three levels have been killed in action since the korean war. In a sense that story is from the grave. Their testimony from the grave is at the core of the book and so in a way their detriment and the other resonance for me was there was an incidence which was the emotional heart of the book which has won seven watch guardsmen were in the back of a vehicle that toppled into a canal. A horrendous incident and they were hanging upside down in the dark with water rising like this. They were upside down and some of them blacked out and when reached for a picture of his wife and the sonogram of his unborn child from his body armor and clutched his chest. Another was flailing around before he passed out and clutched a hand in the darkness and held hands with one of his comrades as they thought they were dying and just after they passed out the door sprang open and they were rescued and all seven of those guys lived. Some were close to death and one was in a coma for two weeks. It is was as they were dead men risen because they thought they were dead and a rose. It has many with resonances but that poem from the first world war. Host can you walk me through how you came to link up with this welsh unit and the amount of time you spend with them in the field verses how many interviews he did afterwards . Guest yeah sure. The regiments there was one battalion regiment the welsh guards and i had coincidently gotten to know them through my years as a journalist. I would bump into them and keep into contact with him in the First Contact was when i was in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. I went down to see them and i ended up writing a book about the ira the ira heartland. During that period i got to know a guy called Rupert Cornwell who turned out to be the Commanding Officer in 2009. He is a young Army Intelligence officer and he became a good friend so i kept in contact with him. I embedded with them in iraq in 2004 in a sun province. Ripper wasnt there but i got to know a lot of welsh guys there. I was aware that they were in helmand and i was back here in the states and they knew they were in a bloody fight. July 1, 2009 i logged onto my laptop and i saw the headline the Commanding Officer was killed. To me was a personal loss and obviously he was the father of two little girls and a husband and a son. There was a big National Moment as well. The First Time Since the falklands war that had the tying commander was killed in action so that was the trigger to me. I needed to get out there and find out whats going on. I got in touch with the regimen and soon after that charlie and tell was Lieutenant Colonel and in fact he he was the major bumped up to active Lieutenant Colonel to be flown out to a place with rupert thornwell. He was a Company Commander in iraq so was happenstance that this all came together. I got out there in august of 2000 mind and i was there for the last month or so with the new Commanding Officer in place. I was able to go into the battle group area and the outposts and was out on the ground with the troops. The book is in my description of what happened to me. There are few things that it involved me but really that was an opportunity to start the interview process. You know yourself when you are embedded with troops you have conversations that you just dont have anywhere else. They are in this mental place and they open up and they talk about their fear. You might be the last person they ever speak to and youre also someone who is coming from the outside. I was very clear to them that this was not a newspaper article. This was a book on history so i felt they opened up a little bit more when they knew this wasnt going to be in the Daily Telegraph the next week and it would be published in a year or so. That was the start of it. It was one publisher that was key or me to write the book quickly. I resisted that and im really glad that i did because i was then able over the next year or so too do many more interviews in the u. K. I went to kabul and met general mcchrystal and Senior Officers in the u. S. Peoples view of what happened to them and what this was all about in their experience changed at the time. I was able to get very large number of documents from the welsh guards and from the ministry of defense documents which meant i could we then these incredibly detailed summaries and incident reports and signal traffic and the night watch keepers logs and transcripts. All sorts of stuff and i was able to weave all that in. Also there was the aspect of ptsd and there were casualties that happened long after they got back. That was unexpected in a narrative i wasnt expected to examine. Dan collins who is one of the heroes of the book he had been blown up twice by ieds. He seemed like he was on top of the world. I was almost envious. You are here or india been through this experience and you are and you were tested and you are tested and you stepped up to the plate and prove yourself. Also dan took his own life on new years eve 2012. So was an extended reporting and getting to know these people for well over a year. Im still in touch with many of them. Host thanks. Having spent time myself in helmand between 2010 and 2012 in the u. S. Marines i was struck by the friction point at times between the american troops and the british troops and also perhaps even more so the leadership on the two sides. Seems pretty clear that some of those british commanders were concerned about their legacy and whether or not the American Marines were going to steal their thunder. How much do you think that had an impact on what was happening on the ground to the rankandfile welsh guardsman in the unit . Guest well right at the ground level not very very much and in fact it there was tremendous camaraderie. The u. S. Marines who were sort of embedded within the welsh guard battle group. One of the most fascinating units within the unit for me was a bunch of sniper snipers who historically the royal green jackets and i arrived at this outpost knowing nothing about them. We came under fire as we dismounted from a convoy. It seemed i didnt think much of it and i heard a couple of big cracks which sounded to me like. 50 caliber single shot so was something quite big and quite close. I found these two snipers and they had done 75 kills and forwards between them and the last two kills were the two cracks i heard us we arrived. One thing i had expected about them is snipers from that unit had been operating with anglo go marines sidebyside in the dust in these outposts. This one incident of british corporal who killed four taliban in quick succession at a distance of more than a mile and right beside him as he was taking no shots were arranged to have their laptops and were downloading data from the u. S. Drone. And so then it was a u. S. Blackhawk that we flew in to recover the bodies and confirm that one with them was a senior taliban commander. Most of the medical evacuations were done by american blackhawks. Most of the combat was american so a lot of the welsh guardsman were with americans every day. At that level it was seamless. They were brothers in arms in the tremendous respect and comradeship. Certainly at the higherlevel at the brigade level this was a very sensitive time because the u. S. Marine corps in june 2009 so right halfway through the welsh guards in this brigade and any suggestion that the 20,000 or so u. S. Marines were coming to the rescue or bailing out the british which i think is actually a fair characterization of what was happening was just an anathema. The british had to be very careful and they know they were americans who are saying they call themselves Task Force Helmand and american said its part of helmand lets face it. It was definitely an issue and the british were sensitive about what happened in iraq and feeling of failure frankly and disappointment from the u. S. Military. So they were very wary of the same thing happening in helmand and ultimately that is what happened as im sure you have found out in places like that. There was american criticism of british tactics there and there was a feeling that the british hadnt been able to do the job and that is why the u. S. Marines were there. Host that brings up a good point. I was struck in the field you would hear the grumbling that they dont come out of their bases much. Reading a book i got an appreciation for the other side the sergeant level and the Lance Sergeant level in those units because you could kind of get the sense for why that was the case and the fact that they were so underresourced both in terms of boots on the ground in the number of people but also the equipment and the problems they had with radios and lack of batteries and lack of airpower. Did you speak a little bit and explain to the viewers what they were dealing with and why it would be that way . I was really shocked and thats not something i anticipated. When i went out there i knew rupert thornwell had been been killed and i knew there was intense fighting going on but what i hadnt expected was that they would be ondemand and they just didnt have enough men. They had 10,000 british troops in helmand and another 20,000 u. S. Marines coming in. They didnt have enough men for the mission. They didnt have the right equipment so rupert thornwell his death like truth being better than any kind of fiction almost tragically poetic the way he died. He was killed inside a viking track vehicle july 12009 and a vehicle that should not have been used on tracks in helmand. It was improperly armored. They improvise by putting an armor plate on the front so the taliban would realize that and they would offset the pressure plate so the ied would explode behind it. One reason he was killed because he was in a vehicle that wasnt fully protected. If you were in an mrap he would have been protected. It the review is in the front vehicle was because there was this real phenomenon of battle shock. Some of these young guardsman 18 and 19 years old were going into a freezing panic volunteering for patrols absolute terrified. The main reason for that was they were searching for ieds and explosive devices using metal detectors. The taliban at that point had developed low metal content or no metal content iuds with graphite and plastic components. Once its described as looking for an ied with a golf club and absolutely terrifying. You can be looking with it and be my zovi using a stick and he could be blown to pieces. Rupert thorneloe appreciated that so as a Lieutenant Colonel he did that job sometimes it going in with a metal detector and on the day he was killed that does is what he was doing. It was sort of a way his leadership style was demonstrate that he would take the soldiers and he paid the price. The other aspect of his death is during operation panthers claw which was the big sweeping brigade level operation which tended to happen to the british every six months, the gates were on a short cycle and certainly thats the american view and ruperts views similar to the american view which is that it should be longer that these big sweeping operations which resulted in lots of medals for senior british officers and the declaration of victory and Great Success and a certain number of taliban on the body count. The british didnt have enough troops to hold the ground so ruperts idea was these operations were flawed in concept. He actually got the plan for his part of panthers claw modified because he thought the area that was given to them was too large and as part of that that was one of the reasons he was on the canal that day. So you have all these aspects of the british strategy and the lack of equipment and the lack of manpower coalesced in that single moment of ruperts death which still sends a chill down my spine. Host sure. And your book focuses a fair amount on the rankandfile on the individuals put into very difficult situations that they have never been in before and in the british case a lot of them had been in 20 years and had never even seen a single gunshot go over their head. The scene with mark edison lieutenant mark edison leading his men in combat but getting shot in the back in and a vicious ambush, three sided ambush the turned ugly very quickly. How much have you heard from are kept in touch with any of the individuals kind of postscript since the book came out and can you speak at all to where they are now . Guest i have kept in touch with a lot of them. Mark everson a young platoon commander by all accounts going places very charismatic young officer. In charge of this outpost on the edge of the affected area of operations. He was a podgy alum in may of 2009 at the start of it all and again this is part of the dead men risen aspect. He was writing in his diary which was a lot expressed in that published in the book. He was concerned about lack of medical equipment and helicopter evacuation procedures and also he didnt know what the mission was. He was unsure what the mission was so the patrol that day i mean it was really what was called matches to go out there and be seen and reassure the local population which is sort of nonsensical in the helmand context. So a big ambush and what i found out in the blogs to the u. S. Edition is that he was in all likelihood a bullet that killed him. What happened to him was he was mortally wounded heroic gallantry medals awarded. He got him back to the base but it was in screwups with helicopters and he got back to the hospital well outside of the golden hours 20 minutes outside of the golden hour and bled to death and the lifesupport machine was turned off by his family. But the tragic postscript that i was able to find out about and published in the epilogue was that it was a sevenpoint 62 nato round that killed him. All of that certainly supplied by welsh guardsman in the heat of battle from the base itself. One of the hardest moments in all of the research and writing this book was to break the news, i would break the news to some of these watch guardsmen that i looked at the ballistics report and i think was a friendly fire death. This one guy called guardsmen cows well who suffered very severe battle shock heattreated mark everson when he was mortally wounded and had a special dynamic with him. He was absolutely devastated by his death and cost well i tracked him down and talk to him. He is awol and he is on the run from the army. He has gone through ptsd and a lot of drinking and drugs. He seems to be in a better place now but very fragile and the number particularly from that platoon really seriously affected them. They came back different people and i think always will be. Host you touched on sangin already been especially when you Start Talking about the british and the american relationship and the dynamics really the history of helmand that is a place where the british took a beating especially before the american surge of troops in early 2010. What surprised you with anything in terms of what they were dealing with be it in terms of taliban tactics or the lack of equipment, just the overall daytoday struggles they had . Guest signing the welsh guardsman and sangin i wasnt in the welsh guards area of operation but one of the things that happened during panther claw the british were robbing peter to pay paul so they were taking soldiers out of sangin and there was one incident where five british soldiers were killed during that. Not because they were more in demand than usual in sangin. I found that there was a lack of coherent strategy from the british which filtered all the way down about what they were doing. This was also a period of flux in the overall nato strategy so general mcchrystal had taken over and basically said we were losing this war and we need to have a surge in troops. We were waiting for president obamas speech which came at the west point speech at the end of the year. He gave the troops to the surge but not as many troops as as mcchrystal asked for and insert this timetable for withdrawal resent this sort of mixed message. What i found was during this period we had british platoon commanders and sergeant level pleading with afghans really saying we are with you. We are in it for the longhaul. We will stay but sometimes there is one particular base where he heard a conversation and on that base there was a caretaker who had worked for usaid in the 1960s and 1970s. He had worked for the russians at the same base. He had worked for the taliban and on the base they were filing cabinets full of usaid documents. There was equipment russian equipment with trucks from a walkie there so it was this graveyard of empire type situation. You could see what the afghans that they werent convinced in the british were saying to me privately we dont know either. We need an answer to this because we cant keep on peddling this lie if we dont know that is true. There was a lot of dismay when the withdrawal date was announced because a lot of troops felt that meant their dealings with the afghans had been somehow dishonest because the americans werent really in it for the longhaul and moved to a domestic political timetable almost. It was a pretty complex relationship between the british and the afghans. Host at the time in 2093 surge there were a couple of American Marine units and you mentioned anglico and battalions in hell month. Did you hear or see anything in terms of oh man they are doing this. You get into a situation where you are in places like that where three miles, five miles can seem like a world away. Absolutely. There was nor was and the welsh guard, small welsh guards unit. They described it like the famous welsh lots of welshman where there were 8b c. s awarded in a single day when a beleaguered forces over ron. Those welsh guardsman were in awe of the u. S. Marines arriving arriving. They were waiting and they described it as the cavalry arriving over the horizon when i got there. At the lower level, i mean i know there was a lot of angst that the Brigade Headquarters at this section. As i said before the u. S. Was coming in and saving the day because the british werent up to it but at the lower level nothing but praise for the americans. We also are starting to see this concept of courageous restraint this slowdown from general mcchrystal and it was all about counterinsurgency doctrine and the need to take risk to avoid civilian casualties even if that meant they might actually take more American British casualties. During this period there was one sergeant he said mcchrystal seems like a bit of a tree hugger to me a jsoc who oversaw the campaign that he described as industrial scale killing of al qaeda in iraq, people in iraq not used to being called a tree hugger. But this was the early signs of the edict was overinterpreted down the chain and you had some enthusiastic lowlevel officers who were making the troops take too many risks on the basis avoiding civilian casualties where every military person knows you cant fight any kind of award without causing casualties. There was some resentment from the british as what was seen as this american Political Correctness rule which actually meant some of the comrades would be killed. That was very much the feeling amongst u. S. Marines and the u. S. Military subsequently that they were losing men because of this doctrine. Very much so. You definitely hear the rules of engagement almost being like a curse word. Around that timeframe and i i have seen similar things as well. On the flipside the book touches on several times some of those oops moment where the british felt like they were stuck in a bad firefight or thought they saw one thing and it turned out to be another. There are several examples of farmers being killed were civilians being killed afterthefact post 2009 post book, did you ever see or hear hear how much of that is the struggle or is it more the struggle of the guardsman dealing with the loss of their own . Guest i think civilian casualties is part of it. There was a father i was speaking to a few months ago of a young guardsman who had found his son in his bedroom weeping and said i killed an 11yearold boy and he was holding his son in his arms saying sunday did what he you had to do. You had to do it. So it really does cut to your corner. I did a documentary for the bbc in 2013 about ptsd and suicide and there was another guardsman who fired a javelin missile at a bunch of insurgents totally legitimately and killed three of them. He recalled looking through the night site and seeing those body parts flying through the air thinking those guys are someones bad. He had his baby on his knee and it clearly weighed on his mind as something the troops had to deal with. You alluded to the incident with the farmer after ebersons death, clearly theres a human desire for vengeance and theres a military need to strike back when you have taken a casualty like that. There was this junction which was routinely succeeded with ieds at that night in looking through a javelin site watch guards saw digging. Everybody believed it was an ied ied. The rangefinder on the javelin missile wasnt working correctly. Rupert thorneloe was very angry about this and said he thought it was the result of being gung ho. They engaged the target and kill the farmer working in his fields in the middle of the night to be avoided out of the heat of the day. He was needlessly killed and propaganda for the taliban. All these things are interconnected and is almost a direct line up ever since that probably friendly fire to that being perhaps a number of young men from the village. Civilian casualties the moral aspect of it and the counterinsurgency counterproductive this a bit the actual individual who does it either through mistake or completely jena action or some kind of combination of the two i think it does wear on people. Host you kind of reconstruct where this battalion came from, its history and background of a lot of the rankandfile and the outsourcers that frequently come from a completely different world. That is sometimes the case on the american side as well. You start the book early by explaining the importance of the falklands in terms of the cultural importance in the unit to that conflict in the 80s and the way that a lot of these welsh soldiers came up. Why include that level of detail . Why was an important . Guest i thought it was essential to the psyche of the watch guards and the way they fought in helmand. Again this is only my belief but i think Rupert Thorneloe would not have been killed in the way that he was killed if it hadnt been for the falklands war which seems bizarre. The falklands war was in 1992 and this was 2009 but during the falklands the welsh watts garden and they were killed while sitting on a ship waiting to land on bluff go for hits by argentine bonds. One of the most arandas incidents in the falklands war but one of the things about the casualties that no officers were killed. It was overwhelmingly guardsman and corporals but it was very much the lower ranks that were hit. But it was the sense that they were on that ship like a sitting duck targets because of the actions of officers. Even now you can go to Sergeant Smith in the watch guardsmen and there will be an argument about what happened that day at bluff cove. I dont think its complete the three officers were killed and three watch guards officers were killed. I think psychologically it was a compensating behavior so leaving from the front was part of the culture of the regiment that the officers some of the officers had been blamed for failure back in 1982. As a regiment there was a very strong sense of history in this moment that they were going out as Infantry Battalion in the heat of battle in helmand having never really had the chance to fight in the falklands war because they were hit so badly before they even landed. I was fascinated. Im now an american citizen who spent 10 to 12 years here and the British Class system something i still dont fully understand. Very present in these guards regiments the way you have 95 of them are welsh mining villages and some welsh speakers from north wales from a small communities. Almost all the officers are upperclass plummy voiced englishman which is a fascinating dynamic. The guards officers will make arguments that its like we are a breed apart so we dont have to fraternize and everyone knows who his boss wears if you have Sergeant Ayres work on the battlefields. Thats part of the culture of the regiments. To get into the psyche of the individual soldiers and this kind of psyche of the regiment i felt was very important for both me and the reader to understand that. You touch on Rupert Thorneloes interactions with the ministry of defense and his previous job there but when he thought it was necessary going around the command and doing whatever he could to get his own soldiers what he thought they would need. That friction point is pretty central to the book throughout. These guys being put in place that they werent prepared for. What lessons are there for the British Military couple of years out now . Have they learn from this . Is this the kind of thing that is, up since then have they changed anything . Guest of really good question. I would like to think so but there are a lot of signs that they are not. Helmand was seen by the british army as a opportunity for redemption after southern iraq but many similar mistakes were made. I think they improved the equipment in the peer kermit. This was the lowest point if you like brickbats but the thing about Rupert Thorneloe hed been the military defense secretary before taking command of the regiment said he had gone from having this view of being assistant to the equivalent of pentagon chief here and write right to the heart of the British Government and British Defense policy and he had gone from the top down to this granular battalion level. This was something i didnt know about certainly while he was alive and he came through documents and people eventually opening up to me and telling me about conversations they had with him. He made himself really unpopular with the brigade. Some people would say he thinks hes a general but he is a colonel and we are on the brigadier staff and he needs to up like everyone else. Rupert felt he knew the reasons for some of these rules that were being quoted at him is the reason why he couldnt have more men. He was like you are mistaken. Its absolutely the reason i was there and i know because i was there when that rule was instituted. He was a selfeffacing character. He didnt express this arrogantly but he was really dogged and i think he knew that he was destined for the highest ranks. I think he made the calculation that he could upset brigadiers and i also think he had at the core of him they believe in serving as well as leading his troops. He died for his troops and he was prepared to do that. I think that is the way he believed that he needed to lead and to fight. He wasnt going to be one of these battalion commanders who thought well i will get my metal and make recommendations and move up the chain. Think rupert had in itself cant cant and in her was above that. Some of the pleased that rupert made to the brigade particularly about the lack of helicopters. There was a watch guard officers have passed it to the member of parliament in the very next day they were discussed at prime ministers question time with david cameron. And mark eversons diary about the inadequacy of equipment and his lack of understanding of the reason he was there that had a profound impact. His mother wrote her own book after dead men risen and has done a lot of media. I do think welsh watch guards it certainly percolated through society and the army but whether it really changes things we will have to see. Host do you think there were innate cultural dynamics at play. This is something that is foreign for americans who dont have any real knowledge or understanding of the way things are in britain. The way a welshman might be viewed differently from a unit from a different part of the country just in terms of where they come from and what their differences are and how they are viewed. Guest yeah absolutely. The british regiment is unique. They had been amalgamated through the years. Welsh guards is a new regiment. It was formed in 1915. If you look at scott guardsmen and you joke about scots guards are only half of them the rest are from liverpool and manchester. The welsh guards have been more cohesive sense i think than any other regiments in the british army. There is a dual world regiment in the infantry regiment. They are also the guards you see wearing the red tunics outside of Buckingham Palace. They have a ceremonial role so a lot of these guys who died in helmand where the guys you saw in Buckingham Palace change in the guard. The regular Infantry Battalion with no ceremonial role they would banter and mock the watch guards but there was an element of seriousness about it. You are not real infantrymen because you word only doing half time and we doing all time. They were very proud of their scruffy miss if you like. They didnt like the spit and polish aspect of the guards which runs right through so even out in helmand people soldiers were being picked up by officers for failure to shave. The guards ethos is that you know you dont shave you dont clean your rifle your rifle doesnt work and then somebody dies. The ethos of the regiment is well its not necessary. We need to focus on the military in appearances and smarter salutes that takes you away from real soldiering. I have always found that with the british that so many factors are at work and history plays a real part. Host some of those things you would see on the american side as well in terms of the rapport between army and the marines and within those different weather reconnaissance or regular or whatever the case is. Guest imagines soldiers who join units would take on this history and ethos because its just everywhere. Host looking at helmand now in 2015 the reports in a lot of cases are frightening and the afghan army is still there in the Afghan Police are still there but we also have reports of the Islamic State there and the taliban certainly taking over a lot more of the territory. What do you see as the british piece of this in terms of what went right and what went wrong and how its viewed back home . Guest similar to here really. Most people believe we should not have been there. Less so than iraq and this is the feeling that 9 11 was launched from afghanistan. A real dismay for how its turned out in the feeling that politicians and generals let the troops down. There is one absolutely chilling passage in the book were David Miliband who is the British Foreign secretary in 2010 acid provincial governor of helmand what would be the British Legacy. I think he was expecting well how long with the British Legacy last . He expected a decade or decades our generation and he replied within 48 hours we will be out of your hanging from the nearest tree. I think that is personnel reports of alplaus. The british base the colocated with camp leatherneck and january in 2006 before the british arrived i went on my own with another reporter and afghan driver and we drove in from kandahar in two less gardy and it was lie in the back the kind of trip. Warlords walking on the road in American Defense contractors they are saying the british could be hit on the roads. Afghans talk about the battle of may 1 from the 19 century and the bones of the british will be lying with their grandfathers. We have no british troops in helmand at all and i think the taliban now are moving into the space that has been left. Certainly the sense what was it all for. We were there and it was an intense period fighting for for almost every inch of ground and now we have just left and its clear to many of these troops that this was very much present in dead men risen that major Sean Burchell that was killed said basically Afghan Police in particular we have to guard ourselves against them and sure enough after i left major darren chance came in seeing the nco in the regiment that ive been traveling around with for two weeks, a fantastic eye shot dead by an Afghan Policeman along with four other guardsmen and military police. In britain as here there is a sons of what was it all for and why did we do this . As a History Lesson and perhaps because i spent time in marcia in 2010 what became that district is touched on quite a bit in the book but it is always kind of this spooky place that they are just not going to go. What did you see and what did you hear as far as marcia went and in terms of having the sense that at some point it would be a large operation they are . Guest i a vice some maps fascinating. A big hand small map operation and he has his hand on this map. I was given a map of the area for the welsh guards so i got back and it worked out and i got my bearings. But then i went into the Operations Room and i was shown another map of the operations and i had been told the operations was in the top lefthand corner. And in the bottom corner was marcia said there was a sense of the badlands taliban controlled terry territory world of supply routes were and it was definitely talk about marcia needs to be dealt with. And then marcia became this place where marines were killed and a big moment for general mcchrystal. And i think im ripe when i was out there no one in the United States would have heard of marjah that yes it was very much on the agenda but it was whispered about really on what the u. S. Marines would be dealing with. Host interesting and i found it fascinating going back. My last trip is 2012 and marcia was considered to be safe at that point. You still have these badlands in between and even in 2012 when there had been years of american operations with the whole lack more manpower. Its the badlands where you push people and to get them out of. Guest i remember a u. S. Army, young u. S. Army Intelligence Officer in iraq and yala province i think describing a blue where you put pressure on it and you remove the air and it goes into another bed and i think that is often the case. That had been the sort of place which would strike fear into the heart of the british soldier and be taken and seemed relatively benign and as you say marjah went that way. I think thats the way it is in war. Host we have about five minutes left. I wanted to touch on the human aspect of this. Both countries are coming to the end of afghanistan and we are back in iraq but its a different kind of conflict at least so far. Your book touches on the struggles especially the new american version that a lot of these individuals have suicide problems and date drinking problems and the stresses of puts on marriages and parents and kids and everything. Do you see especially you have an interesting perspective on this is someone who has tracked it from both sides of the ocean. How have the british done with taking care of the military postconflict and preparing for this and what kinds of differences are there between data and the way the americans do it . Guest pretty badly and fortunately. We have a b. A. System separate Veterans Administration so its shared between the ministry of defense and the department of health. But doing this bbc documentary which features a lot of soldiers from the welsh guards. It became apparent that the british dont track veterans so once you have been discharged and i was trying to find out how many veterans served in afghanistan that had taken their lives and the ultimate answer is we dont know. We have to check newspaper cuttings. So really a flawed system. I think well i know actually there is a belief from very senior people that ptsd is not a british problem. Its something that americans get. They do obviously knowledge that some brits did get it but they cite statistics showing that its higher in the equivalent population and they say the americans overdiagnosed. I think their heads in the sand here. I went out there with a little bit of skepticism about ptsd and what is it and is it a way of getting out of things or claiming benefits afterwards but being out there with people like dan

© 2024 Vimarsana

comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.