Afghanistan Notebook: flights are cancelled and departures delayed but the Army gets me – and members of my old regiment – to Kabul

The weather in London forces a last-minute change to my best-laid plans to get to Afghanistan as a “civvie” so I can revisit my old regiment out there. I’m grateful, though, that old habits die hard: my waterproofed bergen fares better than most of my fellow passengers’ luggage sitting out in the snow once our flight has been cancelled.

The advantage of being rescued by the RAF from my snowed-out plan to fly commercially into Kabul is the chance to return on an old Tri-Star with members of my former regiment, the Grenadier Guards, coming back from their R&R through Brize Norton. Compared with the increasingly angry chaos in London City airport, the announcement of a slight delay in our departure is met with resignation; maybe soldiers are more used to waiting around, more patient than the thwarted Eurostar customers. Then again, maybe they’re just not in such a rush to leave home. Those with faded and battered combats heading back out seem more relaxed than those in freshly pressed and bright new kit deploying for the first time. The unknown is always more intimidating than the familiar, even when the familiar is Helmand.

Croissant, anyone?

Kandahar airfield (KAF) has expanded since I was last here, a French patisserie and a German PX (kit shop) the most obvious additions to the “boardwalk” and testament to the increased Nato commitment to the region. What hasn’t changed, however, is a sense of coming and going. Although home to many dedicated staff and aircrew, KAF for most of the British is a staging post, a relaxed midway point between the comforts of home and the rigours of Helmand.

We stroll around the vast camp without the need to carry helmets, body armour or weapons, and shopping seems to be the main activity of troops in transit. I’m struck that it was slightly cheeky of recent reports to spin the Prime Minister’s stay here as being a night in a “war zone”. Neither the nice ladies in the coffee shop nor the pizza delivery boys can remember when the base was last attacked.

Forward march

The area around Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shawqat couldn’t be spun as anything but a war zone. The sparse ops room made of Hesco (prefabricated protection walls) is a hive of activity controlling the many elements of the Grenadier Guards Battlegroup spread across the Nad-e Ali region of central Helmand — vital ground in the current conflict, where the Taleban are paying no regard to it being Christmas Eve. Five shooting incidents on the day I arrive is a “quiet day” and the surrounding villages are still recovering from a devastating IED attack on the busy market the day before.

Nevertheless, the progress made in the two years since I was last here is marked. Back then we drove through opportunistic ambushes and past bewildered local farmers, across a vast area covered by barely a couple of hundred troops. Now the focus is on the population and the Grenadiers work alongside thousands of other British, Danish, Estonian and American troops integrating ever more fully with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and police. Afghan flags fly prominently from checkpoints and dozens of new buildings around the refurbished marketplace.

Tail of a sergeant

Progress, however, is fragile and a slight lull on Christmas Day deceptive. On Boxing Day I patrol north to the FLET (Forward Line of Enemy Troops), with Captain Tom Holmes and his mentoring team with their partnered ANA troops. The ANA are barely recognisable from the colourful bunch I worked with, smart in new uniforms and with new and improved weapons, but neither their bravery nor their fatalism has changed. When the inevitable contact begins, their disregard for their own safety in the fight is either inspirational or stupid, possibly a bit of both.

I feel strangely naked with a camera instead of a rifle and my arms feel frustratingly redundant, but I’m in safe and well-practised hands and after pinning down the Taleban section we extract without fuss or casualties back to the small checkpoint that is the effective front line. After crawling down ditches and through freezing canals under some pretty accurate fire, soaking and covered in mud with no prospect of a warm shower for days, morale is surprisingly high.

In a small corner where a carpet and a couple of chairs are an attempt at comfort, the soldiers who minutes earlier were scrapping hard are playing with an improbably cute mongrel puppy they’ve adopted and promoted to the rank of sergeant. The ubiquitous Santa hats are as much a nod to home as the scattered lads’ mags, but the graffiti on the blast-proof wall is a reminder of how far from home these guys really are: “I was taking cover behind the Hesco /while you were back in f***ing Tesco.”

Patrick Hennessey is a former captain in the Grenadier Guards and author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

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