tea with them. He had a bodyguard with him. But someone came in and stuck an axe in his head. That brought it home to quite a lot of people, I think. People began to step back and think, ‘Bloody hell, this might be something of a fight.’
The question of how to distinguish friend from foe, gunman from civilian, played a large part in preparations. The Paras were taught some likely indicators that would alert them to an approaching suicide bomber: heavy sweating, an absence of body hair, the mumbling of prayers and a refusal to respond to warning shouts were all signs to set alarm bells ringing. In the towns and villages they would be working in there would be many opportunities for making catastrophic errors that could deal fatal damage to the effort to win consent and trust.
Everyone dreaded shooting the wrong person. But they were also extremely uneasy about what would happen to them even if they had made an honest mistake. The spate of judicial actions against soldiers who had got into similar trouble in Iraq had created cynicism and a belief that justice was being bent by political considerations. Tootal gave reassurance that no one would be hung out to dry. ‘The CO was very, very clear about what his approach would be if someone was deemed genuinely to pose a threat,’ said Martin Taylor. As long as a soldier ‘was acting in all honesty and was not misusing his power in any way he would be supported’.
On the other hand, Tootal also left no room for doubt that anyone who abused the local population could expect harsh punishment. He spelled out the difference in a talk to the troops, asking them to imagine that they were patrolling into a village at dusk. Unseen assailants had been shooting at them and they were tense and nervous. Suddenly a boy walks out of an alleyway, holding a shepherd’s crook. In the failing light it looks just like an AK-47 rifle. Someone makes a split-second decision and shoots him dead. Tragic though it is, it is a consequence of the friction of war. In the circumstances there would be an investigation. But if it was shown that the soldier was acting with honest intent he could count on his CO’s support.
If, however, the soldier had seen the boy and was about to shoot him, subsequently recognised his mistake but took him into the alleyway ‘then kicked the shit out of him because he’d been given a good scare, then I’ll have that soldier court-martialled,’ Tootal said.
By the beginning of April 2006 the theorising was over and the practice was about to begin. After years on the sidelines, 3 Para was ready to take to the field. The thought was both alarming and exciting. ‘There is one test that a parachutist wants to take,’ said Nick French, ‘and that is how do you react under fire. Are you going to flinch, are you going to hide or are you going to pass that test? If you do you will leave the army happy.’ In the months ahead they would have many opportunities to try their courage.
Rudyard Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads, published in 1892, contained a poem, ‘The Young British Soldier’, which was much quoted by those predicting the dire consequences of getting mixed up with Afghanistan. One verse ran: ‘When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains/And the women come out to cut up what remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/And go to your Gawd like a soldier.’
To the Paras arriving at Camp Bastion, in the arid flatlands north of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, it was heat and dust rather than the bloodthirsty attentions of fierce local women which seemed the main hazard. ‘A’ Company were the first to deploy, arriving on 15 April with the battle group’s tactical headquarters and the Patrols Platoon. They had also been the last to leave Iraq and had less time at home than the other company battalions. There was some whingeing among the soldiers, but the logic of the decision was accepted. It was, in its way, a compliment. ‘A’ Company had the most recent operational experience and the longest-established command structure. Going in first confirmed its members’ belief that they were the best.
First impressions of Bastion, though, did not raise spirits. To Corporal Chris Prosser, a machine-gunner from Support Company who was attached to ‘A’ Company, it came as ‘a complete shock’. The Paras were used to roughing it in the field but expected a few basic comforts back at camp. Instead, ‘there was nothing there. Inititally we were living in twelve-foot by twelve-foot tents with no aircon and nothing on the floor. We were living on ration packs for the first two weeks. Sandstorms came in every afternoon and swept through the tents so your kit was always covered in dust.’
‘Bastion when we arrived was just a dustbowl,’ said Hugo Farmer. ‘There were no hard roads and we were about fourteen to eighteen to a tent.’ The ablutions blocks were not completed and grey pools of waste water seeped into the gritty sand.
Other units at the base seemed to fare better than the new arrivals. Farmer speculated that there was an ingrained army belief that ‘the Paras liked that sort of stuff’. In the end they just got on with it, living out of their bergen rucksacks.
Stuart Tootal, who reached Bastion on 18 April, was more concerned with how the base would be resupplied. As it stood, it was reliant on a fragile air bridge provided by the Chinooks and Hercules. The lack of comfort did not worry him too much. His overriding preoccupation was getting his battle group into place as quickly as possible. The camp conditions, however, were a major concern to the Permanent Joint Headquarters staff who oversaw the operation from thousands of miles away in Northolt, Middlesex. They preferred to hold the remaining troops of the battle group back until Bastion was in a fit state to receive them. Tootal was frustrated at their caution. Dribbling his men into theatre risked losing the initiative. His view was that
[we] were an expeditionary army and we should be able to go out into the field and set up. I was quite prepared to say we’ll just live in the desert. We’ll live off rations and draw water because there’s plenty of water we can access. We’ll shit in holes and we’ll burn it off. We’re going to be dusty and we’re going to be uncomfortable. But actually, I’ve got all my fighting power with me.
In the end it was more than four weeks before all his infantry elements arrived. There was a further wait before key assets such as the artillery were in place. The Household Cavalry light armoured squadron did not reach the battle group until 10 July.
Fortunately for 3 Para, the Taliban were not yet ready to declare the fighting season open. The poppy harvest was about to begin. Once it got under way, the fields along the great river valleys that plough north to south through Helmand would be full of toiling men, women and children. The process was simple. First, the harvesters made four light incisions with a multi-bladed razor in the head of the poppy. They left it for a few days for the sticky, milky sap to collect. Then they returned to scrape it off with a wooden spatula. Each head had to be scraped up to seven times to collect all the ‘milk’. The sap was shaped into slabs which were sold at established markets. They were then passed on for processing and transporting, increasing in value at every stage until the refined product reached the streets of Europe’s towns and cities as cellophane ‘wraps’ of dirty, brownish powder.
The poppy farmers sold their crops to local drug lords, who sold it on to the processors. Helmand province was reputed to supply 20 per cent of the world’s opium. The growers were expecting 2006 to produce a bumper crop – 50 per cent up on the previous year. When the Taliban were in power they had opposed the trade, coming close to eradicating production. But now they were trying to wrest back the power they had lost and were anxious not to antagonise either the peasants or the landowners who exploited them. Poppy was a vital part of the economy. Even a poor tenant farmer could expect to make £1,000 from a plot of land less than 100 yards square, a sum that went a long way
