Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20150208 : vimarsana.com

In the last few months is so debased and wave. Its unlawful, its immoral that the book shows yet again that there are two things that torture absolutely guarantees. One is pain and the other is false information. Booktv continues now. Toby harnden recounts a british battalions efforts to prevent the taliban from seizing a province of afghanistan while awaiting the arrival of u. S. Marines in 2009. Mr. Harnden discusses his book with dan lamothe National Security reporter for the washington post. Its about an hour. Host toby thanks for joining me today on after words. I am dan lamothe and i run the military blog checkpoint. Im toby harnden with the bureau chief. We are talking about his book dead men risen which has just been released in the United States. Its about a unit traveling to afghanistan in 2009 i was unit that saw quite a bit of combat. Toby i was hoping off the top of the good explain about the title of the book. A very striking title. Guest its a phrase that in is a poem. Its not a very famous poem. It shone burchell who was Company Commander killed in action in june of 2009. His mother sent out a first collection of poems and he sees him if ray stedman risen because his company was brought forward at the last minute so it was all these men thrown together happen to train together and it builds and he started saying you are dead men risen and he was referring to the battalion which was number nine company and that company being in the nation since the second world war. 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 is a way of unifying them but it also became a sort of the theme of the book really because the three main characters the Battalion Commander but Mark Anderson at the tenth commander were killed in action and that was the first time those three levels of leaders had been killed in action and a british battalion since the korean war. In a sense their stories from the grave, their testimony from the grave is at the core of the book and so in a way they are dead men risen and the others for me was an incident which is an emotional heart of the book which is when seven watch guardsmen toppled into a canal, a horrendous incident. They were hanging upside down in the dark with water rising like this because they were upside down. Some are blacked out and reached for a picture of his wife and a sonogram of his unborn child clutched to 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 swung open and they were rescued and all seven of those guys lived in some of them were extremely close to death. When was it not, for weeks. They thought they were dead and they rose so ive had many resonances that initially in the first world war. Host can you walk me through a little bit how you came to end up with this welsh unit and the amount of time you spend with them in the field versus how many many interviews he had afterwards linking us all together . Yeah share. The regiments, one battalion regiment the welsh guards and i had coincidentally gotten to know them through my years as a journalist. I would sort of bump into them and keep contact with them in the First Contact was when i was in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. I went to see them in our mom and wrote a book about the ira and during that period i got to know a guy called rupert who turned out to be the Commanding Officer in 2009 so he was the Army Intelligence officer and he became a good friend. So i kept in contact with him. I embedded with them in iraq in 2004 n a sans province. Rick wasnt there them but i got to know a lot of welsh guardsman then. I was in touch and i was aware that they were out and i was back here in the states and i knew they were in it bloody fights. In 2009 i logged onto my blacktop and saw the headline Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thornhill killed. My friend the Commanding Officer of the battalion and to me was a personal loss and obviously he was the father of two little girls and a husband and the sun. Its a big National Moment as well. The First Time Since the war that the Battalion Commander had been killed in action so that was the trigger for me. I needed to get out there and find out whats going on so i got in touch with the regimen and then very soon after that charlie and tell was Lieutenant Colonel. He was the major that was bumped up to Lieutenant Colonel to be flown out to replace Rupert Thornhill on Rupert Thornhill and i knew charlie. He was a Company Commander in iraq so was happenstance that this all came together. I got out there in august of 2009 and i was there in the last month or so with the new Commanding Officer in place. I was able to travel the battle creek area. I traveled to all 12 bases and outposts and was out on the ground with the troops. The book isnt my description what would happen to me. There are few things in there that didnt involve me but really that was an opportunity to start the interview process and you know yourself when you are embedded with troops you have conversations that you just dont have anywhere else. They open up and they talk about their fears and you might be the last person ever to speak to them. You are also someone coming from the outside and i was very clear to them this was not a newspaper article. This was the book and a history so i thought the opened up little bit more when they knew this wasnt going to be published in a year or so so that was the start of it. There was one publisher that was bidding for the book that was key to write the book very 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 kristal and some Senior Officers in the u. S. People up what happened to them and what this was about in their experience changed over time. I was able to get a very large number of documents from the welsh guards and ministry of defense documents which meant that 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 and also there was the aspect of ptsd and there were casualties that happened long after i got back. It was unexpected. It was in an area i was expecting to examine that Sergeant Dan Collins who is one of the heroes in the book he had been shot and i remember interviewing him and he seemed like he was on top of the world. I was almost envious of him. A war hero speeding through this experience. You are tested and have proven yourself and then i saw dan descent into death. He took his own life on new years eve 2012. So it was an extended reporting a following these people for over a year and im still in touch with many of them. Host thanks. Having spent time myself and elmont between 2010 and 2012 with the u. S. Marines i was struck by the friction points at times between the american troops and the british troops and perhaps even more so the leadership on the two sides. It 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 indian it . Guest well right at the ground level not very much and in fact there was tremendous camaraderie. In the u. S. Marines who were embedded within the welsh guards battle group. One of the most fascinating units within the unit for me was a bunch of sniper snipers who historically i arrived at this outpost knowing nothing about them and we came under fire as we dismounted from the convoy. It seemed pretty distant to me. I dont really think much of it and then i heard a couple of big cracks that sounded to me like. 50 caliber single shot or something quite close. I found these two snipers and they had 75 kills and four weeks between them in the last two kills and qatar were there first cracks i heard when we arrived. One thing i hadnt expected was snipers from that unit had been operating with marines sidebyside in these outposts so this one incident of british corporal who kills all taliban in quick succession at a distance of more than a mile and right beside him as he is taking no shots were marines from angle go who had the laptops and downloading data from the u. S. Drug. And then it was the u. S. Black core that flew in to recover the bodies and confirm that one was a senior taliban commander. Most medical evacuations were done by american block cox. Most of the combat air support was american so a lot of the guardsmen were talking to americans every day. At that level it was really seamless. They were brothers in arms and tremendous respect and comradeship but certainly at the higher level at the brigade type level this is a sensitive time because the u. S. Marine corps arrived in june 2009 so they arrived halfway through the welsh guards in this brigade. Any suggestion that the 20,000 or so u. S. Marines coming in were coming to the rescue are bailing out the british which i think is a fair characterization of all is happening. It was just an app a month. The to be careful of it and i know americans who were saying well the Task Force Helmand in the american said its part of helmand lets face it so it was definitely an issue in the british were sensitive about what happened in southern iraq and feeling of failure frankly and disappointment from u. S. Military moments there. They were very wary of the same thing happening in helmand and ultimately that is what happened as im sure you found out in places like there was american criticism of the 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 within the field you occasionally would hear the grumbling they dont come out of their bases much. Reading the book i got an appreciation for the other side the sergeant level and Lance Sergeant level and those british units because you could get the sense for why that was the case. 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 lack of batteries and lack of airpower. Can you speak a little bit to the viewers what they were dealing with and why it would be that way . I was really shocked and that was not something i anticipated. When i went out there i knew about the casualties. I knew there was an intense fight going on but what i hadnt expected was they would be undermanned and they didnt have enough men and 10 thousand british troops in helmand. They had enough men for the mission. They didnt have the right equipment so Rupert Thornhill his death is one of those examples of truth being better than any kind of fiction. Almost tragically poetic the way he died. He was killed inside a biking track vehicle july 1, 2009. A vehicle that should not have been used on tracks in helmand. It shouldnt it was improperly arms. The taliban realize that an offset the pressure plate. The pressure plate was ahead of the ied so the ied would exclude behind the vehicle. One reason he was killed because he was in a vehicle that wasnt properly protected. The reason he was in the front vehicle was because there was this real phenomenon of battle shock were some of these young guardsman 18 and 19 years old were going into a freezing panic absolutely terrified in the main reason for that was because they were searching for ieds and improvised explosive devices using metal detectors but the taliban at that point had developed a low metal content ieds or no metal content ieds from graphite and plastic components. It was described to me is like looking for an ied with the golf club. And absolutely terrifying that you could be looking for this and you might as well use a stick and the next step you could be blown to pieces. Rupert thornhill appreciated that so is a Lieutenant Colonel he did that job sometimes up going with the metal detector. On the day he was killed that is what he was doing. It was a way of his leadership style was to demonstrate that he was going to take the soldiers and he paid the price. The other aspect is during operation panther which was the big sweeping brigade level operation which tended to happen to the british every six months very short cycle and certainly thats the american view and ruperts view is similar to the american view which is it should be longer but these big sweeping operations which resulted in senior british officers and the declaration of victory and Great Success and a certain number of taliban but the british didnt have enough troops to hold the ground so rupert thought was these operations were flawed in concept. He actually got the plan for his part modified because he felt the area that was being given to them was too large and as part of that modification that is one of the reasons he was on the canal that day. All these aspects of the flawed british strategy and a lack of equipment and manpower but also coalesced in a single moment of ruperts death which still sends a chill down my spine when i think about it. Host sure. Your book focuses a fair amount on the rankandfile on individuals put into difficult situations that they had never been in before in the british case a lot of them even if they had been in 20 years had never even seen a single gunshot go over their head. The scene with mark evason leaving his men in combat getting shot in the back in a vicious ambush three sided ambush that turned very ugly very quickly. How much have you heard from are kept in touch with the individuals postscript since the book came out and can you speak at all to where they are now . I have kept in touch with a lot of them. Mark everson again a young commander by all accounts was going places very charismatic young officer tremendously excited to be in charge of this outpost right on the edge of the affected area of operations. He was in me 2009 at the start of the tour. He was writing in his diary which was not published in the book. He was writing his diary that they radios didnt work and he was concerned about lack of mental cool equipment and evacuation procedures and he didnt know what the mission was. He was unsure what the mission was so it was really what was called a Northern Ireland days eight just to go out there and be seen and reassured those local population which was nonsensical in the holman context at that point. The big ambush and what i found out which is the revelation in the epilogue to the u. S. Edition i found out very recently was that he was in all likelihood the bullet that killed him. He was mortally wounded in what happened to him was he was mortally wounded. Her row at gallantry medals supported from those who got them back to the base but it was groups with helicopters and he got back to the hospital they are well outside the golden hour and basically bled to death and the life support machine was turned off by his family. But the tragic postscript that i was able to find out about published in the epilogue was it was a nato round that killed him. Almost certainly by welsh guardsman in the heat of battle from the base itself. One of the hardest moments in all the research and writing of this book was to break the news i had to break the news to some of these guardsman the ballistics report and i think it was a friendly fire death. There was a guy called caswell who suffered severe battle shock. He treated mark everson when he was mortally wounded and within the platoon had a special dynamic with him and was absolutely devastated by his death. Caswell was awol. He is still on the run from the army. He has gone through ptsd, a lot of drinking and drugs. He seems to be in a better place now but very fragile and particularly from that platoon really seriously affected him. They came back different people and i think they always will be. Host you touched on it already but i think especially when you Start Talking about the british and american relationship and the dynamics really in helmand that is a place where the british took a beating especially before at the american surge of troops in early 2010. What surprised you if anything in terms of what they were dealing with it being in terms of taliban tactics or the lack of equipment, just the overall daytoday struggles they had . Guest the welsh guardsmans was in the welsh guard area of operations but one of the things that happened was the british were robbing peter to the tape also they were taking soldiers to put an operations and sustaining soldiers or were killed in that period. They were more in demand than usual. I found there was a lack of coherent strategy from british which filtered all the way down about what they were doing so this was also a period of the overall nato strategy so general mcchrystal had taken over because they basically said we are losing this war and we need counterinsurgency structure but we waited for president s obama is answer which came at the west point speech at the end of the year. He gave the troops the surge but not as many troops as mcchrystal have asked for and set the timetable for withdrawal which set this mixed message. What i found was during this period you had british platoon commanders pleading with afghans saying we are in it for the longhaul and we will stay. There is one particular base where he heard a conversation like this him on that base there was a caretaker who had worked for usaid in the 1960s and 1970s. He had been worked for the russians on the same base and he worked for the taliban. On the base there were filing cabinets full of usaid documents and there was equipment russian equipment and trucks from milwaukee there. It was this graveyard of empires type of situation. You could see with afghans they werent convinced in the british were saying to me privately well we dont know either. We need an answer to this because we cant keep on peddling this y if we dont know its true. There was a lot of dismay when the withdrawal date was announced because i think a lot of the troops felt that meant their dealings with the afghans have been somehow dishonest because british americans werent really in it for the longhaul and i moved to a domestic political timetable. It was a pretty complex relationship to the british and the afghans. Host at the time in 2009 presurge there were a couple of American Marine units. There were couple of battalions. Did you hear or see anything in terms of i am here and they are dealing with this . Get into a situation when you are in places like that where free miles five miles 10 miles can seem like a world away. Guest absolutely. There was the welsh guard unit. They described it like the famous welsh the welshman in the war. They were awarded for a single day. The beleaguered force was overrun and they felt they were addressed. Those watch guardsmen were in awe of the u. S. Marines arriving arriving. They were waiting and they described it as the calvary arriving over the horizon when i got there. At the lower level i know there was a lot of angst at brigade headquarters. 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 started to see this concept of courageous restraint and this slowdown from general mcchrystal. It was all about the doctrine and need to take risks to avoid civilian casualties even if that meant that you might actually take more American British casualties. During this period certainly there was one sergeant who said to me you know mcchrystal seems like a bit of a tree hugger to me. A former head of jsoc with a campaign as he described industrial scale killing of al qaeda in iraq and people in iraq not used to being called a tree hugger but this was the early signs. The edict was overinterpreted down the chain within enthusiastic lowlevel office who is making the troops take too many risks on the basis that avoiding civilian casualties were any military person knows he cannot fight any kind of war without causing civilian casualties. There was some resentment to the british about what was seen as this american Political Correctness ruled by the come and which actually meant some of the comrades could be killed but that was very much the feeling amongst the u. S. Marines and the u. S. Military subsequently that they were losing members of this doctrine. Host you definitely hear the rules of engagement being like a curse word around that timeframe. Ive seen similar things as well well. On the flip side the book touches on several times some of those moments where the british felt like they were stuck in a firefight or thought they had seen one thing and it turned out to be another and there are several examples of farmers getting killed and civilians getting killed. Afterthefact postnine postbook did you ever see or hear and how much of that is the struggle or is it more of a struggle of the guardsmen dealing with the loss of their own . Guest i think civilian casualties is part of it. As a father i was speaking to a few months ago of a young guardsmen who said he had found his son curled up in his bedroom weeping and saying i killed an 11yearold boy and he was holding his son and his arms things done you did what you had to do. You had to do it. So it really does cut to your court. I did a documentary in 2013 about ptsd and suicide and there was another guardsmen who fired a javelin missile at a bunch of insurgents it totally legitimate kill, he killed three of them. He recalled it was looking at night site and seeing those body parts flying through the air thinking those guys were someone to dads and as he was talking to me he had his baby on his knee and clearly it weighed on his mind that it was something that the troops had to deal with. You alluded to the incident with the father. It was after abersons death. Clearly theres a human desire for vengeance and theres a military need to strike back and seize the initiative when you have taken a casualty like that. There was this junction which was being routinely hit with ieds dug in at night and looking through a javelin site welsh guards saw and everybody believed it was an ied. The rangefinder on the javelin missile wasnt working correctly. Rupert was killed a month later and he was very angry about this and he said he thought it was the result of being gung ho. They engage the target and killed a farmer working his fields in the middle of the night to be avoid being taxed by the taliban in keeping out of the heat of the day. So he was needlessly killed and obviously that is a propaganda victory for the taliban. All of these things are interconnected. Theres almost a direct line between abersons death probably through friendly fire to that farmer being killed and who knows probably number of men from the village. Civilian casualties as well as the moral aspect of it and the counterinsurgency, counterproductive myths of it. I think the actual individual who does it either through mistake or legitimate action or some kind of combination of the two. I think he really does weigh on people. Host you kind of reconstruct where this does the time came from, its history and the background out of a lot of the a lot of the a lot of the rank and file and who frequently come from me completely different world. Sometimes the case on the american side as well. You start the book very early explaining the importance of the falklands in terms of the cultural importance in the unit to that conflict in the 80s and the way 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 welsh guards and again this is only my belief but i think he would not have been killed in the way that he was killed at that hadnt been for the falklands war which seems bizarre because the war was in 1982 and this was in 2009. During the falklands there were 30 welsh guardsman who were killed who were sitting waiting to land at. [laughter] and they were hit by an argentine bombs and many of them burned to death. Many incidents in the falklands war but one of the things was no officers were killed. Mostly it was overwhelmingly private level and a couple of sergeants but it was a sense that they were on the troop like a sitting duck targets because of the actions of officers. Even now there will be an argument about what happened that day at bluff cove. I dont think its a complete coincidence that three officers were killed and three watch guard officers were killed. Psychologically there was a compensating kind of behavior so leading from the front was part of a culture of the regiment lost that the officers had been blamed some of the officers have been blamed for failure back in 1982. As a regiment it was a very strong sense of history in this moment that they were going out as an Infantry Battalion in the heat of battle in helmand having never have the chance to fight in the falklands war because they were hit so badly before they landed. I was fascinated. I am now an american citizen and spend a total of 12 years here in the British Class system is something i still dont fully understand. Particularly guards regiment. 95 of them welsh mining villages and some welsh speakers from north wales and yet almost all of the officers or upper class englishman which is a fascinating dynamic. The guards officers will make arguments but it means we are a breed apart and therefore we dont have to fraternize and everyone knows if you have a sergeant thats never going to work on the battlefield. Its very interesting so thats part of the culture of the regiment. So to get into the psyche of the individual soldiers and the psyche of the regimen i thought it was very important both for me and the reader to understand that. Host you touch on ruperts interactions with the ministry of defense in his previous job at when he thought it necessary to goround the chain of command and basically do whatever he could to get his own soldiers what they thought they needed. That friction point is pretty central to the book throughout, these guys being put in place that they were really prepared for. What lessons are there from the British Military a couple of years out now . Have they learned from this . Is this the kind of thing that has come up since then are they changing anything . Guest a really good question but i would like to think so but there are a lot of signs that there are not. Helmand was seen as a chance and opportunity for redemption after southern iraq but many similar mistakes were made. I think they improve the equipment and the procurement to the chain. This was the lowest point but the thing about Rupert Thorne low heat being the assistant to the defense secretary taking command of the regiment so he had gone from having this view of being assistant to the equivalent of chief here and seeing right to the heart of British Government and overseeing tax policy. He had gone from the top down to this granular level. This was something i didnt know about certainly while he was alive and it came through through documents and people eventually opening up to me and telling me about conversations they had had with him. Yet he made himself really unpopular with the brigade because some people would say he thinks he is a general but hes a Lieutenant Colonel. We are on the brigadier staff and he needs to up like everybody else but 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. So he said you are mistaken. You are interpreting this rule which is the reason i was there and i know because i was there when the rule was instituted. He was a selfeffacing character character. He was not he didnt express this arrogantly but he was really really dogged and i think he knew that he was destined for the highest ranks and i think he made the calculation that he could upset brigadiers and he had to do it. I think he also had, at the core of him was i believe 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 leave. He wasnt going to be one of these the tiny commanders who thought i will take the box and get my medal and the press the brigadier who is committing the recommendations and i will be moved up the chain but i think rupert had an inner selfconfidence that was above that. Some of the pleased that rupert made particularly about the light helicopters who is a watch guard officer who pass that to parliament and the very next day they discussed the Prime Minister question time with david cameron. In mark eversons diary about the inadequacy of equipment and his lack of understanding of the reason he was there that had a very profound impact and his mother broke her own book after dead men risen dead men risen. Whether it changes things people will just have to see. Host do you think there was any cultural dynamics at play when you Start Talking this is something that is foreign for americans who dont have any knowledge or understanding of the way things are in britain. The way welsh might be viewed differently than the unit from a different part of the country in terms of where they come from what the differences are. Guest absolutely. The british regimental system is unique in these regiment. They have been on akamais throughout the years. Watch guard is a new regiment. It was formed in 1915. The welsh if you look at the scots guards cap of them are scotsman and the rest are from liverpool and manchester so the welsh guards have a much more cohesive sense than almost any other regiment in the british army. But they are also a dual role regiment in their infantry regiment but also the guard to see in the red tunics outside of Buckingham Palace that have a ceremonial role. A lot of these guys who fought and died in helmand were the guards you would see outside with the tassels at Buckingham Palace change in the guard. There is debate about that within the british army. The regular Infantry Battalion with no ceremonial role they would banter or they would mock the welsh guards but there was an element of seriousness about it like you know you are not real infantrymen because you only do it half the time and we do it all the time. They were very proud of their scrapping this if you like and they didnt like the spit and polish aspect of the guards which runs right through. Even in helmand people were being picked up by officers for failing to shave. The guard guards ethos is that you had better shave and you had better clean your rifle because of your rifle doesnt work then somebody dies. The ethos of the regiment were rifles is well its not necessary. We need to focus on the military and appearances and salutes that takes you away from real soldiering. I have found so many factors of work in each unit in history plays a real part of it. Host interesting and some of those things are on the american side as well in terms of the interservice driver between army and marines and within some of those whether you are recognizance or regular or whatever the cases. Its amazing how soldiers who join the unit take on this history in the ethos. Its just everywhere absolutely. Host looking at helmand now in 2015 the reports in a lot of cases are fighting in the afghan armies are there in the Afghan Police are still there but we also have reports of the Islamic State recruiting and we have a ballad tam battalion taking over a lot more territory. What do you see as the british piece of this in terms of what went right and what went wrong . Guest to be back home its similar to hear really. Most people believe we should have been there less so than iraq. 9 11 was launched from afghanistan but real dismay to how its turned out an appealing that politicians in general have let the troops down. There is one absolutely chilling passage in the book were David Miliband who is the British Foreign secretary in 2010 asked the governor who was the provincial governor of helmand what would be the British Legacy and i think he was expecting well how long will the British Legacy last and he expected a decade or decade thirdgeneration and he replied within 48 hours we will be out of here or be hanging from the nearest tree. I think that is reports of outposts taken by the taliban. The british base that go locates with the u. S. Marine corps base and my first visit to helmand was in january 2006 before the british arrived. I went on my own with an afghan driver and we drove in from kandahar and did not feel safe. It was a lying on the back of the c. Type of trip. Warlords working on the road and American Defense contractors they are saying the british could be hit on the roads. Afghan talk about the battle of may 1 from the 19th century and the british will be lying with their grandfathers. We have no british troops in helmand at all and i think the taliban are moving into this space that is then lets. Certainly britain picking up from the welsh guardsman sort of what was it all for . We were there for this fairly intense. Not fighting for almost every inch of ground and now we have just laughed and its clear to many of these groups that this was very much present in dead men risen that major Sean Burchill who was the commander that was killed who wrote back and said basically the Afghan Police in particular are treacherous and we have to guard ourselves against them and sure enough after i left regimental Sergeant Major i came in and the regiment i have been traveling around with him for two weeks. A fantastic guy shot dead by an Afghan Policeman along with four other friend the guardsman and that was the start. Britain has here there is a sense of what was it all for and why would you do this . As a History Lesson and perhaps because i spent time in marjah in 2010 that district or what became that district is touched on quite a bit in the book but its 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 marjah went in also in terms of having the sense that at some point there would be a large operation . Guest i have always found maps fascinating and theres a chapter big hand small map about an operation with a british officers hand on the map. I was given a map of the area of operations for watch guards and there were all the outposts and everything so i got my bearings. But then i went into the Operations Room and i wish on another map and what i have been told was the top lefthand corner and all the rest of it was just sort of blank. I said what about that in right in the bottom corner was marjah so what was the sense of the badlands taliban controlled territory and that is world the supply routes were and it was definitely talk about marcia needs to be dealt with and then marjah became displays where marines were killed and a big moment for general mcchrystal. A sort of answered the public consciousness but i think im right, when i was out there nobody in britain or the United States would have heard of marjah. Yes it was very much on the agenda but it was whispered about it that is what the u. S. Marines would be dealing with. Host interesting. I found it fascinating going back. My last trip was 2012 and marjah was considered to be safe at that point. We have now an initial center of the same thing. You still have these badlands in between and even in 2012 when there have been years of american operations with a whole lot more manpower to track now was the badlands where you push people in to get them out of your districts. Guest i remember u. S. Army Intelligence Officer in iraq in diyala province describing a balloon where you put pressure on any remove the air on the bulletin. I think that is often the case. That had been this place which would strike fear into the heart of the british soldier and it seemed relatively benign. 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. With both countries are coming to the end of afghanistan and we are back in iraq but its a much different complex so far. Your book touches on the struggles especially in the new american version that a lot of these individuals had suicide problems and drinking problems and the stresses it puts on marriages and parents and kids and everything. Do you see especially the probably have an interesting perspective on this is someone who has traffic from both sides of the ocean. How have the british done with taking care of the military postconflict and preparing for this . What kinds of differences are there between that and the americans . Guest pretty badly and fortunately. We dont have a va system and there is no separate Veterans Administration so its shared between the ministry of defense and the department of health. In doing this bbc documentary which featured soldiers from the welsh guards it became apparent that the british dont track veteran so once you have been discharged, i was trying to find out how many veterans in afghanistan had taken their own lives and the answer was we dont know. You will have to the newspapers. So really kind of a flawed system. I think well a note there is a believe for senior people that ptsd is not a british problem. Something that americans get. They do obviously acknowledge that some birds did get it that they cite statistics showing that ptsd is higher in the equivalent population and they say americans overdiagnosed but i think their heads in the sand here. I went out with a little bit of skepticism about ptsd and what really is it and is it just a way of getting out of things or playing benefits afterwards but having been out there with people like dan collins and John Williams who was one of the three falklands veterans who have been on the ship were although watched guardsman burned to death. He drank himself to death when he got back to britain and i view these as casualties just as Rupert Thornhill and John Burchill and Mark Anderson. Although we all know about the many problems in the va system i think the british are behind on all of this. Host is there any talk whatsoever about reinventing the system or improving the system or developing in a way to take care of that . Guest there is always debate about it and for instance they talk about a new tracking system so you put in the National Health service i. D. Number and you put in the code which shows doctors that this person served but effectively you still have a National Health system where soldiers leave the military and become veterans and go out in the civilian system with very little help in any kind of military context. Host are they falling back at all on the Falklands Campaign and do you try to learn lessons from what happened . Guest they are. There is a study of the falklands suicides which the ministry of defense commission. I have a number of problems with the methodology of that which is kind of opaque because its very hard but they went out of their way to prove in their own minds the rates of suicide from the falklands veterans was way way below that of the civilian equivalent population. The answer being we dont really need to worry about it. Its just some sort of media myth. Host to turn that around is that too much emphasis on the way things are in the United States in terms of the way veterans are tracked . It does make the news regularly here and there are a lot of people deeply invested in the problem and a lot of folks that trackpad and are concerned about that. I think we would include ourselves in that but when you compare that to another country where there is that little attention. Guest you have to be careful about pretraining veterans as victims are taking taking ticking time bombs are angry man about to go postal. There is a caricature that has been associated with the left over the years. I think most veterans are proud of their service. They have grown as people and they have got amazing skills. They came back for more different people but in many ways better people. Its important that they shouldnt be portrayed as victims but at the same time ptsd these problems are real. They can be treated. We need to reduce stigma and we need to have access to treatment but i think its very important. They seem like dual messages. You cant you want to not dishonor this or political or caricature the services of the veterans but at the same time you need to acknowledge there are real problems and help needs to be provided. Host i would agree with that completely and its something we spend a lot of time around troops past and present. I dont think there easy answers to this problem at all. At least there is attention on it an investment in it. We are pretty much out of time but i want to thank you very much. I have really enjoyed this conversation. Guest thank you very much. Host thank you very much, congratulations. Guest thank you