(Published in Prospect Magazine 27th August 2009 — Issue 162)

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A cartoon was on the television but little Lilly grabbed the album and leafed through the photos of her father, the late Sergeant Lee Johnson. I was talking to her mother about his death, which I had witnessed in Afghanistan. When I saw Lilly up in Stockton-on-Tees last November, and I thought of my own young child, I struggled to reconcile my doubts about this war with wanting to remember Johnson’s death as honourable and meaningfulEven in chaos and dysfunction, the British army is good at preserving a belief in order and purpose. And when men die their officers steel them and move onwards with poetic speeches, just as Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thomson did on 10th July 2009, after a dreadful day near the town of Sangin in Helmand in which five of his men were killed. In his eulogy Thomson wrote about men saluting the fallen, and returning to the ramparts. “I sensed each rifleman tragically killed in action today standing behind us as we returned to our posts, and we all knew that each one of those riflemen would have wanted us to ‘crack on’… And that is what we shall do.”

Crack on. From Basra to Sangin, I’ve heard that phrase as regularly as Amen in church. Cracking on: the army’s greatest quality, and perhaps its greatest weakness. I remember standing vigil on Sergeant Johnson’s body at dusk on a hilltop, after he had died in the battle for the town of Musa Qala in December 2007. His fellow soldiers were silhouettes, drawn close to their commander. On the horizon muffled bombs flashed through the drizzle. Major Jake Little told his men to put their grief to one side, to deal with it later. After the battle.

Cracking on could also mean failing to challenge impossible orders, or unwillingness to expose a flawed strategy. In the year I spent studying the Helmand campaign for my book, I sensed a questioning, a doubt about whether it was worthwhile. One senior Whitehall figure stunned me by declaring, almost as his first words, that Helmand “was a terrible strategic blunder.” His views were not uncommon.

The public debate has rarely reflected the mixed-up reality of the war. (more…)

This is the official response to my piece on the British Army Review.

British Army Review
MOD Director of Media and Communication Nick Gurr has responded to Stephen Grey’s article in The Sunday Times in which the MOD is criticised for ‘blocking’ publication of a piece about UK efforts in Afghanistan in the British Army Review (BAR) – an official Army publication.

Mr Gurr said: “British Army Review has for many years published thought-provoking and controversial articles from a wide range of contributors about the British Army and its activities. It continues to do so. Mr Grey quotes at length from a critical piece in the latest edition of BAR by US Colonel Mansoor in his article and his colleague, Mike Evans, ran a double page spread earlier in the week on a number of others.

“Unfortunately, BAR has been seized upon in recent editions for easy stories and cheap headlines. A Sunday newspaper ran a splash in July about one article written last year by a junior officer based in Whitehall as evidence of ‘failing’ strategy in Afghanistan. This was seized upon as an authoritative and up-to-date ‘view from the ground’ – which it was not. At no point was it made clear that this was a dated article written by someone who had never served in Afghanistan. In order to avoid giving such propaganda gifts to the enemy in future we have found that, regrettably, we need to be a bit more cautious about what we publish or – in this case – republish. Hopefully, this will not always be the case.”