Sunday, July 02, 2006
Christina And C Company.
Sunday Times journalist Christina Lamb gives a terrifying account of a Taliban ambush in the Helmand province of Afghanistan while she and photographer Justin Sutcliffe were traveling with 48 men from C company of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and an attachment of airborne troops from the Royal Irish Rangers.
I hurled myself into an irrigation ditch and crouched amid the tall reeds, the soil just above me flying up as bullets landed all around. Then firing started coming from behind too. The Taliban had us from three sides.
Have you ever used a pistol?” yelled Sergeant-Major Mick Bolton amid the Kalashnikov fire and bursts from a machinegun as we ran across a baked-mud field and dived for cover. “If it comes down to it, everyone’s going to have to fight.”
For the next two hours we were trapped under such relentless fire that we thought we would be killed. The ambush of our lightly armed patrol not only was unexpected but also brought into question the entire strategy being pursued by the British in Helmand, the huge province they have taken on.
I have been in some hairy situations, not least in Afghanistan, a country that I love, where at the age of 22 I was trapped in trenches by Russian tanks with a group of mujaheddin. But this was the first time in my life that I thought I would not survive.
Worse, I looked at the taut faces around me — and could see the soldiers thought that too.
Then came the reassuring sound of the Apaches, almost two hours after they had been requested.
The Ministry of Defence put out nothing. If Justin and I had not been there, you would probably never have read about it.
And in another Sunday Times column, Christina illustrates the huge gap in thinking between London and reality on the ground.
Someone has come up with the idea of making a film to show locals. It comprises five minutes of the underwater BBC series Blue Planet, followed by a message from the governor of Helmand and the coalition forces, followed by five more minutes of Blue Planet.
The tribal leaders of Gereshk sat in utter bafflement as images of whales and dolphins were projected on the wall.
How ridiculous can it get?
This morning it was announced that TWO UK SOLDIERS WERE KILLED YESTERDAY along with an interpreter, and other troops injured, in the Helmand town of Sangin.
See all recent posts.
I hurled myself into an irrigation ditch and crouched amid the tall reeds, the soil just above me flying up as bullets landed all around. Then firing started coming from behind too. The Taliban had us from three sides.
Have you ever used a pistol?” yelled Sergeant-Major Mick Bolton amid the Kalashnikov fire and bursts from a machinegun as we ran across a baked-mud field and dived for cover. “If it comes down to it, everyone’s going to have to fight.”
For the next two hours we were trapped under such relentless fire that we thought we would be killed. The ambush of our lightly armed patrol not only was unexpected but also brought into question the entire strategy being pursued by the British in Helmand, the huge province they have taken on.
I have been in some hairy situations, not least in Afghanistan, a country that I love, where at the age of 22 I was trapped in trenches by Russian tanks with a group of mujaheddin. But this was the first time in my life that I thought I would not survive.
Worse, I looked at the taut faces around me — and could see the soldiers thought that too.
Then came the reassuring sound of the Apaches, almost two hours after they had been requested.
The Ministry of Defence put out nothing. If Justin and I had not been there, you would probably never have read about it.
And in another Sunday Times column, Christina illustrates the huge gap in thinking between London and reality on the ground.
Someone has come up with the idea of making a film to show locals. It comprises five minutes of the underwater BBC series Blue Planet, followed by a message from the governor of Helmand and the coalition forces, followed by five more minutes of Blue Planet.
The tribal leaders of Gereshk sat in utter bafflement as images of whales and dolphins were projected on the wall.
How ridiculous can it get?
This morning it was announced that TWO UK SOLDIERS WERE KILLED YESTERDAY along with an interpreter, and other troops injured, in the Helmand town of Sangin.
See all recent posts.
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Nobody who reads the newspapers can be under any illusion that things are going well in Afghanistan. Do we need to know about every patrol that goes out? IMO, any woman with a very young child who puts herself into positions of danger like that is stupid and selfish beyond belief, to say nothing of the extra problems she causes as an untrained person that some soldier has to try to look after.
What do you want us to do? Abandon the country to the murderous Taliban thugs who want to drag it back into the past where women were serfs to the men?
Turning this country around isn't going to happen overnight, and anyone who thinks so is dreaming!
So there.
What do you want us to do? Abandon the country to the murderous Taliban thugs who want to drag it back into the past where women were serfs to the men?
Turning this country around isn't going to happen overnight, and anyone who thinks so is dreaming!
So there.
I'm surprised at you, Byronb, for your rather sexist comments about a professional journalist doing her job, and surprised that you seem to miss the point that was being made here.
I didn't say, or even suggest, that Afghanistan should be abandoned, or that that country's women should again become serfs to men, although you seem to imply that female journalists who happen to have children should be little more than serfs, incapable of doing a 'mans' work, and irresponsibly having to be 'looked after' by a soldier.
You omitted, of course, any mention of the male photographer who was also present on the patrol and presumably did not require 'looking after' because he was a man.
Of course turning round that country will not happen overnight. The point being made is that, unless the military get the proper tools for the job - sufficient air cover, extra personnel, an alternative to the woefully inadequate Snatch Land Rovers, etc., coupled with less political interference from politicians in London, Afghanistan will NEVER be turned round, and a high number of UK dead and wounded will be the only visible outcome.
Christina Lamb has almost certainly seen more action, as has photographer Justin Sutcliffe, than many of the troops they were with, and while I agree that we do not need to know about every patrol that goes out, we do need to know when things go wrong and events take a turn which might have ended with fatalities, possibly because of the lack of backup caused by miscalculations and penny-pinching by government.
Finally, in this enlightened age, if it is irresponsible for a woman to do a dangerous job because she has children, surely the same point can be made about each and every father who steps onto the battlefield.
Come now, ladies, you know your place. The kitchen sink requires attention!
I didn't say, or even suggest, that Afghanistan should be abandoned, or that that country's women should again become serfs to men, although you seem to imply that female journalists who happen to have children should be little more than serfs, incapable of doing a 'mans' work, and irresponsibly having to be 'looked after' by a soldier.
You omitted, of course, any mention of the male photographer who was also present on the patrol and presumably did not require 'looking after' because he was a man.
Of course turning round that country will not happen overnight. The point being made is that, unless the military get the proper tools for the job - sufficient air cover, extra personnel, an alternative to the woefully inadequate Snatch Land Rovers, etc., coupled with less political interference from politicians in London, Afghanistan will NEVER be turned round, and a high number of UK dead and wounded will be the only visible outcome.
Christina Lamb has almost certainly seen more action, as has photographer Justin Sutcliffe, than many of the troops they were with, and while I agree that we do not need to know about every patrol that goes out, we do need to know when things go wrong and events take a turn which might have ended with fatalities, possibly because of the lack of backup caused by miscalculations and penny-pinching by government.
Finally, in this enlightened age, if it is irresponsible for a woman to do a dangerous job because she has children, surely the same point can be made about each and every father who steps onto the battlefield.
Come now, ladies, you know your place. The kitchen sink requires attention!
I'm somewhere in between. Like Christina said, she's bringing news that no one would hear otherwise. On the other hand, I sometimes think we don't need to hear about every gunfire volley. Back to the first hand, she states that she's been in dangerous situations before. Back to the other hand, ByronB's right about being a burden to the patrol if the sergeant-major has to provide her with a weapon to use.
Her gender in this situation has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. Just being a mother can be stressful enough; if you caught MY mother on the right day, I'm sure she'd have signed up for the same job just to get away from my sister and me. :)
Her gender in this situation has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. Just being a mother can be stressful enough; if you caught MY mother on the right day, I'm sure she'd have signed up for the same job just to get away from my sister and me. :)
It struck me as a poor and vainglorious piece of journalism - references to her child's blue eyes which she's missing, cocktail parties in the heart of London that she attends, the poor soldiers only earning £1000 a month etc - and then hints that it's all about poppy farming when a few paragraphs below she states that what is actually happening is that the Taliban warlords are sneaking in and taking over and killing everyone who disagrees with them. The farmers don't benefit from the poppy crops - they're too low down the scale.
As for being sexist - I think a mother is FAR more important to young children than a father, way, way more important. Vital in fact. Mothers are the first point of contact, the seat of knowledge, the source of comfort - they're the whole world to a young child.
But I take your point - yes the army needs the right equipment, but we need more than the army - we need an army of builders to supply schools, roads and hospitals - it just isn't enough to pound three kinds of hell out of a country with bombs and then move on to Iraq and forget it.
As for being sexist - I think a mother is FAR more important to young children than a father, way, way more important. Vital in fact. Mothers are the first point of contact, the seat of knowledge, the source of comfort - they're the whole world to a young child.
But I take your point - yes the army needs the right equipment, but we need more than the army - we need an army of builders to supply schools, roads and hospitals - it just isn't enough to pound three kinds of hell out of a country with bombs and then move on to Iraq and forget it.
Hi, Colin no comment on your blog cos every time I log on your writing is too tiny to read and is broken up - is it me?
And yes, I'm still here and will blog away very shortly.
Kats xx
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And yes, I'm still here and will blog away very shortly.
Kats xx
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