Helmand: Tour of Duty review: These soldiers saw terrible things, but they’d all go back tomorrow, writes ROLAND WHITE

Helmand: Tour Of Duty (BBC2) 

Rating:

Shakespeare has a speech for every occasion. Watching Helmand: Tour Of Duty, you might have been reminded of Henry V’s rallying cry before Agincourt.

You know, the bit about gentlemen a-bed in England feeling pretty small about themselves as the returning warriors tell tales from the battlefield.

Ten soldiers from the Welsh Guards talked about their six months in Afghanistan in 2009, when fighting was at its most fierce.

And there was a fascinating contradiction at the heart of these stories.

These men had seen terrible things. Two of them lost legs when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. 

Ten soldiers from the Welsh Guards talked about their six months in Afghanistan in 2009, when fighting was at its most fierce. Pictured: Sergeant Steven Peters

Platoon Sergeant Steven Peters watched bodies floating out from a submerged vehicle that had toppled into a canal after an ambush.

He brought two of them back to life, but there was nothing he could do when an Afghan interpreter stepped on an IED big enough to destroy a truck. He simply had to pick up the bloody pieces of his friend, and put them on a stretcher.

Yet here’s the puzzling thing: many of the men said this had been the best time of their lives. ‘I’d go back tomorrow if I could,’ said Lance Corporal Dale Leach, who is now missing a leg. His injured colleague Geraint Hillard felt the same. 

‘I feel lucky to be a part of it.’ This just after he’d revealed: ‘I am not the person I was before. There is something gone.’

For Major Andrew Speed, who was in charge of battle planning, it was ‘the defining moment’ of his military career. 

And this from an officer whose voice cracked as he remembered delivering a eulogy to his boss, Lt Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the most senior casualty of the tour.

Perhaps the most colourful verdict came from Guardsman Jon Screen. ‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘It was like cocaine and heroin mixed into one. It was incredible.

‘That chaos was vividly illustrated by footage of the troops in battle, with bullets whizzing all about them. Just the sound was chilling enough.

Life was rather less exciting for the families back home. They just had the fear and the worry. 

Colour Sergeant Jonathan Jenkinson’s wife was delighted when he was flown home to recover from a back wound.

She was rather less delighted when he trained himself back to full fitness and went to rejoin his men on the frontline.

The Guards won their battle and drove back the Taliban. But of course it was the Taliban who eventually won the war, seizing Kabul in 2021.

Was it all worth it? Guardsman Screen put it rather well. 

‘They were starting to build schools,’ he said. ‘The women would be out with their husbands in the street. That wouldn’t happen under the Taliban. 

‘We definitely made an impact.’