Craig Allen - With the Paras in Helmand: A Photographic Diary

The Afghan Trust

The Afghanistan Trust was founded by Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal DSO OBE, who commanded 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan in 2006. It was founded to help support soldiers and their families, who have served with the Battalion and have been wounded or killed as a consequence. Among those killed were Cpl Brian Budd VC and Cpl Mark Wright GC.

Part of its charter allowed the discretion of the Commanding Officer to grant funds instantly to meet the immediate needs that are all too common when there is a casualty or death. Since its formation the charity has made donations to injured soldiers to help with mobility, wheelchairs, car adaptations, bereaved childrens trust funds and help with support costs for the families of those killed and seriously injured.

At the latter end of 2009 the decision was made to broaden the remit of the Trust to support all four battalions of the Regiment; 1 PARA have deployed frequently to theatre, 2 and 3 PARA deployed in 2008 and are due to return in October 2010,

4 PARA (V) have been back-filling both of these battalions. To date the Regimental casualties have amounted to twenty-three killed in action and at least 100 wounded, many severely.

Until now the Parachute Regiment has been without a dedicated cap badge charity but this expansion of the Trusts responsibilities is a clear reflection of the importance and need to fill the gaps in provision from statutory and charitable sources.

A spin-off from the formation of the Charity has been the involvement of the families of soldiers killed. The parents of Cpl Mark Wright GC have set up a drop-in centre for servicemen and women in their home town Edinburgh and currently other families are involved with fund raising events for the Trust, including climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and cycling from Lands End to John OGroats.

A percentage of each sale of this book will go towards the Trust and supporting our soldiers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is essentially based on my own diary entries and notes made at the time although I did rely on various written and web sources to verify names, dates & locations. Meanwhile I owe a great deal to my wife Cathy for her unfailing encouragement throughout the sometimes difficult process of getting the words down on paper. My lasting thanks must go to Bobby Gainher who edited my work and offered much help and guidance to a first time author. Tragically he lost his battle with cancer before this book came to print

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to all the front line soldiers who have or will serve in Afghanistan and especially to what they used to call the PBI, The Poor Bloody Infantry, who are at the coalface of this increasingly bitter war.

Craig Allen

Jan 2010

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Craig Allen 2010

ISBN 978 1 84884 300 4
eISBN 9781781599624

The right of Craig Allen to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

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Preface Introduction Chapter 1 Preparation for Battle, October 2007 to April 2008 Chapter 2 Zabul Into the Mountains, 29 May to 10 June 2008 Chapter 3 Kandahar, 14 to 22 June Chapter 4 Camp Bastion, 25 to 30 June Chapter 5 Inkerman The Point of the Sword, 1 to 6 July Chapter 6 Sangin The Ranger Op, 7 to 12 July Chapter 7 Gibraltar Toe to Toe with the Enemy, 19 to 24 July Chapter 8 FOB Robertson Fighting in Someones House, 30 July to 6 August Chapter 9 Musa Kaleh The Eye of the Storm, 12 to 20 August Chapter 10Kajaki Hope for the Future, 22 to 30 August Postscript Appendix I Clothing and Equipment Appendix II A Brief History of 4 Para Glossary

Preface

The camera first went on campaign with Roger Fenton in the Crimea and photographers have been going to the wars ever since. When Mathew Bradys pictures went on public display at the height of the American Civil War, it was said that he had brought the dead of the battlefield into peoples living rooms and front parlours, and the still image retains its power to shock. Despite the work of these pioneers their cumbersome glass plate cameras with slow shutter speeds made action shots all but impossible. The invention of film by Kodak in the late 1880s and their Brownie cameras finally put photography in the hands of the masses. Because of this development many box Brownies went to war in 1914 but there were still few accredited photographers in the trenches. It was the development of the 35mm camera in the 1930s which truly ushered in the era of the war photographers as we know them today. Leicas, Zeiss Ikons and later the famous Nikon F became the mainstays of the trade, and these compact rangefinders and SLRs with their fast shutter speeds finally enabled photographers to capture the front-line action. The heyday of the war photographer was almost certainly from the 1930s to the 1950s, although Vietnam made the names of many famous photographers and killed a good many more; only in Iraq has there been a higher casualty rate. This period spanning the Spanish Civil War to Korea made household names of photographers such as Robert Capa, Lee Miller and Joe Rosenthal, but since those heady days there has been a fundamental change in the way we view conflict. Starting with Vietnam is it television that has become the dominant medium. Many of the magazines that once published cutting-edge photojournalism, such as Life Magazine, Picture Post and others, have gone the way of the Dodo and the Sunday supplements are now packed with Paparazzi pictures of C-list celebrities. Its not all bad news, however, as newspapers will always need pictures and there is the thirst for web images which provides another avenue for the photographers work. As I was to find myself, it is now much harder to find an opening into the business these days and access to the battlefield itself is more tightly controlled than it has ever been.

I was first drawn to war photography by reading of the exploits of Tim Page and Sean Flynn in Michael Herrs Dispatches, a seminal piece of journalism on the Vietnam War. I later learned of Don McCullin, a British photographer who also got his start in Vietnam and went on to cover Biafra, Northern Ireland and Middle East wars. My own introduction to photography came during school days when Mr Coughton, my charismatic art teacher, let us use his treasured Roloflex, then develop the results ourselves in a makeshift dark room. Later employment as a Patrol Photographerin Northern Ireland lead me to purchase my first SLR, an Olympus OM10. This was soon replaced with a Nikon FM2 which I went on to carry through many years of military service. Further tours of NI saw me more closely involved with operational photography and eventually led to my taking on wider photographic tasks for my regiment.

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