Sangin, Afghanistan
‘You don’t want to end up on a bracelet or on a fucking T-shirt. If you see people that need to die, kill them,’ said the US Marine Corps sergeant, briefing the convoy about to leave. It was night and we were setting off along the main road out of Sangin. Highway 611 had recently reopened — one of the successes here trumpeted by Nato — but no one would call it safe. ‘If you need to fire your weapon, that’s between you and Jesus. Good to go? Let’s do this shit.’
As the armoured vehicles rumbled into the pitch black, I remembered a friend’s account of a dinner party in Kabul at Christmas. Two visiting American newspaper editors were holding forth about the UK’s ‘failure’ in Sangin. The only British guest found herself on the defensive as they joked about how the US marines had accomplished more in a few months than the ‘wimpy Brits’ had managed in years. The received wisdom of the East Coast chattering classes is a bitter pill for the UK forces to swallow, having lost more than 100 men in Sangin.
And yet, things are certainly different in Sangin since the US took over. The main base, once under daily attack, did not take a single incoming round while we were there. The US commander is about to let his men patrol the town’s bazaar without helmets. Until recently, that would have been unthinkable. How has this been achieved?
The US marines I spoke to were carefully on-message about how they were building on the successes of previous units and they were also full of genuine praise for British sacrifice and British skill at arms. But the commander for the whole of Helmand, a Marine Corps general called Richard Mills, gave me an honest critique: ‘A change was needed and that change was to free up forces to manoeuvre against the enemy.
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