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  • Telegraph: Dispatches

    Every weekday the Telegraph sends a Newsletter focussing on the war in Ukraine to registered readers. I’m including some of my contributions here for your interest. To make sure you receive the whole thing, please register with the Telegraph. We’re also presenting a live Twitter Space at 1pm London time which is scrubbed, given added content and released as a podcast called Ukraine: The Latest at around 6pm London time.

    WEDNESDAY MARCH 30

    Who wants to fight for a man like that?

    Dominic NichollsBy Dominic Nicholls, DEFENCE AND SECURITY EDITOR
    For an organisation that takes pride in the uniformity of its training, language and doctrine, the British army expends a lot of energy trying to be as individual as possible when it comes to matters of, well, uniform.

    Soldiers go to varying lengths to strike a note of individualism, usually expressed literally through their shirt-sleeves. Badges, personally-bought kit and trimmed rims of jungle hats are other recognition features.

    Looking cool in the army has a name: it’s called ‘being ally’.

    Quite who or what ‘ally’ was has fallen into British military history, but the idea endures: looking good on the outside reflects a higher level of professionalism on the inside.
    The phrase is mostly to be heard in the ranks of the Parachute Regiment.

    A senior Para commander I served with in Afghanistan even coined the phrase “ally-ness saves lives”. (He was so ally he chased an insurgent down an alley and was shot in the chest by a rocket-propelled grenade, only surviving because he was so close to the launcher the weapon hadn’t had time to arm the warhead before it hit him. I’ll shut up now as he’s still serving and in a VERY senior position in the army.)

    The Russian mercenary outfit called the Wagner Group is in Ukraine.

    These fighters are usually called ‘shadowy’ but they’re actually nothing of the sort, given their apparent delight in appearing on social media. This is where we’ve seen them using civilian 4×4 vehicles, models not known for their protection against high-velocity rounds.

    Images on social media have reportedly shown Wagner vehicles in Ukraine riddled with bullet holes (‘brassed up’ in ally language).

    A Western official said on Tuesday around 1,000 Wagner fighters are in the east of the country.
    “Due to the heavy losses and largely stalled invasion, Russia’s highly likely been forced to reprioritise Wagner personnel for Ukraine at the expense of operations that they would be undertaking in Africa and in Syria,” the official said.

    It is doubtful the Wagner troops are going to change the tide of operations in the Donbas, given Ukraine has at least 20,000 of their best trained and equipped soldiers in the area.

    The Western official said Wagner’s “fearsome reputation” was largely one of “not adhering to the rule of law and the law of armed conflict”. The official said Putin was showing a “degree of desperation” by turning to them for help.

    Video clips from Ukraine have also shown Toyota pick-up vehicles being repurposed as mobile gun platforms. The prominent ‘Z’ on the sides of the vehicles suggest they’re Russian.

    The vehicles, like the Wagner fighters, are grubby, not standard issue and reek of individualism; thereby almost perfectly fitting the bill to qualify as ‘ally’.

    But there are two crucial aspects missing which mean they will never acquire such revered status.

    First, they’re not very good at soldiering. Standing around firing guns at civilians, yes; mixing it with a credible military force, no.

    Second, as the Western official said: “If you’re reaching for a thousand Wagner troops thinking that is going to be crucial to success in operations in the Donbas, it should give you pause for thought as to how capable your broader force is.”

    Putin is not ally. He would not be able to wear the coveted berets of units holding ally status. Consequently, he would be known in the British army as a ‘crap hat’.

    And who wants to fight for a man like that?





    TUESDAY MARCH 29
    There’s value in a liaison between enemies, even in the worst of times

    Dominic NichollsBy Dominic Nicholls, DEFENCE AND SECURITY EDITOR
    Have you heard about Brixmis?

    The clunky abbreviation stands for the British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany (BRItish X – denoting a command headquarters – MISsion).

    This rather excellent liaison scheme, part of a wider initiative between the Soviet Union on one side and Britain, the US and France on the other, lasted from 1946 to 1990.

    It acted as a touch point between the newly adversarial nations. Each was allowed to travel, unescorted but in uniform, in the other side’s territory. The British team numbered around 30 people at any time.

    The mission was designed to ‘test the temperature’ of the Soviet Union and act as a channel of communication when more formal, political relationships were strained. Of course, a lot of spying – mainly photographing equipment – went on as well, with modified cars and gadgets worthy of a Bond novel.

    Nothing could be written down, for fear of compromise.

    On one occasion, having come across a previously unseen Russian infantry fighting vehicle (a BMP-2, in service today in Ukraine) with no Soviet soldiers around, an enterprising Brixmis member jumped onto the turret and pressed the apple he was saving for his lunch into the barrel. The resulting imprint was later assessed by intelligence staff to determine the calibre (30mm, since you ask).

    Although ostensibly enemies, the military units regularly met at such things like remembrance events, often going against political direction, to mark their shared history of fighting the Nazis; a common foe.

    The value of liaison between enemies, even in the worst of times, is well understood. Touch points still exist.

    Fast-forward to today and picture a (no doubt overly complicated) phone sitting on a desk in the Ministry of Defence in London.

    The phone is used to keep open a line of communication between the ministries of defence in London and Moscow. The line is tested, verbally, every day by officials talking to each other.
    The purpose of the call is to confirm it would be possible for the very highest levels of the defence establishments in Russia and Britain to speak in person should an emergency situation demand it.

    The daily interactions, I’m told, have been cool and rather brief affairs of late. No time to deploy the infamous British small talk.

    Nevertheless, like Brixmis, it is a means of reaching ‘the other side’.

    Face-to-face peace talks between Ukraine and Russia resume today in Turkey after a two-week gap.

    Turkey, with links to both countries, sees itself as an honest broker. Breaking the diplomatic impasse and saving civilian areas from yet more indiscriminate shelling would boost the credentials of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s Prime Minister, who seeks to position himself as a major regional power.

    Hopes for a breakthrough are not high. Like the morale of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, trust is in short supply. The situation is made worse by reports today of mysterious poisonings afflicting previous meetings.

    Is there a mechanism similar to Brixmis or the hotline for Ukraine and Russia? A way of reaching out, explaining, defusing tension, and acknowledging, perhaps, a shared history?
    I sincerely hope so.

    The two countries’ negotiating positions are a gulf apart. A lot of talking needs to be done before they get even close to comparing apples with apples.


    Register with the Telegraph to receive Dispatches daily to your inbox and why not download the podcast Ukraine: The Latest, while you’re there?

  • After two weeks of war, what are the chances of Vladimir Putin’s demoralised troops laying siege to the Ukrainian capital? 

    This article appeared in The Telegraph on March 11th, 2022

    For more analysis, listen into the Telegraph’s Ukraine: The Latest Twitter Space, every weekday at 1pm London time, released later as a Telegraph Podcast

    Kyiv matters.

    It is the political, historic and cultural centre of Ukraine.

    It stands as a beacon of resistance against the Russian onslaught.

    Russian forces now appear to be “reposturing” for an assault on the capital.

    But how likely is it that Vladimir Putin’s army, weakened, demoralised and exhausted after two weeks of war, will be able to lay siege to the city?

    To cut the city off from any reinforcements that will undoubtedly rush north if the capital is threatened will be an enormous undertaking.

    Given that the city measures roughly 35km (22 miles) north to south and 25km (16 miles) east to west, Russia will need to establish a cordon of at least 90km (56 miles).

    A tall order

    With each Russian battalion tactical group able to defend a frontage of about 1km (0.6 miles), this is a tall order. 

    Without calling up reserves from the homeland, this task is probably beyond the capability of the forces Russia has deployed into Ukraine.

    And that’s just the outer cordon, designed to prevent reinforcements. Russia will also need to lay out an inner cordon to slowly squeeze the life out of any defenders that seek to resist.

    Russia could have about 50,000-100,000 troops around Kyiv. It took 2.5 million to capture Berlin in 1945, with heavy losses.

    For Kyiv, both the steel rings will need to be composed of the full panoply of military might: tanks, infantry, air defence, engineers, logistics, medics, electronic warfare and so on.

    That is eminently possible for a modern force that is organised for such an “all arms” battle, that has trained and rehearsed as such and understands the differing needs and tempos of the various elements.

    Armies learn fast, especially in the white heat of combat, but Russia’s tactical performance so far suggests this level of competence is beyond them.

    Mick Ryan, a former major general in the Australian army, said that the ongoing defence of Kyiv is a major psychological boost for Ukraine’s soldiers and civilians, acting to catalyse international support for Ukraine.

    However, he warned that Russia may not have the capacity.

    “First, they need a theatre-level reserve in the north if they are to complete encirclement of Kyiv and follow-on attack on the city. The size of Russian forces currently in the north is likely to be insufficient for both tasks.

    “Second, the Russians more broadly may need to start planning for more reinforcements and rotating forces. Both humans and equipment need breaks in combat to retain effectiveness over the medium and longer term. And Russian losses have probably been higher than anticipated.”

    A siege is also likely to involve cutting power supplies and communications networks, sowing terror and confusion amongst the remaining civilians. Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor, said that half the capital’s population has already fled, but that still leaves more than a million people.

    Without power and mobile phone infrastructure, the chances of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, being able to communicate more morale-boosting speeches will be severely limited.

    Russia will seek to take down the military communications systems relied upon by the city’s defenders, or at least degrade them with electronic warfare attacks to the point of being useless.

    Information, especially photographs and digital media, will be strictly controlled, to sell a message of Russian military dominance and prevent scenes of carnage refuting claims of precision and compassion.

    If a siege and capture looks out of Russia’s reach, then the alternative is to remain on the outskirts, using artillery and air power to pulverise the city into surrender.

    Given the totemic value of Kyiv, and the difficulty of selling a war of liberation to the Russian population back home should pictures of devastation start leaking out, it is unlikely Russia will use overwhelming force – initially at least.

    However, given that the assault on Berlin at the end of the Second World War required three Soviet army fronts totalling 2.5 million men and thousands of tanks, aircraft and artillery pieces, any attempt to fight building to building, street to street – which is what the Ukrainians are promising – will require much greater forces that Russia currently has available.

  • MiG fighter jets would boost Ukraine – but the first challenge is simply getting them into the skies

    This article appeared in The Telegraph on March 9th, 2022

    Any “rented MiGs” will be a significant boost to Ukraine, but they won’t tip the air balance on their own.

    Even if the country manages to take delivery of the 28 MiG-29 fighters offered by Poland, it will take some time for the jets to be as effective as they need to be in the skies over their country.

    Designed originally to race into the air to take on the US F-15 and F-16 combat aircraft, the jets have been developed over the years to be able to strike ground targets, including with precision-guided munitions.

    The Russian-made aircraft are strong, sturdy, reliable, competent and can turn on a sixpence. But with big engines and small fuel tanks, they have very little endurance. 

    They are not built to the same standards as Western aircraft; the tolerances are much lower. As such, they are a bit heavier than a US F-16 or RAF Typhoon, and whilst they may be able to carry state-of-the-art weapons, the airframes are anything but.

    In the hands of Ukrainian pilots, they would be a “thorn in the side” of Russian air and ground forces, a defence source told The Telegraph. But they are limited.

    An extra 28 jets would be incredibly helpful for Ukraine, particularly as Russia has failed to achieve air superiority over the country. 

    Unless Ukraine has a sophisticated logistics organisation though, where would all the additional spare parts come from that are needed to keep the fleet operational?

    Without additional spares, probably half of the gifted Polish machines would quickly turn into glorified Christmas trees, supplying spares for the rest of the fleet.

    Even with an established support system, a maximum of about 10 aircraft from this extra tranche would be expected to be serviceable and ready to fight on any given day.

    Reinforcing maintenance teams 

    However, there is much more to employing air power than simply having airframes available.

    Pilots, mechanics, avionics technicians and airspace managers are just some of the roles needed to deliver military power from the skies. All of them must be available on the day.

    And where would they fly from? Ukraine has limited options. Russia failed to land many cruise missiles on Ukraine’s military runways at the start of this campaign, but holding the fleet all in one place invites disaster.

    Equally, splitting the fleet up in a bid to protect the airframes would create operational headaches when the order to launch missions was sent.

    It is possible that Ukraine could set up a temporary forward operating base on a motorway in the west of the country, under the protection of an air defence umbrella.

    The RAF practised for these sorts of scenarios during the Cold War, but they’re not easy, and it is unlikely that any air force could set up such a contingency with no notice.

    The point of no return?

    The issue of gifting the MiGs to Ukraine has raised other concerns. The plan to send the aircraft, possibly via the US Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, has seemingly crossed a red line.

    Western politicians and Nato officials were left scratching their heads on Wednesday morning, wondering where the threshold of acceptable and not acceptable lethal aid lies.

    Could Ukrainian pilots fly the jets directly from Poland? Was Poland seeking to spread the risk by announcing, seemingly without negotiating first with Washington, they would send the planes to Ramstein?

    Would Vladimir Putin, a man known to like taking risks and who has repeatedly raised the spectre of nuclear weapons, deem the supply of Soviet-era fighters from the West a step too far?

    Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, was blunt in his analysis. He said there would be “blowback for Poland if it happened”. 

    However, Eduard Heger, the prime minister of Slovakia, a Nato member, seemed to disagree. 

    “We are all united in this. The risk is always ours together as Nato, the EU or Europe,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It’s not about individual countries because Ukraine is fighting for democracy.”

    An unhelpful precedent

    Western officials think Putin would use nuclear weapons if his regime was threatened, and then only – initially, at least – as a demonstration: a “small” battlefield nuclear strike against an airfield, or a detonation in the atmosphere above a city to knock out power through the electromagnetic pulse.

    Poland was unwise to force the US to decide whether it thinks Putin would view sending the MiGs from Ramstein as sufficiently escalatory to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.

    An unhelpful precedent has been set regarding the threshold of what lethal aid is acceptable and what is not.

    Putin will now do all he can to push that threshold down in order to stop the flow of tank-busting missiles wrecking his military ambitions.

    All the while, the MiG-29s are still in Poland and Ukraine is still being pounded from the air.  

  • On the ground in Belfast: Loyalists warn of ‘biggest threat to peace yet’

    With special access to people close to Loyalist paramilitaries, The Telegraph was told Northern Ireland is a ‘matchstick’ away from eruption

    This article appeared in The Telegraph on May 12, 2021

    There is a violent, perfect storm gathering over Northern Ireland.

    Among hardline Unionists in the Province, the anger is clear, the tension palpable.  

    “The IRA have got what they wanted by bombing and murder. We don’t want to go down that route, but is that the only option for us?” says Stephen, a Loyalist community worker close to North Belfast Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

    “London needs to know there’s a new generation that is so angry and bitter you can cut it with a knife. This is the biggest threat to peace there’s ever been.”

    The Telegraph was given exclusive access last week to people close to the UDA and two other Loyalist paramilitary groups, the  Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando.

    The groups have issued a chilling warning:  Northern Ireland is “a matchstick away from being ignited”, accusing Boris Johnson of “selling us down the tubes”.

    The anxieties and the problems are clear.

    First, the customs border created by brexit in the Irish Sea has driven a wedge between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, and a real sense that hardline republicans in Sinn Fein and its one-time military wing the IRA have won.

    Next, the failure to prosecute Sinn Fein leaders who broke Covid-19 rules last year to attend  the funeral of Bobby Storey, the terrorist group’s ‘brutal’, one-time head of intelligence, continues to cause a bitter outrage.

    Meanwhile the Unionists are in turmoil with Arlene Foster forced to quit as leader of the Democractic Unionist party (DUP) and First Minister. A new leader is due to be elected on Friday. 

    Added to the heady mix is the pursuit in Belfast courts of Army veterans accused of murder during the troubles while IRA terrorists received ‘comfort’ letters, and it feels like all the hard work of the Good Friday Agreement is unravelling. And fast. Security sources fear the peace deal is facing its greatest threat since its signing 23 years ago in 1998.

    “This community has gained nothing from the peace process. Nothing,” says Dean, a Loyalist community worker close to North Belfast UDA.

    He said the area of Tiger’s Bay had gone to “wrack and ruin” since the Good Friday Agreement.

    “Boris Johnson has sold us down the tubes and he’ll regret it. He’s seriously misunderstood this.” 

    Despite promises that there would be no customs border in the Irish Sea, Boris Johnson agreed to the Northern Ireland protocol as a way of protecting the Good Friday Agreement, amid fears a land customs border between the UK and Ireland would be attacked by Republican paramilitaries.

    Speaking in the New Beginnings office in Tiger’s Bay, Michael Bingham, 60, said the Good Friday Agreement is now being used as a “beating stick against the Protestant people”.

    “I thought 1998 would be the year this all stopped and our kids could have a normal life. 

    “Sitting here in 2021, there’s been some changes but all the trouble hasn’t gone away, it’s still hanging over your shoulder.

    “I want to let our children know there is an alternative to all this. But we can’t do it without political backup.”

    Michael spoke to the Telegraph at one of the Peace Lines: walls and barriers used to separate protestant and catholic communities. The total length of peace line barriers has increased since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. 

    “People are still being attacked in their homes, people are still being shot, bombs are still being planted under cars, prison officers are being murdered,” Michael said. 

    “Is it a peace process or not? It only seems to be so on one side at the moment.”

    Whitehall sources told the Telegraph a range of issues have left Loyalists feeling insecure about their identity and future, adding: “unrest and unease has been building for some time”.

    Both main Unionist parties  are currently electing new leaders, with the DUP expected to elect Arlene Foster’s successor on Friday.

    The party’s rulebook says the new leader and deputy – Nigel Dodds stood down on May 5 – will be elected by assembly members, MPs and peers.

    Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland’s agricultural minister, is the hardline favourite, having been a vocal opponent of post-Brexit trading arrangements in the province. 

    His rival, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP’s incumbent Westminster leader, is seen as the moderate candidate.

    Loyalists will want to see a fresh approach to the Good Friday Agreement and the protocol from the new leader .

    Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine, a spokesman for the Progressive Unionist Party, said support for the Good Friday Agreement among Loyalist communities was “haemorrhaging”.

    Speaking to the Telegraph in the offices of Action for Community Transformation on the Shankill Road in West Belfast, he said: “People are saying ‘this isn’t what I signed up for, what I went to jail for. This isn’t why my family are lying in graveyards across Northern Ireland.

    “The dangers are absolutely massive. We’re a matchstick away from this place being ignited.”

    Referring to the riots that broke out across Northern Ireland two weeks ago, Mr Irvine, who is close to West Belfast UVF, said: “We came within minutes of a potential bloodbath. 

    “That scene was reminiscent of the outbreak of the Troubles here on the Shankill 50 years ago. The only thing that was missing was people having their houses petrol bombed. 

    “Had that happened we would have been into full scale military engagement using physical force; not just petrol bombs and masonry, we would have been in a deep dangerous spiral of tit-for-tat.”

    The funeral in 2020 of leading IRA figure Bobby Storey, attended by around 2,000 supporters when Covid rules limited attendee numbers to 15, is a source of particular anger among Loyalists. 

    They are disgusted no action was taken against Sinn Fein organisers, or Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, for attending.

    “She knew the rules inside out…and they got away with it,” Stephen said.

    There were uncorroborated reports of Sinn Fein security guards turning other mourners away from the cemetery during the funeral. 

    Stephen says the whole thing was a message from Sinn Fein: ‘we run the show’.

    “That’s what that was: ‘we call shots’. I know people who were given £100 fines for having kids’ birthday parties. Not one fine was given out there.”

    Mr Irvine added: “Could you imagine a cabinet minister in London going to a similar type of funeral and surviving politically?

    “We’re at a really dangerous moment here in terms of the political and peace process. I would urge people to think about these things.” 

    Mr Irvine said the Good Friday Agreement consolidated the peace deal that predated it but warned: “The bedrock of the political progress here has been shaken to the core”.

    He expects after lockdown, and with better weather, more people will take to the streets. 

    Against the backdrop of the parading season and tense political situation over the “juggernaut of Brexit”, it could lead to a long, hot summer.

    “If anybody thinks tinkering around the edges of the protocol to ensure freer access here or there for specific goods is going to be sufficient to deal with the issues, they’re deluding themselves.”

    “We’re trying to warn people of impending things,” James ‘Jimbo’ Wilson, 69, a former Loyalist internee close to the Red Hand Commando group, said.

    “Boris Johnson, the Irish government, the American government, and the European government need to sit down and get something sorted.

    “We might have been paramilitaries in our day, but I’m an old man and most of the leadership in Loyalism would be elderly. We will be pushed to the side and these young lads will go ahead and do what they think is right. 

    “Fortunately at the moment we still have an influence [but] we’re rolling into something that could make this country explode.”

    Mr Irvine agrees: “There is a prevailing sense in the communities that politics isn’t able to deliver on the solutions required to fix the problems at the moment. Therefore people are resorting to other means.”

    He describes as “dangerous” former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney’s reference, during Brexit negotiations, to possible Republican Dissident violence in the event of a hard border. 

    “I don’t think they priced in the reaction because it sent the signal that the threat of violence will be leveraged; the threat of violence is the currency that has the greatest value in order to gain advantage in negotiations.

    “That’s exactly what you’re seeing playing out now. 

    “You’re seeing people saying, ‘it worked for them, it may just work for us’. That’s a very dangerous political trajectory to set any community on.”

    Loyalist community leaders also worry policing is being politicised in the province. 

    When the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), an umbrella group for Loyalist paramilitaries formed in 2015, sought a meeting with the PSNI Chief Constable, the Northern Ireland Justice Minister and leader of the centrist Alliance Party, Naomi Long, was “apoplectic” and “openly politically hostile to the police engaging with Loyalism,” Mr Irvine says. 

    In recent years the Alliance Party has taken votes from centrist parties such as the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionist Party. Mr Irvine says that in order to appeal to centre-left voters targeted by Sinn Fein, the Alliance Party has recently adopted a harder stance towards Loyalism.

    He contrasts this approach with that taken over the Bobby Storey funeral and says there is no “political cover” for police to engage with Loyalism. “It places the police in an extraordinarily difficult space,” he says.

    “It’s not straightforward to say Loyalism has lost confidence in the police and the Chief Constable. No matter who the Chief Constable is, the same problems will occur because you have a Justice Minister who has priced in that being hostile to Loyalist communities is a vote winner.”

    “They’re now trying to play the other side of the coin so that they can become the largest party between the green and the orange,” Mr Wilson adds. 

    “You can understand why genuine Loyalists get so frustrated.”

    A security source in Belfast told the Telegraph many Loyalists now viewed the police as a nationalist force and therefore a legitimate target for reprisals.

    Mr Irvine said Loyalists were the strongest advocates for peace as they have experienced first-hand the consequences “when politics doesn’t deliver”.

    “The only way we’ll fix this is if we have London, Belfast, Dublin and Brussels on the same page, getting us back in the orbit of the Good Friday Agreement.

    “We have a short period of time to do that.

    “We don’t want to see a single person going to prison. We don’t want to see another person get a criminal record. But we also don’t want to see the Union being broken up. Loyalism can’t stand by.

    “Loyalism needs help, it needs support, and it needs politicians to get real about the problems.”

    Doug Beattie, Ulster Unionist MLA member for Upper Bann and the man tipped to be the next leader of the party, says people see in the Brexit protocol “that their concerns have been absolutely ignored by the UK government”.

    It created “sheer anger and frustration,” he said.

    “Boris Johnson has lied to them; he wasn’t up front, he hasn’t told them the truth.”

    He also criticised Leo Varadkar for showing pictures of a bombed out British army checkpoint on the border. 

    “Every time the EU spoke about violence, they spoke about violence, on the border. 

    “Everybody was only concerned about the frontier between the UK and the EU. They weren’t concerned with violence in Belfast or anywhere else away from the border. That doesn’t affect them. 

    “Those threats of violence, led Boris to the negotiating stance that we’re in.

    “That’s an awful place to be; that governments are either making decisions based on the threat of violence, or they’re making decisions because of violence. 

    “The only way to fix this is if the EU and UK, just stop and look at the mess and realise that, as they beat each other over Brexit, the only people suffering are the people in Northern Ireland.

    “Boris Johnson is an English nationalist, [although] I don’t think that’s what the majority of people in England are. He’s concerned with the English vote. There’s no vote in Northern Ireland for him or his Conservative party so he doesn’t care, he’s hands off.

    “Whether he stays as Prime Minister is not down to Northern Ireland, it’s going to be down to a vote in England. So his brand of English nationalism is creating a problem. 

    “He is a Prime Minister that could lead to the destruction of our union.

    “Violence and the threat of violence has returned to Northern Ireland politics.”

  • Why a padre’s frozen vigil in Bosnia remains my image of remembrance

    Every act of remembrance is different. For service personnel and veterans remembrance is not so much an event as a way of life. Memories of friends lost in the service of their country are not dusted off annually, to be boxed up again afterwards. They are constant. Parallels are everywhere. 

    The story of the Unknown Warrior contains one parallel for me. 

    The train carriage containing the casket of the British warrior unknown by name or rank arrived in Victoria Station on the evening of November 10, 1920. It remained on Platform 8 overnight, prior to the service in Westminster Abbey the following day.

    An honour guard of soldiers from the Grenadier Guards was posted and remained in place until morning. It was a symbolic act of comradeship. Brothers in arms are never alone, even in death. 

    After the Remembrance Day service in 1998 I said goodbye to my friend Phil, who was about to deploy to Bosnia with 669 Squadron, part of 4 Regiment Army Air Corps. 

    Captain Phil Jarvis, along with Sergeant Dave Kinsley and Corporal Chris Addis were killed a few weeks later on December 22, when their Lynx helicopter suffered a catastrophic engine failure and crashed just outside the British army base at Gornji Vakuf in central Bosnia.

    The field the helicopter had come down in was outside the wire and often flooded, allowing the anti-personnel mines made from plastic (to defeat metal detectors) to float across from known minefields, resting wherever the water left them. As such, the area was strictly out of bounds. 

    The accident happened late in the afternoon as darkness was falling. Thick snow obscured any chance of seeing the mines.

    With no thought for their own safety, soldiers from the operations room ran to the downed helicopter. They vaulted the fence and ran through the snow. Phil was already dead, but Sgt Kinsley and Cpl Addis were alive, badly injured. They were the priority in the failing light. 

    The soldiers raced to free them from the wreckage and administer first aid. Tragically Sgt Kinsley died in hospital later that night and Cpl Addis lost his fight for life in hospital in Bristol a week later. 

    The decision was taken to leave it until daylight to recover Phil, still strapped into the freezing cockpit, as it was simply too dangerous to risk more lives that night. 

    At which point Padre Tom, posted to the British army base from the Royal Army Chaplains Department, stepped forward. 

    He felt it was his duty to accompany Phil through the night. Talk to him. Sit with him on his final journey.

    There was no talking Padre Tom out of it. 

    Equipped with almost every item of cold weather gear the British Army of the late nineties possessed, a sleeping bag and a flask of hot tea, Padre Tom followed the line of footprints through the snow to the stricken aircraft. 

    There he sat. Zipped up to the neck in his sleeping bag and sipping his tea, Padre Tom kept Phil company through the night, just as the honour guard of Grenadiers had administered to the Unknown Warrior all those years before.

    The watchkeepers in the operations room crunched out to the aircraft each hour, checking on the pair and topping up the flask. 

    Phil was repatriated to the UK. Padre Tom went to serve elsewhere. The story of his actions spread throughout the Army Air Corps and I was able to meet him and thank him personally some years later. 

    Every act of remembrance is different. But for me, when I think of friends lost, service, duty and comradeship, I see an image of a padre in a sleeping bag, wearing a big woolly hat and sipping tea in a freezing aircraft, keeping watch through a long Bosnian night, chatting to my friend Phil.

  • Ten years after Afghanistan: do soldiers struggle with what they leave behind or what they come back to?

    Ten years ago this month I deployed to Afghanistan on my last operational tour as a British army officer.

    Nothing on that tour was any more dangerous or troubling than anything else I experienced in my career, but even after a decade it still sticks out as one of the most intense periods of my life. 

    I left the army five years after Operation Herrick 13. Transitioning back to civilian life has not been without its difficulties.

    Home life was fine, as was becoming a father, but work felt flat and directionless. I struggled not to react to behaviour and values at odds with those of the close-knit teams I was used to in the army.

    I eventually spoke to a counsellor. It seems that after 23 years in the army I am very drawn to risk, adrenaline and conflict.

    Perfect for a defence correspondent, or a nightmare for an editor?

    Am I missing the single-minded focus of operations? Are the characteristics that enabled me to thrive in the military utterly incompatible with civilian life?

    I thought I’d better ask those that were in Afghanistan at the same time as me.

     Johnny Mercer, veterans minister, 39, said he was “still adjusting every day” to life after the intensity of combat.

    The minister, who served three tours of Afghanistan, overlapping with me on the last one, said deploying on operations “makes you realise how so much of life comes down to luck.”

    “You could be patrolling next to a guy and a random burst of gunfire hits him, not you. How do you rationalise that? You can’t.

    “It makes you lose your fear. Now, I’m not worried about not being liked, but I worry about other things around family life. I get annoyed when the kids argue about which breakfast cereal to buy. It’s stupid stuff like home insurance that keeps me awake nowadays.”

    Toby, another friend, said he reflects a lot on his military service, particularly the “very clear purpose” of our tour in Afghanistan.

    “We all knew what we were pushing towards. That’s something that doesn’t often exist away from that environment. That makes working with people much more difficult.

    “It’s rare to find that common cause. That’s when I feel like I’m on my own or I’m pushing against people.” 

    He looks back on the decisions he made during the operation. “I constantly question: ‘Was that the right decision?’ I know at the time it was right. I made all of those decisions without doubts at the time. With the benefit of hindsight and mature consideration, I wonder: ‘Did I convince myself that was right?’ That plays a bit more on my mind.

    “Is it guilt? Is that the right word? There were things out of my control that went wrong, for which I have massive regrets.

    “You’re young, you’re part of the big machine, are you really doing the right thing as opposed to doing what you always do?”

    I don’t know if he is describing guilt, doubt or healthy self-reflection. What I do know though, is that a man who considers these thoughts a decade later, who examines his actions and motivations, is absolutely the right person to have been placed under such pressure in the first place. 

    The strong moral core that I remember so well, as tough as the Aberdeen granite near his home in Scotland, is still very much in evidence. So is his sense of mischief.

    “To be out on a limb, on your own, is exciting. That’s the thrill of soldiering.”

    For those who take their responsibilities seriously, being part of the ‘big, green machine’ can be an additional source of stress. There is only so much an individual can do. 

    Operation Herrick 13 was Matt’s fourth tour of Afghanistan.

    He says the lack of consistency in the strategic approach to the war over the previous five years had been “devastating on my morale”. 

    “Objectives and plans that were bought with the lives of soldiers were discarded months later, not to mention the fatigue and wariness of the Afghans as they once again changed tack to support the new Task Force’s plan.”

    However, he says the “air of positivity” in the deployed force was infectious and he looks back on his time in the country “with immense pride”. 

    “The ability to keep going and achieve things not thought possible was inspiring. Every set-back was met with greater desire to overcome the challenges. A few weeks in such an environment really is akin to years of routine work and life, and that’s something I miss.”

    Our conversation has a sting in the tail: “Last year I had dinner in London with an Afghan I worked with there and asked if the place was better than before we went,” Matt says. “He did not answer.”

    It does not surprise me how so little of the stress my friends describe comes from enemy action. Most is rooted in self-induced or system-induced pressure.

    Tom, an Apache attack helicopter pilot, told me: “I think of those six months a lot”. 

    “Of all the events in your life, going to war is always going to feature as one of the more significant. I don’t think it changed me, but it certainly affected me.”

    Discussing that tour will trigger “replays” he says. “I will not sleep well for a few nights.”

    “It’s the same if anyone asks me a serious question. The intensity and immediacy of my reply surprises them and generally causes me a period of preoccupation until the thoughts and memories settle back to their rightful places.

    “A source of enormous stress for me was my chain of command which… on one significant occasion threw me to the lions. Justice was sweet, the enquiry which followed was confused as to what the alleged issue was and [they] congratulated me on a job well done. 

    “This one incident and the anger and disbelief that came from it still lingers.” 

    He remembers what he calls his “bad judgements”. I would say they were decisions taken with the best of intentions, given the situation and available information at the time.

    He describes escorting a Chinook helicopter carrying the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) to collect an injured American soldier. The wounded man was collected and the helicopter headed to Camp Bastion, the main British base in the area where specialist medical facilities were located. Tom’s Apache, call-sign UGLY FIVE ZERO, peeled off to attack a High Value Target (HVT) that had just been spotted. 

    “The Americans called up again to say they had another casualty coming to the same Helicopter Landing Site (HLS) and could the Chinook come back? I decided not to call the Chinook back, thinking it better not to extend the flight time for the first casualty, but told the Chinook to drop off and come back for the second casualty.  

    “The delay was long enough for the second casualty to bleed out on the HLS and become a Hero (a US Marine Corps term for a dead marine).”

    Tom remembers the radio call vividly: “UGLY FIVE ZERO, this is EL ZEE 77, casualty two is now a Hero, no need for the MERT, we’ll send him back on this evening’s resupply flight.”

    “A sandstorm prevented me from making any useful contribution to the HVT engagement. I didn’t help anyone that day.”

    At other times he would race towards a location where troops were in contact with the enemy. 

    Dialling into the radio frequency of the soldiers under fire he would often hear instant screaming and uncontrolled shouting. 

    “UGLY FIVE ZERO we’re f****** going down, you better f****** save us, just f****** shoot the b*******!”.  

    “The background was generally punctuated with clicks, whizzes and thuds of incoming rounds lacking the boom of outgoing fire. 

    “The words: ‘FOXTROT42, we have you visual, we have 1400 rounds of 30 mil cannon, four hellfire and three hours play time, just talk us on to him or tell us where we can put warning shots’ tended to calm the situation.

    “If that all worked, and you dug them out of the s***, the sense of elation was huge. The best was when the JTAC (Joint Terminal Air Controller – the person on the ground directing fire from fighter jets and helicopter gunships) in question came in through Bastion on R&R and popped in to say thank you. Those moments were powerful.

    “Back home I didn’t communicate well. It was only when, a year later, sleep became interrupted and tears were unexplained that I put my hand up. 

    “The team at Colchester mental health unit were the best. The cognitive therapy seemed a bit quirky for an alpha soldier but I gave it a go and it certainly helped.”

    A lot of my friends say it is sometimes difficult to relate to others without similar experiences.

    James speaks most openly about that time with people he served with, sometimes to his wife’s annoyance. 

    “They’re the ones that you trust, the ones that you listen to. They’re the ones who understand your context. You can’t say: ‘You wouldn’t understand’. Of course they understand, they were there with you.”

    He says he was “twitching” on his return from Afghanistan. The troops under his command suffered 18 per cent life changing injuries on that tour but he managed to bring everybody home. 

    “I wasn’t expecting to,” he says. “You know everybody’s name, the names of their kids. You feel the ownership of all that.”

    However, speaking later to injured soldiers that had served in his squadron, either in rehabilitation units or at home undergoing long-term medical treatments, was hard. 

    “The lights had gone off behind their eyes, because they’re clinically depressed and they’ve been told their careers are coming to an end. 

    “I was being treated for PTSD [and] the thing that really bothered me was that feeling of responsibility for people I really gave a s*** about and the unwillingness to put that down.”

    He set up Mission Motorsport, a charity that uses the automotive industry to help those affected by military operations. He says it is the “dividend” borne of the profound trauma he experienced.

    “It’s no longer so visceral. It fades and that’s ok. It’s natural to be shaped by the things you’ve experienced, it would be inhuman if you weren’t. Herrick 13 was a traumatic event in the lives of many people who were on it.”

    James says it is not always helpful to follow ‘post-trauma’ with ‘stress disorder’ and that by viewing these experiences instead through the lens of post-traumatic growth “you can be better as a result of these things”.

    “You can be more balanced, with a broader world-view. You can be more patient. You can hold your family more dearly. You can care more about the plight of other people. You can be a better individual.

    “I firmly believe post-traumatic growth is something we should be promoting in our people.”

    Josh Goldberg of the veteran-led Boulder Crest Foundation, based in the US state of Virginia, says focusing on post-traumatic growth, rather than a specific diagnosis of PTSD – which many people may not suffer – is a better way to help individuals who have experienced extremely stressful episodes in their lives. 

    Post-traumatic growth, a term first coined in 1995 by Dr Richard Tedeschi of the University of North Carolina, suggests that an individual’s struggle to make sense of life after a trauma often causes changes that enable their lives to be “more authentic, fulfilling and purposeful” than before, Mr Goldberg says.

    “It’s not that trauma is good, it’s not, but it’s also inevitable in all our lives, especially in the warrior class – people who sublimate instincts of self-preservation to protect and serve other people – and you will encounter trauma on that journey.”

    The intent of creating a diagnosis of PTSD, so that treatments could be better directed, was sound, but the label has overtaken the purpose. 

    The core symptoms of PTSD – hyperawareness, intolerance to mistakes, a sense of numbness and disconnection, being quick to anger – are all helpful self-preservation tools for a soldier on a battlefield, but do not translate well to life back home.

    Some veterans struggle to get past these feelings to the idea that “something good can happen next, or that their experiences may have value and not just be a dark period that I hope to never revisit,” Mr Goldberg says.

    “The question is: Are you struggling because of what you’re coming back from, or what you’re coming back to?

    “They have to grapple with the randomness of life, the fragility of it all. The seeds are planted for post-traumatic growth in a warzone, but if you don’t nurture them you just tear them out.”

    He cites the example of the 591 US prisoners of war from the notorious Hoa Lo prison, immortalised as the Hanoi Hilton, during the Vietnam War. 

    Released in 1973, some after nearly nine years’ captivity, the men’s families were warned to expect psychotic and infantile behaviour. Instead, a study a year after their return found that 80 per cent of the men were emotionally stronger than before their capture. 

    “It was a crucible experience. No mental health professionals, just guys having to figure it out.

    “These fighter pilots didn’t aspire to get shot down, that wasn’t the plan! Yet somehow they had the wherewithal to say: ‘This is the fate I’ve been dealt and it will make me, not break me’.

    “Post-traumatic growth is both a process and an outcome.”

    In the decade since I served in Afghanistan I’ve learnt two big lessons: to reflect, to set that period in the correct context, and try to learn from the experience. Anything less is a wasted opportunity at best and potentially damaging at worst. And to not be afraid to seek help, even if that’s just talking to your idiot mates.

     “Don’t ever be shy of getting help,” Tom, one of my oldest friends, agrees.

    “Better still, get help as a matter of course before you need it.”

    This article first appeared in the Telegraph on Saturday October 31st. Reproducing here to (hopefully) reach a wider audience.