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Prince Harry Says Tour of Duty in Afghanistan Triggered 'Trauma' of Losing Princess Diana

Prince Harry said he experienced an "unraveling" after his military service in his new Netflix docuseries 'Heart of Invictus'

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty

Prince Harry is getting candid about his time in the military. 

Speaking in his Netflix docuseries Heart of Invictus , the Duke of Sussex opened up about how he experienced an "unraveling" after returning from his tour of duty in Afghanistan — and how that triggered the “trauma” of losing his mother, Princess Diana .

“I can only speak for my personal experience, my tour of Afghanistan in 2012 flying Apaches, somewhere after that there was an unraveling and the trigger to me was actually returning from Afghanistan ,” the 38-year-old said.

"But the stuff that was coming up was from 1997, from the age of 12, losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had I was never really aware of, it was never discussed.”

"I didn't really talk about it," Harry continued. "I suppressed it like most youngsters would have done — but then when it all came fizzing out I was bouncing off the walls, I was like, ‘What is going on here? I am now feeling everything as opposed to being numb.' "

JOHN STILLWELL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The British Army veteran went on to discuss how his "biggest struggle" was that "no one around me could really help."

“I didn't have that support structure, that network or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me," he said.

"Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you really consider therapy is when you are lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously, and that’s what I really want to change."

Anwar Hussein/Getty

The five-part docuseries, released on Wednesday, follows Invictus Games competitors — wounded, sick and injured servicemen and women — from around the world. The Invictus Games was founded by Harry, with the first Games taking place in March 2014. 

The prince served in the military for 10 years and undertook two tours of Afghanistan. He first served in Helmand Province in 2007 and 2008, but his tour was abruptly cut short after a media outlet broke a news embargo and revealed his presence in the warzone. He later returned for a second tour in 2012.

Speaking in Heart of Invictus , Harry described how he was “angry” at being sent home but how he also knew it was important for “everyone’s safety.”

John Stillwell - WPA Pool/Getty Images

He also discussed how his flight home affected him after he saw the air hospital onboard the plane.

“As we took off the curtain in front of me blew open and all you could see was the air hospital,” he said. “Three young British soldiers all wrapped in plastic and their bodies in pieces. I saw what only people had talked about.”

“That was the real trigger for I’m now seeing the real cost of war. Not just those individuals but also their families and what that would mean and how their lives would literally change forever.”

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Adding how the flight made him realize he needed to help, he continued, “At that point, it wasn’t clear to me what needed to be done. All I was trying to work out and try to navigate was, ‘OK, I’ve got this platform, I’ve just had this experience, what more can I do with this.’ ” 

Harry has been very open about his mental health over the years and wrote about his experiences in his 2023 memoir, Spare . 

Detailing his struggles in his book, he told PEOPLE in January, “This book and its truths are in many ways a continuation of my own mental health journey. It's a raw account of my life — the good, the bad and everything in between."

"My hope has been to turn my pain into purpose, so if sharing my experience makes a positive difference in someone's life, well, I can't think of anything more rewarding than that.”

Harry added of losing his mother, who died in a 1997 car crash in Paris , "I struggled for years to accept or even speak about my mother's death. I was unable to process that she was gone. I'm not sure anyone can ever truly have closure when they lose a parent, or anyone for that matter, especially when that grief may be the only thing left of them.”

"The healing process has allowed me to get to a place where I now feel the presence of my mum more than ever before. She's with me all the time — my guardian angel.”

Related Articles

Inside Prince Harry's two 'horrendous' tours of Afghanistan

Prince Harry's two tours of Afghanistan left an indelible mark on the young Prince who admits he saw dead bodies lying on the streets and even took lives himself.

In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Harry, who has remained committed to the armed forces with the setting up of the Invictus Games despite giving up his official duties, issued a heartfelt statement urging veterans to 'support one another'.

The Duke of Sussex in a joint statement with wife Meghan said: 'As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless. It’s easy to find ourselves feeling powerless, but we can put our values into action — together'.

Here we take a look inside his two secret tours of Afghanistan, and the drama that dogged Prince Harry before, during and after.

Why They Didn't Want Him To Go

Harry joined the British Army in 2005, training as a recruit at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. When his unit was shipped out to Iraq the following year much to Harry's frustration he was not allowed to go.

While Harry had gotten permission from Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to be deployed to Iraq, this never transpired.

The then-Chief of the General Staff Richard Dannatt told Forces News, 'Unfortunately, the media speculated so incessantly and so accurately, and by about the time when we would have to take a final decision on whether to deploy him or not, they had worked out where he'd be, what his unit would be doing, what sort of vehicle he'd be in, and what he'd be wearing.'

'It wasn't so much a concern for his safety, but the increased risk that his presence created for those around him. So we took the decision not to send him, which, was very upsetting for him.'

How Harry's Secret Deployment To Afghanistan Was Hatched

Harry's unit the Household Cavalry's Blues and Royals were then deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 and this time Harry was going.

The British Ministry of Defence held a series of meetings with the British media before Harry was shipped out to Afghanistan, which concluded with them reaching an agreement that his deployment would be kept secret.

Under the news blackout deal media organisations that signed up were given access to a series of pooled interviews, pictures and footage of the prince in Afghanistan.

However, they had to agree that they would keep this information secret until his six-month tour ended.

Miguel Head , was the chief press officer for the UK's Ministry of Defence back then. He thought they might be able to keep it a secret for two days, while they were certain he wouldn't be able to finish his deployment.

Head says he believes the normally ruthless UK press didn’t want to be seen as the bad guys especially after the death of Princess Diana and so agreed to a media blackout on his posting.

His cover was finally blown at 10 weeks when an Australian publication the Drudge Report, which was not part of the blackout, broke the story.

It Turns Out Harry Was A Helicopter Ace

Harry's job was to deploy airstrikes from the ground, although he was also pictured firing a .50 calibre machine gun at Taliban soldiers.

As a commander of the army's most sophisticated attack helicopter the Apache, the prince said he had fired on the Taliban during operations to support ground troops and rescued injured Afghan and Nato personnel. Most of the time the helicopter acted more as a deterrent, he explained.

'If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose,' he said. 'Take a life to save a life… the squadron's been out here. Everyone's fired a certain amount.'

In a series of interviews during his time-based at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, he spoke about his difficulties reconciling all his roles in his head.

The prince was known as Captain Wales in the army, he went on to explain his 'three mes'.

'One in the army, one socially in my own private time, and then one with the family and stuff like that. So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary.'

How Big Brother William Stepped In To Protect Him

Immediately after his flight touched down in the UK, Harry was rushed into an interview, to hold up his end of the agreement with the media.

But after they got through a couple of questions, William simply cut off the interview as he felt it was too much for Harry at the time.

'It was simply a brother realising that at that point nothing was more important than his welfare, and none of the other agreements mattered at that point,' Head explained.

Head noted that this incident spoke to Harry and William 's attitudes toward the press in general.

'And it says something about the closeness of the two brothers and their authenticity, as well,' he said.

'They will not fake who they are simply to play a game or to go along with other people’s expectations. And they are perfectly courteous and loyal and they will abide by agreements up to a point. But there will come a point where they say, "Well, actually our humanity is more important."'

Prince Harry confessed he did kill Taliban insurgents

It is one of the realities of war, but it is something that is often glossed over. However, Harry spoke candidly about having to kill during his two tours.

Speaking to the press after returning to the UK, he admitted that he felt it was 'take a life to save a life'.

'That's what we revolve around, I suppose. If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose,' he continued.

However, he wanted to reassure the public that the shooting was 'not the reason I decided to do this job'.

'The reason to do this job was to get back out here and carry on with a job. It used to be very much: front seat, you're firing the whole time.'

'Now, yes we fire when we have to, take a life to save a life, but essentially we're more of a deterrent than anything else. But it's not just about the shooting, it's about giving the effect to the [enemy] guys on the ground, and that's not always pulling the trigger.'

Prince Harry saw 'horrendous' things

Harry left the military in 2015 after 10 years of service and spoke of his experience in Afghanistan shortly after returning to the UK.

The prince shared that what he witnessed during his decade in the army was 'horrendous' and miles away from the smiling scenes that the media shared of him at the army base.

Writing for The Times , he shared: 'The tragic injuries and deaths of local people from roadside bombs, some of whom were children; coalition forces lying on the battlefield; and the constant ferrying of injured personnel to the hospital in Camp Bastion.'

'Radioing in the details of their injury to the hospital (which sometimes included the phrase "Op vampire," when the casualty would need a lot of blood—it still sends shivers down my spine), or lying in bed late at night while our accommodation shook from the downforce of the Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, was a constant reminder of what was happening all around.'

'See it, smell it, hear it, feel it, there was no escaping it,' he concluded.

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Sgt. Robert Bales and multiple tours of duty: How many is too many?

Twenty percent of active-duty Army troops are on at least their third tour of duty to a war zone. Sgt. Robert Bales, suspected of slaying 17 Afghan civilians, was one. Here's what's known about the dangers of repeated deployments.

• By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

March 23, 2012 | Washington

The tremendous burden that battle places on soldiers – and the notion that it can push some to their breaking point – has long been one of the fatalistically accepted miseries of war.

During the Civil War, this breaking point was called, alternately, “soldier’s heart” and “exhausted heart.” In World War I, it was “war neurosis,” “gas hysteria,” and “shell shock.” Sigmund Freud had his own theory about the “inner conflict” between a soldier’s “peace ego” and its “parasitic double,” the “war ego.”

But the case surrounding Staff Sgt. Robert Bales , who stands suspected of gunning down 17 Afghan civilians – including nine children – in a murderous March rampage, is likely to spotlight the unique toll that repeated deployments to decade-long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken on America ’s soldiers. 

Bales’s lawyer, John Henry Browne, has hinted that he will argue post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) played a role in his client’s alleged crime. “He doesn’t remember everything the evening in question – that doesn’t mean he has amnesia,” Mr. Browne told reporters. “There are lots of other options.”

Browne might argue, too, that it is the US military ’s fault for not properly treating the mental wounds of war of his client, who had deployed to Iraq three times before being sent – against his will, Browne has said – to Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has carefully disavowed Bales’s alleged crime as the lone action of a lone gunman, for which the Pentagon may well seek the death penalty.

But the Pentagon acknowledges, too, the stresses put on its force by repeated deployments. Some 107,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to war three or more times since 2001, or some 20 percent of the active-duty force. More than 50,000 of those currently in uniform have completed four or more combat tours, Army figures indicate.

America’s current conflicts “represent not only the longest wars fought by our Army, but also the longest fought by an all-volunteer force,” placing “tremendous and unique burdens on our soldiers and families as compared to the previous conflicts,” notes a wide-ranging study of soldiers’ mental health released by the Army earlier this year.

The study was particularly adamant that any attempt to view "soldier misconduct in isolation" necessarily "fails to capture the real likelihood that the misconduct was associated with an untreated physical or behavioral health condition, such as increased aggression associated with PTSD." 

That's because in some cases the burdens of repeated deployments have been greater than those troops had endured in World War II, the study warns. The average infantryman in the South Pacific “saw about 40 days of combat in four years” in contrast to a “persistently high” level of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has offered “very few opportunities for individuals to rest, either physically or mentally.”

The Pentagon has grappled with just how many deployments is too many. A 2010 study known as the “Red Book” discovered in those who had completed multiple tours “a growing high-risk population of soldiers engaging in criminal and high-risk behavior with increasingly more severe outcomes including violent crime.”

Precursors of this behavior, the study noted, were “combat-related wounds, injuries and illnesses; repetitive and lengthy separations, and broader economic conditions.” Bales’s lawyer might point out that his client struggled with all three.

Many troops wrestle with the strains of repeated trips to war zones. Tech Sgt. Bob Roberts has completed 15 deployments in 17 years since joining the Air Force’s elite pararescuers, who were most recently serving as a quick-reaction force for the final troops pulling out of Iraq. During the past four years, Roberts estimates he has been away from home more than 300 days a year. A former professional snowboarder, Roberts says the key to doing the job he loves is learning how “to keep your personal freakout at bay” amid violent chaos that sometimes requires “picking up pieces of people.”

He is quick to acknowledge that war has taken its toll. Roberts is on his fourth marriage. “I’ve chosen this over relationships – over everything else,” he says. The majority of pararescuers he began serving with, he adds, have turned violence inward and are now either “in jail, have a bullet in their head, or are drug abusers.”

Wary of painting a picture of every soldier who returns from war as wrestling with deep pathology, military officials stress that the majority of those who have served multiple tours have done so without committing crimes against civilians.

But they grapple with the simple soldierly reality that going into battle and all it entails necessarily cultivates aggressive behavior. What troops “have been through in the past 10 years requires more attention, more understanding – and it requires ways to channel that energy that we’ve encouraged them to have and bring to the fight – so that when they come back to the States, they don’t self-destruct,” says Lt. Col. Thomas Hanson, of the Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq (OSC-I).

Some try to create ad-hoc therapies. Lt. Col. Jonathan Downing, chief of doctrine and education at the OSC-I, witnessed the risk-taking behaviors that troops in his 800-person squadron would engage in upon their return from war. “We saw a lot of guys coming home, getting on sports bikes, and going crazy,” he says.

He and his colleagues decided to pay for motorcycle track days for those who seemed to “need that adrenaline” they had become accustomed to in combat. Risk-taking is “obviously a legitimate concern,” Downing says, “so we’re trying to use our influence to channel it.”

Just how the US military has chosen to cope with its war-sick has varied throughout history. Gen. George Patton , in one of the more notorious leadership moments of World War II, felt compelled to slap a crying 18-year-old soldier in a field hospital for being a “coward.”

Less remembered is the general outpouring of compassion that act prompted. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower sent a letter of reprimand to Patton, who had hit crying soldiers on more than one occasion, writes F. Don Nidiffer and Spencer Leach in a 2010 article published in Developments in Mental Health Law.

“I am well aware of the necessity for hardness and toughness on the battlefield,” Eisenhower admonished. “But this does not excuse ... abuse of the ‘sick.’ ” Congress concurred, stepping in to delay a command promotion for Patton.

Attempts have increased to understand war trauma and to use psychiatry to pinpoint which troops will suffer inordinately from what they have seen and done, but they remain primitive, military officials say. “There’s going to be lots of soul-searching and teeth-gnashing, but the reality is that we can’t tell when somebody is going to snap,” says Ronald Smith , director of psychiatry at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda , Md.

Dr. Smith recalls doing screenings for Antarctica missions. “I’m supposed to be pretty good at this, but you’d say that somebody’s going to have a terrible time, and they’d do great. Another guy you’d think would cruise through it would come apart,” he adds.

The bottom line is that war is a gruesomely powerful and ultimately unwieldy force that has the capacity to change the people who fight it in ways large, small, or negligible – but nearly always unpredictable. “Horrible, wretched tragedies that brook no understanding can in fact happen at war because you threaten people’s survival,” Smith, a Navy captain, says. The solution for preventing such tragedies, he adds, “is that our appetite for war should go away – and we should only do it when everything else fails.”

In the meantime, psychiatrists must often grapple in cases like Bales’s with “that sickening feeling [that] we don’t know and we can’t explain it,” he adds. “That will be up to a jury of his peers. But there’s not to my knowledge a neuropsychologist in the world who can say this was predictable.”

It is a frustration echoed by Gen. Peter Chiarelli , who, as the Army’s second-ranking officer, spearheaded the service’s mental-health outreach efforts until he retired this year. “We have no reliable diagnostics,” he says. “That was the frustrating thing for me for 3-1/2 years.”

Chiarelli, now chief executive officer for One Mind for Research, is pushing for collaborative research that he hopes will ultimately help troops who have been fighting the longest wars in American history. For now, however, the tools remain limited.

“The military is the only organization I know of that screens its people when they enter the service, before they deploy, while they are deployed, when they return, and six months after they return,” Chiarelli says. “If we had reliable tools, don’t people think we’d use them?”    

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In pictures battling the afghan insurgency, second prior assault cases surfaces against robert bales, afghan villagers say shootings were revenge, bales may not remember shooting, lawyer says, share this article.

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Now in Congress, veterans of Afghanistan war avoid partisan politics, demand answers

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Jimmy Panetta can’t stop thinking about the narrow streets leading to Kabul’s airport.

The former Navy intelligence officer remembers how the snarls of traffic, poor roads and crowds of pedestrians made airport access such a challenge during his tour of duty in 2007 and 2008, and again on trips back he took as a member of Congress.

Add to that the abrupt U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Taliban checkpoints now dotting the airport road and thousands of desperate people — including many American citizens — rushing to Hamid Karzai International Airport to flee the country, and the Bronze Star recipient gets angry.

“Dammit, where are the contingency plans?” said Panetta, a Democratic congressman from Carmel.

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How, he wonders, did the Biden administration not have a plan for the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, trapping tens of thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies, who helped the military and along with their families were promised sanctuary?

“It’s just very shocking,” Panetta said.

Panetta is now in a position to not only ask questions, but also expect answers.

He’s one of 34 members of Congress who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, including nine Democrats and 25 Republicans.

In the House last year, some of them formed the For Country caucus, a bipartisan congressional version of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, to work on legislation where they have common ground. Caucus members pledge to put their military bond above partisan politics by agreeing to not campaign against fellow members at election time.

The group feels a personal connection to Afghanistan and moral obligation to find out what went wrong in a conflict that took the lives of so many fellow troops. Despite disagreements over whether the U.S. should have left, so far there’s been broad bipartisan agreement in the caucus that the Biden administration’s withdrawal was deeply flawed.

“The fact is that we need to make sure that we hold this administration accountable to meet that first priority of leaving no American behind there, getting people out of there who we made promises to, but at the same time knowing that our reputation is on the line,” said Panetta, who spent the majority of his deployment in a bunker, tracking high-value Al Qaeda targets for U.S. special forces.

“It’s a personal issue because I served there,” he said. “But it’s also a very professional issue in my capacity as a representative.”

Biden plans to keep Afghanistan withdrawal deadline, but makes contingency plans

Biden aims to stick to Afghanistan withdrawal deadline as evacuations continue, but asks Pentagon for contingency plans. Taliban warns against extension.

Several of the lawmakers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq say the Defense Department, State Department and White House ignored months of warnings that evacuations were taking too long, the visa application process was too onerous and many people would be left behind.

Lawmakers remain appalled by the administration’s response. The State Department gave all 435 representatives and 100 senators the same email address to contact for constituent help. Some lawmakers’ offices received hundreds of requests a day.

“These numbers have names and faces to us,” said Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002-06 and received a Bronze Star for his actions in Iraq. “These are our friends. These are our allies. These are people that we fought with and worked with. We made promises.”

The veterans have watched in horror at the airport scenes : thousands of people trying to flee the country, an infant being boosted over the barbed wire into the hands of a Marine, young men and boys who clung to the side of an overburdened C-17 and fell to their deaths after takeoff.

Hawaii Democratic Rep. Kaiali‘i Kahele, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, said he sees himself in the Airmen loading people into the C-17s. Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, a former Army intelligence officer who focused on conflict analysis, empathizes with those trying to manage the crowds. Crow pictures himself in his old unit, the 82nd Airborne, which is assisting with the withdrawal.

“You don’t have to be a military strategist to recognize that when you pull the military out first, and then you leave your civilians, your contractors, your special immigrant visa applicants behind ... it ends poorly,” said Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Santa Clarita), a former Navy pilot who made bombing runs in Iraq. “This wasn’t a lapse of intelligence. It wasn’t a lack of foresight. It was straight negligence.”

Historically, it’s rare that so many lawmakers now find themselves tasked with overseeing the end of a military conflict they personally fought in. Typically there is more distance between military and political careers. That’s a reflection of both the unprecedented length of the U.S. action in Afghanistan — 20 years — and both parties’ growing interest in putting forward young congressional candidates with military service.

David Gergen, who advised Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, predicted that the voices of these former troops in Congress will be amplified in the coming weeks, and integral to whatever investigations Congress conducts.

“Your pressure and your sort of moral suasion exceeds that of anybody else in this conversation, the national conversation, and that’s why it’s so important that you guys keep talking,” he told lawmakers at an event Friday.

Notably, Democrats in the caucus are not going easy on the president just because he’s the leader of their party.

“President Biden has and will own this personally, policy-wise and politically,” Panetta said. “It’s his administration, and it was his ultimate decision to make at this point.”

Vets in both parties also note that several past presidents — particularly Trump, who negotiated the withdrawal with the Taliban — bear responsibility for America’s longest war.

“There does need to be an analysis as to what negotiations took place with the ex-president, what happened there. But not just with Donald Trump. Let’s look at what President Obama did, and let’s look at what President Bush did as well in regards to our involvement and strategy,” Panetta said.

Questioning Obama’s decisions means also potentially questioning decisions made by Panetta’s father, Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s Defense secretary and CIA director. The former Obama official has criticized the pull out in recent days, comparing it to the Bay of Pigs in Cuba.

“We need to be unsparing and unrestrained,” Meijer said. “This is not just the botched withdrawal and the chaos that we’ve seen unfold. Really this puts a fine point on the entirety of our conflict in Afghanistan, and in many ways also wraps in some of the challenges we saw on the failures in our conflict in Iraq.”

Panetta said he isn’t worried that the coming oversight investigations and predictable partisan sniping will divide or fracture the caucus — because the shared military experience of serving on the ground left such an impression.

“I believe they feel the same way,” he said of his colleagues in the caucus. “That this isn’t a political issue. This is a policy issue. We need to get to the truth as to what happened so that hopefully, hopefully we can learn from these lessons.”

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Sarah D. Wire covers government accountability, the Justice Department and national security for the Los Angeles Times with a focus on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and domestic extremism. She previously covered Congress for The Times. She contributed to the team that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the San Bernardino shooting and received the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington Correspondence in 2020.

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• Afghanistan

Tour of Duty: Two Marines Depart for War in Afghanistan

Two Marines say goodbye to families; deploy to Afghanistan for tour of duty.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 12, 2010— -- The war in Afghanistan grips not only those deployed, but their entire families. ABC News followed two Marines as they deployed to Afghanistan in late December -- part of the 30,000-person surge ordered by President Obama to fight for security in the region .

"This my uncle gave me… my great grandmother gave to him when he was going out to Desert Storm," said Cpl. Phil Jedras, holding up a rosary. "She made him promise that he'd bring them back, so he made me do the same… This is probably the most special thing that I'm taking with me," he added.

Jedras and Pfc. Rodrigo Rodriguez said goodbye to their families in the dark of night. And then there was a call to attention -- breaking the quiet -- signaling it was time to go .

It's Jedras' second tour of duty – he previously spent time in Iraq. Rodriguez is deploying for the first time.

"I haven't put my foot down in Afghanistan yet, so I don't know what exactly it is like -- it's the little things in the area that make me feel more comfortable," Rodriguez said before he left. "I'll probably be scared when I get there. Every human goes through some kind of fear ."

"I try to cram all my emotion, my family, my love of my family, all in that last two to five minutes right before I get on the bus," Jedras said. "As soon as I get on that bus, it's game time."

The two soldiers traveled from their homes in Camp Lejeune in N.C. to Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

"It's exciting getting on the plane," Jedras said. "It was Christmas Eve, and we boarded and it went from 11:59 p.m. to midnight. It became Christmas and all the Marines started cheering on the plane saying, 'Hey, Merry Christmas.' Couple minutes later, we were airborne and flying -- flying into Afghanistan."

Deployed with the Bravo Company, Second Assault Amphibian Battalion, the Marines described their first impressions.

"There weren't any paved roads, anything like that, and the weather is a little rough -- it has been a little crazy," said Rodriguez. Yesterday we had a little rain, hot, cold...crazy."

"Here the temperature changes at nighttime -- a lot. Really, really cold," Jedras said.

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Valley of Death: One Platoon’s Tour of Duty

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By David Carr

• June 16, 2010

ASK almost any American, even those opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they will state that they “support our troops.”

It’s a lovely thought, that we care for the soldiers who do the fighting regardless of politics at hand. But for the most part public interest and understanding of what American soldiers do on our behalf remains remarkably limited in wars that go mostly untelevised and undernoticed. American men and women fight, die and kill a long ways from home, and many want it to stay that way. “Restrepo,” a documentary directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, which will open on June 25 in Los Angeles and New York, is a 94-minute tutorial on life at the tip of that very sharp spear. Specifically, Mr. Junger, a veteran war correspondent and author of several books, including “The Perfect Storm,” and Mr. Hetherington, a longtime war photographer, spent 14 months, beginning in May 2007, with a platoon of United States soldiers in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan.

“Restrepo” avoids the conventions of documentary film: there is no back story, no drive-bys with experts for context, no underlying ideology or obvious message. The viewer is dropped into war, with a hard jolt, and resides, along with 15 soldiers from Second Platoon of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, in a remote and raw outpost called Restrepo, so named after one member of the platoon who is killed early in their rotation. In practical terms the soldiers of Second Platoon hump up a mountain with lots of bullets and some shovels and dig in. During the day they make efforts at outreach, handing over food and sometimes cash to local people, many of whom return at night to shoot at them. “It is a weird sort of anti-paradise,” Mr. Junger said in a phone call from Houston, where he was on a book tour for “War,” his best seller based on the same reporting. “They were in the most extreme place in the valley, which was the most extreme place in Afghanistan. By 2007 a fifth of the fighting in Afghanistan took place there.”

The Korangal Valley, full of giant peaks and hidden enemies, has a bit of reputation inside the military.

“Everybody is like, ‘Oh, you’re going to the Korangal?,’ and they feel sad for you,” Capt. Dan Kearney says in the film. “The deadliest place on earth. The Korangal Valley.”

The battle-hardened approach to depicting the current conflicts has shown up in features, on television and in other documentaries: “The Hurt Locker,” a feature film about a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq that won the best picture Oscar this year; “Generation Kill,” a 2008 HBO mini-series by David Simon and Ed Burns; and “Gunner Palace,” a 2005 documentary about an artillery unit in Iraq.

But “Restrepo” (pronounced res-TREP-o) may be the most frightening among them because the soldiers are so clearly on their own, isolated and often beyond the reach of the technological might of the United States military. Once viewers adjust to seeing life from inside a helmet, they could not be blamed for wondering how Mr. Hetherington and Mr. Junger survived. Suffice to say that both men, who each did assignments for Vanity Fair magazine while working on the film, still bear marks from their time alongside the soldiers in the Second Platoon.

Sitting in Central Park two weeks ago in shorts, Mr. Hetherington had a deep, angry series of hash marks on his ankle where he broke his fibula. After Mr. Hetherington fell down a mountain, the medic who examined him told him it wasn’t broken; that was a lie because they were four hours away from base, and there was no way to get there except to walk on his mess of a leg.

“That was not a very good evening,” he said, smiling as he looked down at the scar. “There was very little choice at the time, because you don’t want to be the person that is slowing down the platoon and putting others at risk.”

Mr. Junger learned quickly that war makes no distinction between warriors and those who are there to observe them. In one scene captured in the film, a Humvee in which he is riding drives over an improvised explosive device, or I.E.D., which blows up under the engine block rather than the cab, sparing the lives of the men on board, but rocking their worlds. Later in the tour Mr. Junger jumped off a rise to avoid incoming fire and tore his Achilles tendon.

“I tore my Achilles and Tim went back, and then he broke his leg and I went back,” Mr. Junger said. “The fact that we kept coming back gave us a lot of credibility with the soldiers.”

In choosing the members of the platoon, Uncle Sam proved to be an effective casting agent. There’s Captain Kearney, a ramrod who figures that the only reasonable tactic is aggression, projecting power down the valley to keep the enemy on its heels. Specialist Misha C. Pemble-Belkin is a baby-faced dreamer whose hippie parents would not allow him to play with guns, but he seems to know his way around a machine gun pretty well. Pfc. Juan S. Restrepo is a medic and a toothy, grinning instigator who keeps his nails long to serenade his squad on guitar. And Sgt. Brendan C. O’Byrne is a soldier’s soldier who is alert to all incoming signals.

Sergeant O’Byrne, who completed his tour, has read Mr. Junger’s book and seen the film, said the movie has a practical value.

“I’ve received all sorts of e-mails from families and wives of soldiers who say the book and the movie helps them understand why their fathers or their brothers or husbands don’t like to talk about what happened over there,” he said. “There are certain parts in the middle of the movie that I can’t watch, they are so real and powerful.”

Not everyone is a fan of Mr. Junger’s approach to storytelling. Lewis Manalo, who served combat tours in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, wrote a withering critique of Mr. Junger’s “War“ on the Publishing Perspectives Web site , calling his depiction of soldiers “superficial and unsophisticated.”

In a phone call Mr. Manalo, now a book buyer at Idlewild Books in Manhattan, said that he had not seen “Restrepo,” but that Mr. Junger’s suggestion that the soldiers in Afghanistan did not have opinions about the war they were fighting was that of a “condescending fan.” He added, “People enlist as a political choice, and he takes that way from them, and I think that is doing a great disservice to the people who served there.”

Mr. Junger said that the movie reflected what he saw and heard, which was not a lot of talk about politics.

It’s clear watching the film that Mr. Junger and Mr. Hetherington achieved extraordinary intimacy with their subjects over time. There are noncombat moments in the film that are very much part of the military life: the men wrestle one another and in one particularly vivid scene they crank the song “Touch Me” and gang pile on one another as the lyrics “I want to feel your body” pour out of the speakers.

It’s less homoerotic than a clear antidote to the physical isolation of their posting, according to the filmmakers.

“One of the things that is missing out there is affection,” Mr. Hetherington said. “You can’t hug yourself, and the wrestling and dancing is a way to have physical contact with someone.”

Mr. O’Byrne said that his platoon didn’t have a lot of time to pay attention to the cameras. “The truth of the matter was that in the beginning we were too busy getting shot at to worry about what kind of movie they were making,” he said, recalling that when he first arrived in the valley, he heard the monkeys howling and thought they were approaching Taliban. “After we were there, Sebastian and Tim’s first story came out in Vanity Fair, and we all read it and realized that they were good dudes, that they didn’t make us look like idiots and they told the truth, which is all any of us cared about."

Daniel Battsek, the former president of Miramax who now runs National Geographic Films, saw “Restrepo” in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the grand jury prize for best documentary. Now National Geographic Entertainment is releasing the film. Mr. Battsek was familiar with the film because it was produced by his brother, John Battsek, but said seeing it with an audience convinced him that it could have a theatrical life beyond the typical documentary fans. The film will open on several military bases in July, including Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell and Fort Benning.

“In this country there is a blind devotion to supporting the troops, and that is a very honorable sentiment,” said Daniel Battsek, a native of Britain. “But I don’t think we really know what that means. This movie gives you a window into the journey that these men — our troops — took when we sent them there. It’s the first time I understood what that really means.”

“Restrepo,” however, never delves into the geopolitics that put those soldiers in that deadly valley in the first place.

“We weren’t burdened by the baggage of classic documentary filmmaking,” he said. “And that included letting people draw their own conclusions. There is no room to be apathetic. These are your tax dollars at work, but the soldiers we filmed didn’t spend much time talking about the war and neither did we.”

The only hard and fast conclusion drawn about the war comes in the form of an endnote, which states: “In late 2009, the U.S. military began withdrawing from the Korangal Valley. Nearly 50 American soldiers died fighting there.”

Mr. Junger said it was less an editorial than a cold fact of military life.

“Wars have always been fought over pieces of terrain that become obsolete,” he said. “Hamburger Hill, Dunkirk, Gettysburg — at the end of the day none of that terrain really mattered after it was done. But many men fought and died there just the same. It’s the story of war.”

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A virtual museum of his presidency

Through a collection of deeply reported stories, videos, photographs, documents and graphics, experience Barack Obama’s historic time in office: as the first black president , as commander in chief , as a domestic and foreign policymaker, and as a husband and father .

Continue to the gallery of stories or keep reading: ‘I have a lot of dead friends...’: The surge in Afghanistan reconsidered .

Swipe to enter gallery of stories

Continue to gallery of stories

‘I have a lot of dead friends...’: The surge in Afghanistan reconsidered

Before attending Georgetown University and becoming a Washington Post staff writer, Thomas Gibbons-Neff served with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment from 2007 to 2011 as an infantryman. He deployed twice to Afghanistan — in 2008 and 2009 — where he led a small team during Operation Moshtarak, the mission to retake the city of Marja in Helmand province from the Taliban, in February 2010. The joint U.S.-Afghan mission was the largest of its kind since the start of the war, and Gibbons-Neff’s team accompanied 120 Marines of 1/6’s Bravo Company into the heart of the city.

In the ensuing weeks, the Marines of Bravo Company cleared large portions of the city after facing heavy Taliban resistance. Although some of the fighting would drop off in the following months, the Taliban remained a persistent threat even after the Marines of 1/6 left in July 2010.

Feb. 13, 2010: Marine Lance Cpl. Chris Sanderson tried to protect an Afghan man and his child after Taliban fighters opened fire, just hours after Bravo Company landed in Marja. The Afghan man and his child, who were caught in the crossfire, were rushed to safety.

Feb. 14, 2010: U.S. soldiers and one Afghan soldier exchanged fire with insurgents in support of the Marine offensive against the Taliban in the Marja area. In that fight, one soldier was wounded and at least one insurgent was killed.

Feb. 14, 2010: As the battle for Marja unfolded, Bravo Company found itself surrounded and in need of additional support. Charlie Company, part of the 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, and its complement of vehicles headed toward Bravo Company to lend that support.

Feb. 15, 2010: After an intense firefight in which many Marines were wounded, the regiment’s commander, at right, paid a visit to the temporary headquarters of Bravo Company. Cpl. Thomas Gibbons-Neff, left, had just come off the roof of the building, where a Marine had been shot through his helmet.

March 2, 2010: During a helicopter medical evacuation by the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, known as Task Force Pegasus, flight medic Sgt. Bryan Eickelberg secured a tarp around the body of an Afghan National Army soldier killed in Marja minutes earlier in an improvised explosive device attack. Pegasus crews provided the fast medical evacuation of seriously wounded combatants and civilians, and also transported those killed in action.

March 26, 2010: A member of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment held the dog tag of a fallen comrade as he paid his final respects during a memorial ceremony for four fallen comrades at their base in Marja.

May 31, 2010: A Marine took a break behind his vehicle at Forward Operating Base Marja, which was the hub for most operations in the southern portion of the city. By the end of the 1st Battalion 6th Marines Regiment’s deployment, the base had a chow hall and air-conditioned tents for the Marines based there.

June 4, 2010: Marines in Marja often executed their patrols in flooded ditches, or wadis, to avoid the many improvised explosive devices buried in the roads and trails.

Sept. 24, 2010: Army flight medic Sgt. Tyrone Jordan, attached to Dustoff Task Force Shadow of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, carried Marine Lance Cpl. David Hawkins to a medical helicopter after he was wounded by a blast from an IED in Marja. Task Force Shadow was responsible for evacuating wounded forces, as well as locals, throughout southern Afghanistan.

This story is part of a virtual museum of President Barack Obama’s presidency. In five parts — The First Black President , Commander in Chief , Obama’s America , Obama and the World and The First Family — we explore the triumphs and travails of his historic tenure.

• A hopeful moment on race
• A soliloquy in Philadelphia
• The beer summit
• The other trailblazers
• On a bridge in Selma
• In his own words
• The backlash
• A new aesthetic
• Kids on Obama
• Crime, justice and race
• Obama in Africa
• The Obama electorate
• Your Obama presidency

Barack Obama’s watershed 2008 election and the presidency that followed profoundly altered the aesthetics of American democracy, transforming the Founding Fathers’ narrow vision of politics and citizenship into something more expansive and more elegant. The American presidency suddenly looked very different, and for a moment America felt different, too.

The Obama victory helped fulfill one of the great ambitions of the civil rights struggle by showcasing the ability of extraordinarily talented black Americans to lead and excel in all facets of American life. First lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia, extended this reimagining of black American life by providing a conspicuous vision of a healthy, loving and thriving African American family that defies still-prevalent racist stereotypes.

But some interpreted Obama’s triumph as much more.

The victory was heralded as the arrival of a “post-racial” America, one in which the nation’s original sin of racial slavery and post-Reconstruction Jim Crow discrimination had finally been absolved by the election of a black man as commander in chief. For a while, the nation basked in a racially harmonious afterglow.

A black president would influence generations of young children to embrace a new vision of American citizenship. The “Obama Coalition” of African American, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters had helped usher in an era in which institutional racism and pervasive inequality would fade as Americans embraced the nation’s multicultural promise.

Seven years later, such profound optimism seems misplaced. Almost immediately, the Obama presidency unleashed racial furies that have only multiplied over time. From the tea party’s racially tinged attacks on the president’s policy agenda to the “birther” movement’s more overtly racist fantasies asserting that Obama was not even an American citizen, the national racial climate grew more, and not less, fraught.

If racial conflict, in the form of birthers, tea partyers and gnawing resentments, implicitly shadowed Obama’s first term, it erupted into open warfare during much of his second. The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby v. Holder case gutted Voting Rights Act enforcement, throwing into question the signal achievement of the civil rights movement’s heroic period.

Beginning with the 2012 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, the nation reopened an intense debate on the continued horror of institutional racism evidenced by a string of high-profile deaths of black men, women, boys and girls at the hands of law enforcement.

The organized demonstrations, protests and outrage of a new generation of civil rights activists turned the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter into the clarion call for a new social justice movement. Black Lives Matter activists have forcefully argued that the U.S. criminal justice system represents a gateway to racial oppression, one marked by a drug war that disproportionately targets, punishes and warehouses young men and women of color. In her bestselling book “ The New Jim Crow ,” legal scholar Michelle Alexander argued that mass incarceration represents a racial caste system that echoes the pervasive, structural inequality of a system of racial apartheid that persists.

Obama’s first-term caution on race matters was punctured by his controversial remarks that police “acted stupidly” in the mistaken identity arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University’s prominent African American studies professor, in 2009. Four years later he entered the breach once more by proclaiming that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

In the aftermath of racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, and a racially motivated massacre in Charleston, S.C., Obama went further. In 2015, Obama found his voice in a series of stirring speeches in Selma, Ala., and Charleston, where he acknowledged America’s long and continuous history of racial injustice.

Policy-wise Obama has launched a private philanthropic effort, My Brother’s Keeper, designed to assist low-income black boys, and became the first president to visit a federal prison in a call for prison reform that foreshadowed the administration’s efforts to release federal inmates facing long sentences on relatively minor drug charges.

Despite these efforts, many of Obama’s African American supporters have expressed profound disappointment over the president’s refusal to forcefully pursue racial and economic justice policies for his most loyal political constituency.

From this perspective, the Obama presidency has played out as a cruel joke on members of the African American community who, despite providing indispensable votes, critical support and unstinting loyalty, find themselves largely shut out from the nation’s post-Great Recession economic recovery. Blacks have, critics suggested, traded away substantive policy demands for the largely symbolic psychological and emotional victory of having a black president and first family in the White House for eight years.

Others find that assessment harsh, noting that Obama’s most impressive policy achievements have received scant promotion from the White House or acknowledgment in the mainstream media.

History will decide the full measure of the importance, success, failures and shortcomings of the Obama presidency. With regard to race, Obama’s historical significance is ensured; only his impact and legacy are up for debate. In retrospect, the burden of transforming America’s tortured racial history in two four-year presidential terms proved impossible, even as its promise helped to catapult Obama to the nation’s highest office.

Obama’s presidency elides important aspects of the civil rights struggle, especially the teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. King, for a time, served as the racial justice consciousness for two presidents — John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Many who hoped Obama might be able to serve both roles — as president and racial justice advocate — have been disappointed. Yet there is a revelatory clarity in that disappointment, proving that Obama is not King or Frederick Douglass, but Abraham Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson. Even a black president, perhaps especially a black president, could not untangle racism’s Gordian knot on the body politic. Yet in acknowledging the limitations of Obama’s presidency on healing racial divisions and the shortcomings of his policies in uplifting black America, we may reach a newfound political maturity that recognizes that no one person — no matter how powerful — can single-handedly rectify structures of inequality constructed over centuries.

Peniel Joseph is professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Being number one means nothing until there’s a number two.

If i had a son, he would look like trayvon., some young americans have known only one president in their lifetime..

• On war and leadership
• The parade of generals
• A tour of duty
• One enemy after another
• Words of war and peace
• The last convoy
• The rise of ISIS
• Weighing intervention
• An army of drones
• Struggle after service
• Fear at home
• Your fight, your stories

Has he failed to understand the nature of war or shown the virtues of patience to win the long game?

We won some good fights and we lost the war., no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy..

• Eight turbulent years
• Economic brinksmanship
• The price of Obamacare
• A new state of unions
• Shots fired
• A cultural shift
• ‘Healing the planet’
• Making presidential comedy
• A mark in the wilderness
• American reactions
• Your America

Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.

What is it like to be the last black president.

• Determined restraint
• For Muslims, unanswered prayers
• Open hand, clenched fist
• Talking to Tehran
• Closer now – and cigars!
• Standing in the world
• Friends, adversaries
• A pivot to Asia
• Air Force One miles
• Your worldview
• The new modern family
• White House, black women
• The first lady’s last stand
• It’s an Obama thing
• In the cultural mix
• White House parents
• The most popular of them all?
• The O’Bidens
• The first dogs

The Obama family has really uplifted the image of the black family from the moment we saw them.

He does not walk. he strolls with a black man’s head-up posture..

Share this series

What President Obama’s executive actions mean for President Trump

• Terence Samuel, project editor
• Allison Michaels, project manager, digital editor
• Shannon Croom, multiplatform editor
• Courtney Rukan, multiplatform editor
• Emily Chow, graphics assignment editor
• Seth Blanchard
• Emily Yount
• Suzette Moyer, art director
• James Steinberg, illustrator (The First Black President)
• Brian Stauffer, illustrator (Commander in Chief)
• Thandiwe Tshabalala, illustrator (Obama’s America)
• Jasu Hu, illustrator (Obama and the World)
• Erin K. Robinson, illustrator (The First Family)
• Dalton Bennett
• Gillian Brockell
• Bastein Inzaurralde
• Claritza Jimenez
• Ashleigh Joplin
• Whitney Leaming
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• Mike DeBonis
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Prince Harry says he killed 25 people in Afghanistan during tour of duty

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Prince Harry has reportedly claimed he killed 25 people when he was an Apache helicopter pilot during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The Duke of Sussex makes the claim in his memoir, Spare , which was due to be published next week but has been leaked and accidentally put on sale in Spain.

He flew on six missions that resulted in “the taking of human lives”, something of which he is neither proud nor ashamed.

In the heat of combat, the prince did not think of the 25 as “people” but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board, The Telegraph reported.

It is the first time the 38-year-old has revealed how many Taliban fighters he killed during his military service.

Prince Harry served in the army for 10 years, rising to the rank of Captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan.

The prince also claims in his autobiography that his brother, William, and Princess Kate encouraged him to dress up as a Nazi soldier – an incident he has called “one of the biggest mistakes in my life”.

Harry is reported by The Guardian to also say in the book that William physically attacked him during an argument in 2019 over the Duke of Sussex’s marriage to Meghan Markle, and he has now branded his brother, the Prince of Wales, his “archnemesis”.

His book, due for release on Tuesday, shows he has dedicated his memoir to his wife, children and his mother, Princess Diana.

On his duty in Afghanistan, he describes watching video of each “kill” when he returned to base, as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded each mission.

Soldiers do not usually know how many enemies they have killed, he says, but “in the era of Apaches and laptops” he was able to say “with exactness” how many he had killed.

“And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number. So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he writes.

In the “din and confusion of combat” he saw the insurgents he killed as “baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies”, The Telegraph says.

It is not possible to kill someone if you see them as a person, he says, but the army had “trained me to ‘other’ them – and they had trained me well”.

Harry writes: “I made it my purpose, from day one, to never go to bed with any doubt whether I had done the right thing … whether I had shot at Taliban and only Taliban, without civilians in the vicinity.

“I wanted to return to Great Britain with all my limbs, but more than that I wanted to get home with my conscience intact.”

Part of his reason for feeling no guilt about taking lives, he says, is that he never forgot watching news coverage of the 11 September attacks on New York, and later meeting the families of victims of the attacks on visits to America.

He describes those responsible for the attacks and their sympathisers as “enemies of humanity”, and says that fighting them was an act of vengeance for one of the worst crimes in human history.

The only shots he thought twice about were the ones he had not taken, and in particular, being unable to help his Gurkha “brothers” once when they were under fire from the Taliban and a communications failure meant he was unable to help them.

Security experts say the prince is a potential terrorist target because of his military service, and revealing his personal tally of kills is likely to increase those fears.

The Taliban said at the time it had told its commanders in Helmand to do whatever they could “to eliminate him”.

Elsewhere in the book , Prince Harry reportedly compares his first meeting with his stepmother and Queen Consort Camilla to getting an “injection”.

He says he was fearful Camilla would be his and William’s “wicked stepmother”.

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Pentagon Extends Tours of Duty in Iraq, Afghanistan

Steve Inskeep

The Defense Department is planning to extend the tour of duty for soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced Wednesday that soldiers will have to serve three more months than scheduled.

Related NPR Stories

Deadly blast hits iraqi parliament in baghdad, mccain vmi speech aimed at reenergizing campaign, u.s. accuses iran of arming iraqi insurgents, white house seeks war czar.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And even as we're following that news, American troops are absorbing this announcement from the Pentagon.

Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Department of Defense): Effective immediately, active Army units now in the Central Command area of responsibility and those headed there will deploy for not more than 15 months.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

The key part there is not more than 15 months. Up to now, most deployments in Iraq had been closer to a year. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the one who made the announcement. In effect, every soldier who's currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan has just had their tour of duty expended.

NPR's Tom Bowman was at yesterday's briefing and has details. Tom, good morning.

TOM BOWMAN: Good morning, Steve.

INSKEEP: Why do this now?

BOWMAN: Well, a couple of reasons. Secretary Gates wants to give predictability to the soldiers and their families. There have been times over the past several years where these soldiers have been extended sometimes at the last minute. It could be devastating, obviously, for families and soldiers. Morale takes a real hit when something like this happens. The other thing is to maintain the so-called surge of troops in Iraq. The Army is too small to keep up this overall level of 160,000 troops in Iraq.

INSKEEP: Well, what does this say about the stress that's on the Army right now?

BOWMAN: People are really worried about it. Now, Gates points out that the recruiting or retention figures for the Army look pretty good, but some generals I talk with really question that. They say that there are some indications that National Guard soldiers, sergeants with more than 10 years are leaving at a higher rate. Also in the active force, some officers and senior non-commissioned officers are leaving much more than they would have in the past at higher rates.

INSKEEP: Now I suppose if you're institutionalizing these longer terms, in effect, you're acknowledging that the demand for troops in Iraq is going to go on and on for quite some time. What ever happened to Iraqi forces taking over at some point?

BOWMAN: Well, it's a good point. The Iraqi security forces have several hundred thousand police and soldiers. And at the press briefing yesterday, I asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, that very point.

General PETER PACE (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): I think you say the truth, which is that there are 329,000 trained. Of the 120 battalions of about 500 Iraqis apiece, about 85 to 90 of those are in the lead or are working side-by-side. That they are getting better.

BOWMAN: We've heard that for well over a year now, that the Iraqis are in the lead, taking over more territory, increasing their numbers. But when you're on the ground in Iraq, you're more likely to hear from American soldiers that the Iraqi security forces are a mixed bag. They take one week off each month. Their units are sometimes less than half strength. Leadership is spotty. And aside from the Iraqi soldiers, you have the Iraqi national police, which has been infiltrated by sectarian militias. So there's a lot more work to do. And the sense I get is that Pentagon is painting too rosy a picture sometimes about the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces.

INSKEEP: Tom, thanks very much.

BOWMAN: You're welcome, Steve.

INSKEEP: That's NPR's Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon.

Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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• International
• Foreign affairs
• Afghanistan

Afghanistan tour lengths for deployed UK personnel

The troop rotation arrangements outlining the tour lengths for deployed UK personnel in Afghanistan between now and the end of UK combat operations in 2014 have been announced today.

British and Afghan soldiers pause during a patrol

The new arrangements are designed to ensure that we maximise force protection for our troops during drawdown, while also delivering to the Afghan National Security Forces the support they need throughout a critical transitional period.

They will minimise the number of Service personnel who have to deploy to Afghanistan over the next 18 months by removing the need to train and deploy an extra brigade on operations.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond explained that while brigades deploying under Operation Herrick have previously done so on a 6-monthly cycle, the rotation will change from this October when the next brigade will deploy for 8 months until June 2014.

The subsequent brigade will deploy for 6 months until December 2014 when the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force campaign concludes – but individuals could see their deployment extended to up to 9 months to provide support to final redeployment activity, in a non-combat role, if required.

Under the changes, most personnel will continue to serve standard 6-month tours. However, the amended tour rotations do mean that some personnel will deploy for up to 8 months, with a smaller number potentially deploying for up to 9 months.

In his statement, Mr Hammond told MPs that the changes were based on clear military advice which reflected the UK’s changing role in Afghanistan which is evolving from a combat role to one of training, advising and assisting the Afghan forces which now lead 80% of all security operations covering nearly 90% of the Afghan population. By the end of the summer, that will reach 100%.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond [Picture: Crown copyright]

Mr Hammond said:

The rationale for this decision is clear and is based on advice from military commanders. First, it will better align the final tours with key milestones in the transition process such as the Afghan presidential elections in spring 2014. Secondly, it will help to maintain continuity in posts where we work closely with our Afghan partners at a time when retaining and bolstering Afghan confidence is critical – both for mission success and to ensure our own force protection. Thirdly, it removes the need to train and deploy another brigade at greatly reduced scale to cover the final couple of months of 2014. It will therefore minimise the total number of Service personnel who deploy to Afghanistan over the next 18 months. This will allow personnel to focus on post-Afghanistan training, improving the general readiness of the Army as it reverts to a contingent posture for the future.

The Defence Secretary also set out measures to recognise personnel who may have to serve an extended tour or face an increased level of uncertainty.

A ‘Herrick Drawdown Allowance’ will be paid on top of the standard operational allowance package for eligible personnel who serve more than 7.5 months in Afghanistan. This will mean that an average serviceman, conducting an 8-month tour from October 2013, will receive an extra £750 before tax in addition to existing allowances.

Major General Patrick Sanders, Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations), said:

This move makes sound military sense and it represents the Chief of the Defence Staff’s military advice. In the first instance it is a sensible adjustment that will align our tours to key milestones in the campaign, ensuring the best possible support to the Afghan security forces. But most importantly it recognises that sustaining and strengthening our relationships with the Afghan security forces up to and beyond 2014 must be at the heart of all we do. By providing continuity where and when it really matters, this step will go a long way to achieving that. In fact, the majority of personnel will continue to serve tours of 6 months. Those who will serve longer will be in roles where their relationship with Afghans is a crucial part of the job, or where their particular expertise is needed to deliver greater continuity – and for this additional burden they will receive an additional allowance. In keeping with the many thousands of British Service personnel who have served with such courage, commitment and distinction in Afghanistan – many repeatedly – I know that they will approach their extended final tours with professionalism and dedication.

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Department of Defense Announces Tour Length Change for the Middle East

The Department of Defense has changed the current overseas tour length for DoD military personnel under COCOM (Title 10) authority assigned to permanent duty locations in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.

As a byproduct of the Department's continuous reassessment of personnel policies worldwide, DoD military personnel will gradually transition to 12-month unaccompanied tours for designated duty stations in the region.

This change will not affect the number or readiness of U.S. forces in the region.

DoD military personnel currently assigned to the region will finish out their accompanied tours and cycle out gradually over the course of two years. Those who have orders to prepare to move up to 30 days from today will be allowed to PCS to their accompanied tour, though all accompanied tours must be complete by August 31, 2022.

While this change applies to a number of countries in the region, only Bahrain and Qatar currently host military families under COCOM authority.

The Department remains committed to supporting our partners in this vital region.

The policy can be found here  and a corresponding fact sheet can be found here .

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• Episode aired Sep 24, 1987

After the platoon are hit in a nighttime raid, Sgt. Anderson recruits some fresh troops before going on a mission to find the enemy units that hit them. After the platoon are hit in a nighttime raid, Sgt. Anderson recruits some fresh troops before going on a mission to find the enemy units that hit them. After the platoon are hit in a nighttime raid, Sgt. Anderson recruits some fresh troops before going on a mission to find the enemy units that hit them.

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