Pulped by the MoD

Even at the time, I knew it was a deal with the devil. Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, commanding officer of the Welsh Guards and a friend of mine from the late 1990s, had just been killed in Afghanistan. He was the first battalion commander to die in action since the Falklands. Colleagues of his were encouraging me to consider writing a book about him and his beloved Welsh Guardsmen, who were still engaged in ferocious fighting. I had spent time with the Welsh Guards in Northern Ireland and Iraq. It seemed like an opportunity presented by fate. To explore the idea, I had to go to Helmand to be with the Welsh Guards.

Three years earlier, I had been driven there from Kandahar (albeit clad in a shalwar kameez and lying on the back seat). By now, however, it was the summer of 2009. Operation Panther’s Claw was raging and the roads were seeded with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). I needed the army’s help to get there. The quid pro quo for being flown from Kabul to Camp Bastion, and for being granted access to the Welsh Guards, was an inch-thick contract agreeing to submit any book manuscript to the Ministry of Defence for it to be checked for ‘operational security’ and ‘accuracy’.

It sounded straightforward enough but I had a sinking feeling. Back in the early 1990s, I worked in the MoD on an admiral’s staff. I was well aware that ‘operational security’ often meant ‘what we don’t want you to reveal’ while accuracy was ‘according to how we see things’. The MoD’s control-freakishness is well known amongst defence reporters. All journalists embedded with British troops are required to submit their reports, photographs and videos to be vetted by ‘media ops’. These strictures were not applied by UK forces during the initial years of the Iraq war and journalists embedded with American forces do not have to follow such procedures.