traveling through afghanistan in 2009, welsh unit. toney, can you explain the title of the book? >> dead men risen is a phrase in a poem. it's not a very famous poem. but a company commander who was killed in action in june 2009 his mother sent him out a collection of first world war poems and he seized on the phrase dead men risen because his company was an amalgam of bits of other countries, all these men thrown together who haven't trained together, and to build an esprit decore he was saying you are dead men risen and the title was number nine company. and that company being in

suspended animation since the end of the second world war and so he was trying to say to them, you are a reincarnation of these men from the second world war. you're they're descendents. you're dead men risen, and this was way of unidentifying them and became a theme of the book because the three main characters lieutenant the battalion commander, the company commander, and the pursuing commander were all killed in action and those three levels of leaders have been killed in a british battalion since the korean war. sense their testimony from the grave is at the core of the book and they're dead men risen. and the other thing was an incident which again is one of the emotional parts of the book when seven welsh guardsmen in

the back of a vehicle that toppled into a canal. they were hacking upside-down in the dark with water rising like this and they were upside-down, and some blacked out and just before one reached for a picture of his wife and a sonogram of his unborn child and clutched to his chest. another was flailing around and clutched a hand in the darkness and held hands with one of his comrades as they thought they were dying and just they're passed out the door sprung open and they were rescued and all seven of those guys lived. some were extremely close to death and one was in a coma for two weeks. they were dead men risen because they thought they were dead and they rose. so has many resonances but initially from the poem in the first world war. >> host: can you walk me through how you came to link up with

this welsh unit and the amount of time you spend with them in the field versus how much interviews you did afterwards trying to linking this together. >> guest: sure. the regiment, the welsh guard and i had sort of coincidentally got to know them through my years as a journalist. i would bump into them and keep in contact with them, and the first contact is when i was in northern ireland in the late 1990s, and i went to see them and wrote a back about the ira, the irra heartland and during that period i got to know a guy called rupert he became a good friend and so i kept in contact with him. i imbedded with them in iraq in

2004. rupert wasn't there then but got to know a lot of welsh guardsmen, and they were out in helmand, i was back here in the states and i knew they were in a really bloody fight, and then july 1 2009, i logged on to my laptop and saw the headline that rupert was kill. a big -- for me a personal loss and obviously he was a father of two little girls and a husband and a son. and so it was a big national moment as well. first time since the falklands' war a battalion commander had been killed in war. so that was a trigger to me to get out and see what was going on. i got in touch with the regiment and soon after that it became apparent that charlie

antel, who was bumped to -- to replace rupert. and charlie was a company commander in iraq. so it was happenstance this came together. so i got out there in august 2009. i was there at the last month or so of the tour, with the new commanding officer in place, and i was able to travel into the battle group area. i traveled to all the patrol bases and the outposts and was out on the ground with the troops. it was -- the book isn't my description of what happened to me. it's a few things in there that did involve me but really that was an opportunity to start the interview process, and you know yourself, when you're imbedded with troops you have conversations you just don't have anywhere else. they're in this mental place and they open up and talk about their fears. you might be the last person

they ever speak to. and you also someone who has come in from the outside, and i was very clear to them that this was not writing a newspaper article. it was a book. the work of contemporary history so they opened up more when they knew witness wouldn't be in the daily telegraph the next week. wouldn't be published for a year or so. so that was the stuff of it. one publisher was bidding for the book was very keen for me to write a book very very quickly, and i resisted that and i'm really glad i did because i was then able over the next year or so, to do many, many more interviews in the u.k. i went to kabul to see general crystal and senior officers and some people in the u.s. and people's view of what happened to them and what this is all about and their experience changed over time, and i was able to get very large number of documents from the welsh guard, and from ministry

defense documents which meant that i could sort of weave in these incredibly detailed intelligence summaries and incident reports and signal traffic and the night watch keeper's logs, and transcripts and e-mails, all sorts of stuff. and able to we've -- we've weave all that in. and there were casualties that happened long after they got back. so i was able -- that was unexpected. it wasn't an area i was expecting to examine, but sergeant dan collins, a hero of the book i interviewed him just after he got back. he had been shot in the body armor, blown off his feet twice by ieds, and i interviewed him. he seemed on top of the world, almost envious of him, war hero been through this experience and were tested and proved yourself,

and then i saw dan -- he took his own life on new year's eve 2012. so an extended reporting and getting to know these people for well over a year and still in touch with many of them. >> host: sure. thanks. having spent time myself in helmund between 2010 and 2012 with the u.s. marines i was struck by the friction point at times between the american troops and the british troops and also perhaps even more so the leadership on the two sides, seems pretty clear some of the british commanders were concerned about their legacy and whether or not the american marines were going to sort of steal the thunder. how much do you think that hat an impact on what was happening on the ground to the ralk and file welsh guards men in the unit. >> guest: at a ground level not very much. in fact it was tremendous

camaraderie. u.s. marines who were sort of imbedded within the weapon-guard battle group. and so one of the most fascinating kind of units win the unit for me was bunch of snipers from bull rifle, who history cloy wore the green jackets, and i arrived at this outpost knowing nothing about them. we came under fire as we dismounted from the convoy, and it seemed pretty distant to me. i don't think much of it. then i heard a couple of big cracks of -- which sounded to me like 50 caliber shots or something quite big and quite close, and i found these two snipers, and they dredged 75 kills in three weeks between the three of them and the last two kills were the two cracks i heard as we arrived. and one thing i hadn't expected

is snipers from the unit had been operating with marines side-by-side in the dust these outposts and this one incident of british corporal who killed four taliban, very quick succession, at a distance of more than a mile and right beside him as he is taking the shots were marines who had their flat tops downloady data from the u.s. drones and so then it was the u.s. blackhawk which flew in to recover the bodies and confirm one of them was a senior taliban commander. the most of the medical evacuations were done by american blackhawks. code name was pedro for the british. most of the combat support were american so most of the welsh

guardsmen were talking to the americans after day. so it was seemless and brothers in arms and tremendous respect and comradeship. but certainly at the high level, at the brigade type level, this was a very sensitive time because the u.s. marine corps arrived in june 2009 so right halfway through the tour of the welsh guards and any suggestion that the 20,000 or so u.s. marines coming in were coming to the rescue or bailing out the british, which i think is actually their characterization of what was happening was just anathema. you had to be very very careful of it. i know that the americans who were saying task force helmund and the americans would say well, task force part of helmund. let's face it. the british were sensitive about

what happened in southern iraq and feeling a failure there, frankly, andtive appointment from u.s. military -- disappointment from the u.s. military at the british work there. and that is what happened. as i'm sure you found out in places like -- american criticism of the british tactics and a feeling that the british hadn't been able to do the job and that's why the u.s. marines were there. >> host: that brings up a good point. i was struck even within the field, you hear the grumbling, they don't come out of their bases much. reading the book i got an appreciation for the other side. the sergeant level, the lance sergeant level in those british units, because you could kind of get the sense for why that was the case. the fact they were so underresourced, both in terms of just boots on the ground and number of people and also the equipment, the problems with

radios lack of batteries, lack of air power. can you speak a little bit to -- i guess explain to the viewers what they were dealing with and just why it would be that way? >> guest: right. i was shocked. it's not something i anticipated. when i went out there i knew rupert had been killed i knew about the casualties. i knew there was a really intense fight going on. but what i hadn't expected was that they would be undermanned, just didn't have enough men, had 10,000 british troops in helmund, and 20,000 u.s. marines coming in. didn't have enough men for the mission. didn't have the right equipment. to rupert's death -- one of those examples of truth being better than any kind of fiction really. almost tragically poetic the way he died. he was killed inside a viking

track field in 2009. and a vehicle that should not have been used on narrow tracks in helmund. it wasn't properly armored. they improvised by putting an armored plate on the front cabin so the two vehicles -- the taliban realized that and the ied would explode behind the vehicle. so one reason he was killed because he was in a vehicle that wasn't properly protected. he had been in an mrap he wouldn't have been killed. the reason he was in the front vehicle because there was hill real phenomenon of battle shock among the welsh guardsmen, some of them 18, 19 years old were going into a freezing panic absolutely terrified, and the main reason for that was because they were searching for ieds using metal detectors. but the taliban at that point had developed low metal content

ied or low metal content ied with graphite and plastic components. so described to me it's look liking for an ied with a golf club and absolutely terrifying. you could just be looking for this device without the right -- might as well use a stick and then your very next step you could be blown to pieces and rupert appreciated that. at a he did that job and on the day he was killed that's what he was doing. it was sort of a way of part of his leadership style was to demonstrate he would take the same risks the soldiers were and he paid the price. the other aspect of his death is during operation panther's claw, which was the big sweeping

brigade level operation which tended to happen with the british every six months. brigades were on a six-month cycle, which was flawed and certainly that's the american view. and rupert's view similar to the american view, which was that tours should be longer, but these big sweeping operations which resulted in lots of medals for senior british officers and declaration of victory and great discuss and a certain number of taliban on the body count but just didn't have enough troops to hold the ground. so rupert's argument was that these operations were flawed in concept. and he actually got -- he got the plans for his part of panther's claw modified because he thought that the area that was being given to them was too large, and is a part of the modification that one of the reasons why he was on the canal that day. so all these aspects of the

flawed british strategy and the lack of equipment and the lack of manpower, also coalesced in the single moment of rupert's death, which still sends a chill down my spine when i think about it. >> host: sure. your book focused a fair amount on the rank-and-file on the individuals put into very difficult situations that they've never been in before and in the british case la lot of them, even if they'd been in 20 years, had never even seen a single gunshot go over their head. the scene with mark edison leading his men in combat, but getting shot in the back in a vicious ambush three-sided ambush that turned ugly quickly. how much have you heard from or kept in touch with any of the individuals kind of post script since the book came out and can

you speak to where they are now? sunny kept in touch with a long of them. mark edison, a young platoon commander, going places young charismatic officer tremendously excited to be in charge of this outpost on the edge of the area of operations. so he was -- may 2009, at the start, and he -- this is part of dead men risen aspect. he had written in his diary a lot of that published in the book. he was write that the radios didn't work. he was concerned about lack of medical equipment. concerned about helicopter evacuations. procedures. and also he didn't know what the mission was. he was unsure what the mission was. and so the patrol that went out

that day -- there was no -- it was really what is called in northern ireland presence was felt, just to go out there and be seen and reassure the local population which is nonsensical in the helmund context. so a big ambush, and what i found out, which is the sort of revelation in the epilogue to the u.s. edition, the new material for the u.s. edition, i found out very recently was that he was in all likelihood the bullet that killed him -- he was mortally wounded. heroic gallantry medal awarded for some of the soldiers who had got him back to the base but he didn't -- it was then screwups with helicopters and he got back to the hospital there well outside the golden hour and

basically bled to death, and was flown back to the u.k. and the life support machine was turned off by his family. this tragic postscript i was able to find out about and publish in the epilogue was that it was 7.62 nato round that killed him. so almost certainly fired by british general purpose machine gunfire. fired in the heat of battle from the base itself. one of the hardest moments in all of sort of research and writing this book was that -- to break the news that some of these welsh guardsmen looked at the ballistics report and i think it was a friendly fire death. and this one guy called guardsman caldwell who suffered very severe battle shock he treated mark edison when he was

mortally wounded and within the platoon had a really special dynamic with him which absolutely devastate by his death, and caldwell -- i mean, i tracked him down and talked to him. he is awol. he is on the run from the army. he has gone through ptsd a lot of drinking drugs. seems to be in a better place now but very, very fragile and a number particularly from that platoon really seriously affected and they came back different people and i think us will be. >> host: you touched on something already but when you start talking about the british and the american relationship and the dynamics, really just the history of helmund that is a place where the british took a beating, especially before that american surge of troops in early 2010. what did you see -- what surprised you if anything in

terms of what they were dealing with be it in terms of taliban tactics or the lack of equipment, just the overall day-to-day struggles. >> the welsh guards men -- i good night sangen who wasn't in the welsh guard areas of operation but what happened during panther's claw, the british were robbing peter to pay paul. so they were taking soldiers out and putting. the operation panther's claw and one incident where five british soldiers were killed in that period because they were even more undermanned than usual in sangen. i found that there was a lack of just coherent strategy from the british which filtered down about what they were doing there. so this was always a period of sort of blocks in the overall

nato strategy. so general crystal is taking over and issues a report saying we're lose thing war and we need to move to counterinsurgency and need a surge in troops and they were waiting for president obama, and it came in the west point speech at the end of the year. he inserted this timetable for withdrawal, which set this sort of mixed message. what i found was during this period you have british platoon commanders and right down to sergeant levels pleading with afghans saying, we're with you we're in it for the long haul, and we will stay, but sometimes -- there was one particular base where i heard a conversation, part of a conversation like this and on that base there was a caretaker who had worked for usaid in the

sort of 1960s and 1970s. the then worked for the russians at the same base and he worked for the taliban and on the base there was filing cabinets full of usaid documents that were sort of equipment from russian equipment, trucks from milwaukee there, and this graveyard of empires type of situation. you could see with afghans they were convinced -- they weren't convinced and the british war saying to my privately we don't know either. we need an answer to this bus we can't sort of keep on peddling this line if we don't know that it's true. and it was a lot of dismay when the withdrawal date was announced. i think a lot of the troops felt that meant that their dealings with the afghans had been somehow dishonest because british and americans weren't

really in it for the long haul and would kind of move to a sort of domestic political timetable almost. so it was pretty complex relationship between the british and the afghan. >> host: at the time there were -- 2009 presurge, there were a couple of american marine units. a couple battalions in other placed in helmund. did you hear or see anything in terms of, man, i'm here and they're dealing with this? you get interest a situation when you're in places like that where three miles, five miles, ten miles can seem like a world away. >> guest: absolutely. there was very small we are-guard unit which -- welsh guard unit. they described it like the well welsh men in the bull war where

awards for action in a single day, when this beleaguered force was overrun, and they thought they were -- but those watch guardsmen were in awe of what the u.s. marines arriving and they were waiting for them. they described this like the cavalry arriving over the horizon. when they got there. so at the lower level dish know that there was a lot of angst at brigade headquarters and i said the u.s. was coming in and saving the day because the british weren't up to it. but at the lower level, nothing but praise for the americans. we were also starting to see this contest, the british were calling courageous restraint, and this flowed down from general mcchrystal, and it was all about counterinsurgency dock trip and the need to take risks to avoid the civilian casualties

even if that meant you might actually take more american and british casualties yourself. so during this period there was certainly -- one sergeant said to me mcchrystal seems like a bit of a tree hugger to me. which former head of -- who was sort of oversaw a campaign, he described it as industrial scale killing of al qaeda in iraq. people in iraq that not used to being called a tree-hugger. this was the early signs -- i think the edict was overinterpretted down the chain and you had some enthuseasic lower level officers who were making the troops take too many risks. on the basis that avoiding civilian casualties where any

military person knows you cannot find any war without civilian casualties. there was some resentment from the british about what was seen as this american political correctness rule, which men that some comrades could be killed. that was very much a feeling amongst u.s. marines and other u.s. military. they were losing them because this doctrine. >> host: very much. so definitely hear the rules of engagement being almost like curse word. around that time frame. and i'd seen similar things as well. on the flip side, the book touches on several times some of the oops moments where the british felt like they were stuck in a bad firefight or thought they saw one thing and turned out to be another. there are several examples of farmers getting killed. civilians getting killed. after the fact post-2009, post

book did you ever see or hear -- how much of that is the struggle or is it more the struggle with this -- over the guardsmen dealing with the loss of their own? >> guest: i think civilian casualties is part of it. there was a father i was speaking to a few months ago of a young guardsman who said he found his son curled up in his bedroom weeping, saying i killed an 11-year-old boy, and he was just holding his son in his arms saying son you did what you had to do. you had to do it. and so it really does cut to your core. i did a documentary for bbc in 2013 about ptsd and suicide and again another guardsman who had fired a javelin missile at a bunch of insurgents totally legitimate, killed three of

them, and he looked through the -- he recalls looking through the night sight and seeing those body parts flyingly to air and thinking, those guys are someone's dad and as he was talking to me he had his baby on his knee, and clearly sort of weighed on his mind that something the troops had to deal with. and you alluded to it, the incident with the farmer was after edison's death. clearly there's a human kind of desire for vengeance and a sort of a military need to strike back and seize the initiative back when you have taken a casualty like that. and there was this junction very close -- which was being routinely -- dug in at night. and looking through a javelin sight welsh guards, saw -- everybody believed that it was

an ied being dug the range finder on the javelin missile wasn't working correctly. rupert who was killed a month later, he was very angry about this and said he thought it was a result of being gung ho, they engaged the target and killed a farmer working his fields in the middle of the night to avoid being taxed by the taliban and keep out of the heat of the day. so he was needlessly killed, and obviously that's a propaganda victory for the taliban and so all these things are interconnected. almost a direct line between edison's death, probably through friendly fire to that farmer being killed and perhaps a number of the men from the villaging fighting with the taliban. so civilian casualties, as well as the sort of moral aspect of it and the -- you have

counterinsurgence, the course productiveness of it. for the actual individual who does it either through mistake or through completely legitimate action or through some kind of fog of war or combination, it really does weigh on people. >> host: you kind of reconstruction where this battalion came from, its history, and the background of a lot of the rank-and-file, and also the officers coming from a completely different world. that is sometimes the case on the american side as well. how much of that -- you start the book very early kind of by explaining the importance of the faulklands in terms of the cultural importance in the unit to that conflict in the '80s and the way a lot of these welsh soldiers came up. why include that, that level of

detail? why was it important? sunny thought it central to the psyche of the welsh guards and the way they fought in hell minute and again, this is -- helmund, and this is my -- only my belief but i think rupert would a not have been killed the way he was killed itself hadn't been for the falklands war. seems bizarre because that was 1982 and this was 2009. during the falklands, more than 30 welsh guardsmen who were killed sitting on a troop shirt waiting to land and they were hit by argentine bombs and many of them burned to death. one of the most horrendous incidents in the falklands war, but one of the things about the casualty list then no officers were killed and mostly it was overwhelmingly ordinary guardsmen at the private level and corporals and a couple of sergeants. very much the low ranks that

took the hit. but it was a sense they were on the troop ship like a sitting duck targets because of the actions of officers, and so even now you can go into the sergeant's mess in the welsh guardsman that will he an argument when the happened that day. and i don't think it's a complete coincidence that three officers were killed and three welsh officers were killed in this 2009 tour because i think psychologically there was a compensating behavior and this leading from the front was part of the culture of the recommending meant was that the officers had been -- some of the officers had been brained for failure in 1982. as a regiment, a very strong sense of this history in this moment that they were going out as an infantry battalion in the heat of battle in helmund, having never had a chance to fight in the falk leans war because they were sit so badly

before they landed. i was fascinated -- i'm now an american citizen, spent a total of 12 years here, and the british class system something i still don't fully understand but very present in these, particularly guards regiment, where you have -- in case of the welsh guard 95% of them welsh, from mining villages or mining slate and coal, and some welsh speakers from. north wales from very very small communities and yet almost all the officers are upper class sort of englishmen, which is a fascinating dynamic. the guardsmen will make arrangements it means we're a breathed apart and therefore we don't have to frattennize, and that's part of the culture and

so to get into the psyche of the individual soldiers soldiers and the psyche of the regiment was important for me and the reader to understand that. >> host: you touch on rupert's interaction with -- and when he thought it was necessary to go around the chain of command and doing whatever he could to get his own soldiers what he thought they needed. that friction point is pretty central to the book throughout that these guys being put in a mails that they weren't prepared for. what kind of do you think lessons are there for the british military a couple years out now. have they learned from this? are they changing anything? >> guest: really good question. i would like to think so but a lot of signs they're not.

helmund was seen by the british army as a chance an opportunity for redemption after iraq, but many similar mistakes were made. they improved equipment and procurement chain. this was sort of the lowest point if you like for that. but sure, the think about rupert is he being the military assistant to the defense secretary immediately before taking command of the regiment so he had gone from having this view of being assistant to the equivalent of the chief here and right at the heart of the british government and overseeing british defense policy and hey had gone from the top down to this very granular battalion level and so he was a -- this is something i didn't know about certainly while he was alive and it came through in documents and people

sort of opening up to me and telling me about conversations they had with him, and, yes he mate himself really unpopular with the brigade. some people says he thinks he is a general but he is not. he is a lieutenant colonel and we're on the brigadier staff and he needs to suck it up. rupert felt he knew the reasons to some rules being quoted at him the reason why he couldn't have more men, and so he was telling people you're mistaken, you are interpreting this rule which is absolutely counter to the reason why it was there i know because i was there when the rule was instituted. now he was a very kind of self-efacing character and he wasn't arrogant -- he didn't expect this arrogantly but he was really, really dogged and i think he knew that he was destined to the highest ranks

and he had made the calculation that he could upset brigadiers and he was prepared to do it and i also think he had -- at the core of him was a belief in leading his troops and he died for his troops and was prepared to do that and i think that is the way he believed that he needed to lead and to fight. and he wasn't going to be one of these battalion commanders who thought, well, i'll get my medal, impress the brigadier who is writing my report and submitting the medal recommendations, and i'll be moved up the chain. rupert had that inner self-confidence that was above that. and some of the pleas that rupert made to the brigade, particularly about the lack of

helicopters, who was welsh guard officer who was a member of parliament and the very next day they were discussed at the prime minister question time with david cameron. so i think in mark edison's diary, about the inadequacy of equipment and his lack of understanding the reason he was there and his mother has been -- she wrote in the book and got a lot of media and had the ear of people in high places. i think there are lessons from the welsh guard that are perforating through society and the army. whether it really changes things we'll just have to see. >> host: do you think there was any cultural dynamics at play when you start talking -- this is something that is for americans who don't have any real knowledge of understanding of the way things are in

britain. the way a welsh might be viewed differently than a another from a -- a unit from a different part of the country in terms of where they come from, their differences, how they're viewed? >> guest: absolutely. the british regimental system is unique. they're been alma good mated through the years, welsh guard is a new regiment it was formed in 1915. the welsh -- if you look at the scots guard -- the joke is only have of them are scootsmen and the rest are from liverpool and manchester. so the welsh guard has a more cohesive sense than any other regiment in the british army. they're also sort of dual role regiment. an infantry regiment, also the guys you see in the red units

outside buckingham palace. they have a ceremonial role and a lot of these guys who were fighting and dying in helmund were the guys you see outside winsor castle and buckingham palace changing the guard. there's debate about that within the british army. so the full rifles, which is regularly infantry battalion with no ceremonyol role, they would sort of mock -- banter, mock the welsh guards but there was an element of seriousness. nor yost real infantrymen because you're only doing it half the time and we're doing it all the time and they were very much proud of they're scruff ins if you like -- scruffiness, if you like, and they didn't like the spit and polish aspect of the guards which rubs right through so even out in helmund people were being -- soldiers being picked up by officers for failing to shave. and the guards thought that you

don't shave, you don't clean your rifle you rifle doesn't work and then somebody dies. each officer says, well that's bullshit. it's unnecessary with need to focus on the military and this kind of appearances and smart absolutes and stuff takes you away from real soldiering. so i found -- i've always found with the british that so many factors at work in each unit, and hoyt plays a real part of it. >> host: interesting. and some of those things are things you see on the american side as well in terms of the interservice rivalries between army and marine or within the different units, whether you're reconnaissance or regular infantry or whatever the case is. >> guest: it's making soldiers who join a unit sort of take on the history and the -- it's just

everywhere and -- >> host: looking at helmund now 2015, the report i think in a lot of cases are frightening. and the afghan army is still there, the afghan policing storyville but records of the islamic state recruiting there and the taliban appears to have certainly taken over a lot more territory. what do you see as kind of the british piece of this in terms of what went right, what went wrong and how it's viewed back home. >> guest: well, back home similar to here really. most people believe we shouldn't be there. less so than iraq but it was this feeling that, well five was more from afghanistan but real dismay how it turned out and the feeling that politicians

in general let the troops down. one absolutely chilling passage in the book where the british foreign secretary in 2010 asked the governor of the provincial gov of helmund what will be the british legacy, and i i think he was expecting well, how long will the british legacy last? and he expected a decade or decades or a generation and the man replied, within 48 hours we'll -- afghan officials well by out of here or hanging from the nearest tree and that's what is coming to pass now. reports of outposts very close to -- have been taken by the taliban. the wire breached the british base that collocated with the u.s. marine corps base and my first visit to hell minute was in january 2006 before the british arrived, and i went there on my own with another

reporter and afghan driver and fixer, and we drove in from kandahar. did not feel safe and it was lying on the back of the seat. war lords sort of walking on the road. american contractors, defense contractors, saying the british can be hit on the road. afghans talk get battle of may 1 from the 19th century and the bones of the british will be lying with their grandfathers. so, i think we have now no british troops in helmund at all, and i think taliban are moving into the space that's been left and certainly -- some of the well already guardsmen say what was it for? we were there in this indecreed blue intense period, fighting for almost every inch of ground, and now we just left and it's

clear to many of the troops this was very much present in dead men risen, that major birch, the company commander wars killed, wrote back and basically afghan police in particular just treacherous, we have to guard ourselves against them and sure enough just every left, a few weeks later, the regimental sergeant major who came in senior nco in the regiment ahead been traveling with him for two weeks fax guy shot dead by an afghan policeman along with four other guardsmen and military police and that was the start of the green on blue thing. so in britain, as here, there's a sense of, what was it all for? >> host: as a hoyt lesson, and perhaps because i spent time there in 20, that district --

what became that district is touched on quite a bit in the book but it's always kind of this spooky place, that they're just not going to go. what did you see and what did you hear as far as it went and also in terms of kind of having the sense that at some point there was probably going to be a large operation there. >> guest: well, i've always found fascinating. big hand, small map operation. british officer's hand on the map. and so i was given the map of the area of operations of the welsh guard, and i got that, and got my bearings. but then i went into the operations room and i saw -- i was shown another map of the area of operations, and what i'd been told the area of operations

was actually in the top left-hand corner and all the rest of it was blank and i said what about that? and right there in the to bottom left-hand was marja so the sense of the badlands, taliban controlled territory where all the supply routes were and it was definitely talk about marja and needed to be dealt with, and marja became this place where lots of marines were killed big operation, and kind of a big moment for general mcchrystal big moment in the campaign, and entered the public consciousness but i think i'm right that when i was out there, nobody in britain or the united states would have heard of marja but it was very much on the agenda but it was kind of whispered about that would be what the u.s. marines would be dealing with. >> host: interesting. i found it fascinating even going back. my last trip was 2012.

and you had marja and it was considered at least in the district center to be pretty safe at that point. yet now in the initial center of -- now the same thing. you still have these badlands in between, and even in 2012 when there had been years of american operations dish with a whole lot more manpower it was still the bad leans where you push people into to get them out of the other districts. >> guest: i remember a u.s. army -- young u.s. army intelligence officer in iraq in diyala province, describing a balloon where you put pressure on and it you remove the air from that bit of balloon but it goes into another bit. that is often the case. a district where the welsh guards where, that had been this place where would strike fear into the hearts of the british soldier, and then being taken

and seemed relatively benign, and as you say, marja went that way. i think that's the way it is in war. >> host: we have just about five minutes left. wanted to touch on the human aspect of this. beth countries are coming to the end of the afghanistan and we're back in iraq but a much different kind of conflict at least so far. your book touches on the struggles, especially in the -- the epilogue in the new american version, a lot of these individuals had later the suicide problems the drinking problems, the stresses it puts on marriages, on family and parents and kids and everything. do you see -- especially you probably have an interesting perspective on this -- someone who has kind of tracked it from both sides of the ocean -- how have the british done with kind

of taking care of the military post conflict and preparing for this? what kind of differences are there between that and what the american does. >> guest: well, pretty badly unfortunately. we don't have a va system. there's no separate veterans administration. so it's all sort of shared between the ministry of defense, the pentagon equivalent, and the department of health. but during this bbc documentary, which features lot of soldiers from the welsh guard, it became apparent that the british actually don't track veterans. once you have been discharged -- i was trying to find out how many veterans served in afghanistan had taken their own lives, and the only answer was we don't know. you had to check newspapers and that sort of the thing. so really kind of flawed system. and i think there's a -- i know actually there's a belief from

very senior people in britain that the ptsd isn't a british problem, it's something that americans get. they do obviously acknowledge that some brits do get it, but they cite statistics showing that ptsd it higher in the equivalent civilian population and they say the americans are overdiagnosed, but i think that their head are in the sand. i went out with a little bit of skepticism about ptsd just a way of getting out of things or the kinds of benefits afterwards, but having been out there with people like dan collins and officer john williams one of three falkland veterans who had been on the troopship when the welsh guardsmen burned to death and he

drank himself to death when he got back to britain. i view these at casualties just as rupert and edison so we all know about the many problems that have been in the va system. the british are further behind then the americans. >> host: any talk about re-inventing the system or improving the system or developing a new way to take care of this? smyers always debate about -- >> guest: there's always debate bit. i for instance they talk about a new tracking system so in the national health service, i.d. number, you put in a code which shows doctors that this person has served but effectively you still have a national health system where soldiers leave the military been veterans and are then out in the civilian system will very little help in any kind of military context. >> host: are they falling back at all on the falklands

campaign, be it to track difference's or try to learn -- >> guest: there was a study of falklands which the ministry of defense commissioned. i have a number of problems with the methodology of it which was opaque very hard to -- but they went out of their way to prove in their own minds that the rate of suicide in the falklands veterans was way, way way below nat, in equivalent population. the answer being there isn't a problem here, we don't need to worry about this. some kind of media myth. >> host: to turn that around is there too much emphasis on the way things are in the united states and the way veterans are tracked? it does make the news regularly here and there are a lot of people that are deeply invested in the problem and a lot of folks that track that and are concerned about that. and i think we would probably

include ourselves in that. but when you compare that to another country where there's that little attention... they seem like dual messages. you want