Long patrols, in temperatures that often reach 130. There are few firefights now, just roadside bombs
Huge pile of opium poppies, a makeshift guntower and another huge pile of huge harvested opium poppies
Another exhausted Marine. They can fall asleep within a minute of a battle ending, anywhere
On the Walls inside children's drawings showed an AK47 shooting at a helicopter
Exhausted Marines rest in a family compound after s firefight and long patrol
The roads now have IEDs every km, so we have to go through the desert, past the nomad goatherders. But the trucks are so heavy they get stuck in the sand. It took us 13 hours to travel 16km
A huge pile of harvested opium poppies, which the soldiers don't even seem to notice.
Harvested opium poppy, Helmand province. The lines are from farmers scoring the poppy, so the opium oozes out.
The lump of earth in the distance, beyond the bridge, is an old British fort, over 100 years old. We've been defeated here twice before
The Americans have arrived and everything is bigger and angrier. But also much safer, when the Taliban are laying IEDs every kilometre
Toilet graffiti in Garmsir. I'd attribute this to the Brits who have now left. The Americans aren't miserable enough to write it. Not yet anyway
