Toby Harnden

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).

Toby Harnden

Bill Clinton on Tony and Gordon

Little Rock, ArkansasWhat can be done to bring order to a fractious Labour party? Inside Little Rock’s Alltel Arena, home of the Arkansas Twisters football team and filled with local Democrats greedily consuming mounds of deep-fried frogs’ legs washed down with vats of iced tea, the question was hardly a burning one.It was a balmy evening and no one seemed much exercised by the travails of Tony Blair or the overweening ambition of Gordon Brown. Indeed, there was talk of nothing much beyond the borders of a Southern state still viewed by most of the rest of the union as a poor, illiterate cousin.Except from one man. As he roared with laughter, signed autographs and waited with cheerful indulgence as clammy-fingered fans struggled to operate their digital cameras at the crucial moment, Bill Clinton was only too happy to offer his opinions on Labour’s future.

‘World Trade Center’ is insulting

Toby Harnden says that ‘World Trade Center’ ditches Oliver Stone’s left-wing conspiracy theories, but dishonours one of the heroes of 11 September by caricaturing his faithNew YorkStaff Sergeant David Karnes was working as an accountant at DeLoitte & Touche in Wilton, Connecticut, on 11 September 2001 when the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. He and his colleagues watched it on television. Karnes announced that America was ‘at war’ and drove home in his Porsche 911 (he saw this as an omen from above) to don his old marine uniform. He got a buzz cut at the barbers, picked up equipment at a storage facility that he rented and went to a church to pray before driving to Manhattan, stopping for a McDonald’s on the way.

Gays have the right to be miserable too

Lubbock, Texas The candidate is clad in a black Stetson, dark pearl-buttoned shirt and blue jeans, like a shambolic outlaw in some spaghetti western. But if he is inhibited by the audience of corpulent, stony-faced sheriffs glaring out from beneath their ten-gallon hats, he does not show it. Within the first two minutes of his stump speech, the ageing cowboy with Frank Zappa facial hair and a history of substance abuse proudly confesses to lewd conduct and breaking a state law.‘I’m a member of the Mile High Club,’ declares Kinky Friedman, the former country and western singer, to delegates at the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas conference, where stalls advertise professional ‘tragedy clean-up’ services and a commemorative handgun auction.

Waiting for the British

Lashkar Gar, Afghanistan In a dusty clearing on the outskirts of Helmand’s capital, the US army’s Provincial Reconstruction Team had set up a mobile aid station. As we approached, a Humvee gunner swung his machine-gun towards us and shouted angrily, ‘Get back, get back!’ We were clad in shalwar-kameez and sporting scrubby beards. We may not have fooled many locals but to the American soldier, viewing the world through his wraparound sunglasses, we looked like Afghans. Moments later, Captain Alan Dollison strode over to welcome us. ‘There’s some good stuff going on here,’ he grinned, pointing over at his colleagues — square-jawed doctors from California treating Afghans for their ailments and veterinarians with buzz cuts worming a sorry collection of sheep.

A cat ate the face of the corpse

Toby Harnden accompanies American troops as they fight the insurgents with everything they’ve got Fallujah Slumped in a corner, his face drawn and smeared with grime after five days’ fighting through the city, Specialist Lance Ohle of the US army’s Task Force 2-2 surveyed the room. ‘Can you imagine coming into your house and finding it like this?’ he mused. ‘Oh, man.’ Every window in the cinder-block house was shattered. A 155mm shell had blown a large hole through the roof. The front gate had been crushed by a Bradley fighting vehicle and every door kicked in. Bags and suitcases left by the fleeing family had been emptied, their contents strewn across the dining-room floor and mixed with empty packets from MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) boxes, the staple diet of the troops.

Saturday

Pulped by the MoD

Pulped by the MoD

Saturday

Bill Clinton on Tony and Gordon

Bill Clinton on Tony and Gordon

Wednesday

‘World Trade Center’ is insulting

‘World Trade Center’ is insulting

Wednesday

Gays have the right to be miserable too

Gays have the right to be miserable too

Saturday

Waiting for the British

Waiting for the British

Saturday

A cat ate the face of the corpse

A cat ate the face of the corpse