Locals call it the "desert of death" -- a stark landscape of burned flats, furnace-like heat and choking dust storms that sprawls across Helmand Province. But the wry nickname for the neighborhood around Camp Bastion, Britain's main military camp, has started to acquire a more sinister meaning.
At dawn on Thursday, a Chinook helicopter returned to base carrying a mournful cargo -- the remains of Private Damien Jackson, a cheery 19-year-old paratrooper who died in a Taliban firefight hours earlier. Commanders shut down the camp's satellite Internet system to prevent word of the fatality leaking out before his parents were informed.
Still, the bad news gusted across the camp as fast as the scorching desert wind. Six British deaths in three weeks -- the previous fatalities just four days earlier -- brought home the perilous reality of "peacekeeping," Helmand style, to many British soldiers.
"This latest one has hit the lads quite hard," said Corporal Kelly Buckley, 27. "They know it's part of their job, what they signed up for. But nothing really prepares you for when it happens."
The bloodshed also sealed the formidable reputation of Sangin, where full-blooded battles between Taliban and British forces involving rockets, mortars, machine guns and warplanes, erupt almost every day.
A battle-frazzled group flew out of the riverside town on Thursday. Many were exhausted after two weeks with little sleep and nightly gunbattles, according to fellow soldiers.
"Yes, we are rough, tough soldiers, but this is one of our mates," Captain Darryl Ochse said.
Helmand is stubbornly refusing to follow the script imagined by British ministers and generals when they agreed to send more than 3,000 troops last January.
Plans to woo villagers with development projects have been frozen because outside the two largest towns, Lashkar Gah and Goreshk, much of the province is under Taliban control.
Paratroopers deployed to four northern corners -- Sangin, Kajaki, Musa Qala and Naw Zad -- to break the insurgents' stranglehold have been welcomed with the rattle of gunfire. At one stage this week the Taliban simultaneously attacked three of the small bases.
But the hostility also appears to come from local villagers. Patrolling soldiers are greeted with sullen looks, spy vehicles that shadow their vehicles and passers-by who run their fingers across their throats in a slitting motion.
The attacks have not reached Camp Bastion, safe behind a long razor wire fence that cuts through the forbidding desert. Here the biggest battle is against the heat, which hovers around 50?C.
Even with air conditioning, the tents are swelteringly hot.
The mood among the paratroopers is mixed. After Iraq -- where their battalion was posted to peaceful Maysan province -- many were enthusiastic about coming to a theater with the possibility of action.
"The only casualties in Iraq were guys who injured themselves in the gym," Corporal Buckley said.
But Afghanistan has offered a more potent challenge than many wished.
"That place is like hell on earth," said one paratrooper, speaking to fellow soldiers about to leave for Sangin. "Just expect the worst. There's no other way to describe it."
Others were more phlegmatic about the possibility of casualties.
"You can't just go walking into the Taliban's back garden and not expect to get a punch," said Private Kyle Deerans, a 23-year-old South African sniper who recently fought a two-hour battle.
Many soldiers complain about their putative allies, the Afghan police. Untrained and notoriously corrupt, the police flee in the face of battle, one officer said privately, and some are suspected of siding with the Taliban by night.
And some say they are confused about how to achieve their laudable mandate -- winning hearts and minds -- using deadly force.
"I tell you one thing," one said. "We need to decide what our mission out here is -- because we can't do hearts and minds and this [fighting]. It just won't work."
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