This week's announcement of US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan will be cold comfort to a small group of civilians in north-east England. They are part-time soldiers enlisted with the Territorial Army. And with Britain's regular troops over-stretched, they are on standby to be thrown into the front lines. Dateline's Evan Williams joined their unit as they got the call to war.
REPORTER: Evan Williams
It is a cold dawn and a company of young British soldiers is under attack. This is just a training exercise and it is happening in the safety of northern England. But soon, these soldiers will be inAfghanistan in what is predicted to be the fiercest fighting season so far. The soldiers are members of the reserve force known as the Territorial Army or the TA. They are plumbers, students, bakers - volunteers drawn from everyday life and paid to do part-time military training. Former Navy officer Chris Hall helps run one of the TA companies.
CAPTAIN CHRIS HALL, TERRITORIAL ARMY: Once you start the training, you can be while your training forAfghanistan - be delivering letters or repairing toilets and then at the weekends, training to go to war, then going back and delivering letters again etc. They live their normal lives and come in and do training every week. They go to war quite literally with the regular units and when they return after their time off, they go back to delivering letters and repairing toilets again.
COLOUR SERGEANT NEIL REDPATH, TERRITORIAL ARMY: Originally, I joined the TA because I was on a college course and was on a miniscule grant. It was to get extra money, basically. I saw an ad in the paper, it was some years later before I got to jump out of an aircraft, you get a monthly pay. Friendship as well - you meet people that you stay mates with for years.
Today the Fifth Fusiliers are getting ready to mark St George's Day, the patron saint of England and of the unit itself. It might look quaint, but there is a deadly serious side.
CAPTAIN CHRIS HALL: Well, the image of the TA ten years ago was that the regulars thought they were just a drinking club, a group of people who put combats on and had socials. But things have changed dramatically sinceBosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The TA has been on a constant war tempo ever since. It has changed dramatically to a very strong operational fighting force.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL CLARKE, ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE: In theory, the Territorial Army is a separate army to raise numbers, as in the First World War.
Professor Michael Clarke studies the demands on Britain's armed forces and says the TA plays a critically important role.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL CLARKE: These people have been deployed in ones and twos in order to make up shortages – that was the case in the medical services some time ago and those ones and twos have now become about 30% of our full force deployment across any given operation.
TA members get about $50 for each day they turn up for training and more for fighting overseas. In the depressed north-east, that can make all the difference to a struggling family, like for new father Darren Longstaff.
DARREN LONGSTAFF: Yeah, the money is alright. It is about £27,000 for me and that is a lot of money. Everyone is the same boat. It is a financial issue. I have got a little daughter, Holly who will be one on the 28th of May, and I don't want to leave her but I want to move forward in life. I know I will miss her and she will miss me but when I come back, there will be security.
But Darren knows that earning that money carries risk and that soon he will be in a real-life war zone.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL CLARKE: What the TA used to do is back fill, so they used to take supporting roles to release regulars to go to the front, as it were, to take on the combat roles. And that was fine, but increasingly, what is needed is not infantry front line troops, what’s needed are the specialists. They tend to be in the TA and so they are finding themselves on the frontline more often. Sometimes they do it in the first deployment.
Veteran ex-regular Graham Smith is this region's welfare officer for the TA.
GRAHAM SMITH: The expectation is that they will have to go on an operational tour, so they don't really have a choice. That is the expectation and that is what they sign up for. Once the training is completed, we say that we are expecting you to serve on that tour. This is how we are going to do it through that process of mobilisation.
But not everyone gets through unscathed, as I'm about to find out. Graham Smith is taking me to meet the wife of a TA soldier who was recently sent to Afghanistan and who called her from the front with a message she will never forget.
DANNI: I've been shot. Just like that. I just couldn't believe what I had heard.
REPORTER: What went through your mind when he said ‘I’ve been shot”?
DANNI: It was a complete blank. I couldn't speak. I didn't know how I felt at first and then he started to explain that he was shot in the leg and he was going to be absolutely fine and I think, after a couple of seconds it started to sink in and I started to get really upset but I didn't want to show him I was upset.
Danni's partner has now rejoined the TA. But the shock of his injury - and the fact that he has a new baby girl - made him wary of another overseas mission.
DANNI: He said, ‘right, that’s it, I have had a shock, I was not expecting that’ I don’t think he ever once thought that that was going t o happen and I think when it did and he got home, he thought ‘I can’t do that again’. When he got back last time, he said that he never thought something like that would happen to him. And when he got home, he thought, I cannot risk that happening again.
It is a freezing dawn, and Z Company is on the streets for a gruelling 2-day march. A Northumberland piper tries to lift the spirits, but it is little defence against the chill north-east winds.
JOHN HUNTER: How many miles have we done so far? 20. At five miles an hour. Faster, because we have loads of breaks in there as well.
Exercises like this are a way for officers like Bosnia-veteran John Hunter to assess these men to see if they are fit for the battlefield.
JOHN HUNTER: If we knew there was an individual who was wanting to deploy but really we knew hand on heart was not fit enough, we would have that discussion with them and would advise them not to go ahead, to do a bit more phys first. Because if they become a casualty due to poor fitness, then it is those who are left behind that have to deal with that, so it does have a serious impact on what happens out there.
With their involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya, Britain's armed forces have already been at war longer than during World War II, increasing pressure on the TA to deliver men.
JOHN HUNTER: It is almost a certainty now that everyone will deploy at some time and probably a couple of times within a three to five year time span.
COLOUR SERGEANT NEIL REDPATH: I have been in the TA for 26 years now and the Army has invested a lot and it is only fair they get a return on their investment. It is something every solider wants to do to, to deploy on ops for real. My children are used to it anyway. And my ex-wife would not be bothered anyway.
The march is over for the day, and it is time to inspect damaged feet.
YOUNG SOLDIER: Discipline, commitment to what I put into things before I joined the TA. Like, I would give up on things if they were not going my way. I would not be too happy about it but now I will keep on trying doing my 100% best.
These two TA soldiers, Fusiliers Damien Rowell and Ross Davison, are working one of their last shifts at a paintball company. Soon, they will be firing real bullets in Afghanistan.
DAMIEN ROWELL: We are both going to be riflemen on the frontlines. I am nervous but I am happy that I am going. It is shocking that it has come so quickly, but it is something that I want to do.
ROSS DAVISON: I am nervous, but it is something that I have always wanted to do for our country. With Osama Bin Laden dead, there is probably someone else appointed to lead them and it will get worse.
48-year-old veteran Corporal Moore is also deploying.
CORPORAL MOORE: Well, someone has to look after the young 'uns. There is no point in training for it if you do not do it. There is danger in everything you do. In civilian life, I drive a truck and how many people get killed on the roads. There is risk involved in everything you do.
Darren's deployment to Afghanistan is nearly here now. Weeks of intensive training with regular soldiers will start within days.
DARREN’S PARTNER: I would rather him do a job that he will be happy doing what he wants to do than have him stuck in a dead end job.
His partner was also in the TA. It is where they met. She understands his desire to go. But leaving her and their baby girl, Holly, isn't easy.
DARREN LONGSTAFF: I have got the life insurance all sorted.
REPORTER: Are you worried?
DARREN LONGSTAFF: It is just a job. It is a job and it is what you do. You don't go there and think about being killed. You could just as easily be hit by a bus. You have got to think positively.
Danni, whose partner was shot in Afghanistan, now knows that he has changed his mind and is going back to the war after all.
DANNI: It has really hit home that he is going. Silly Mummy. At this stage, he is going and there is nothing of that I can say to change that. Not that he doesn't care – he does care – deeply, but he knows this is what he has to do. I wouldn't stop him because I know he wouldn't be happy.
The Fusiliers are back on the streets, blisters and all, marching ever closer to the day they leave for the front lines. Sergeant Redpath knows there is a chance not all of these men will make it home again and it gives him pause to think of the two daughters he will be leaving behind.
COLOUR SERGEANT NEIL REDPATH: They hope I will come back OK, safe. They have not voiced any worries but in their minds, they have probably thought it won't happen to Dad. Dad will be stacking blankets or doing something equally as exciting as that. Every time I say good bye to my kids, whether it is just me going back to my house or whether I am going to deploy or a weekend, it is always the same. I always say I love them in case it is the last time I see them.
Reporter
EVAN WILLIAMS
Camera/Research
EVE LUCAS
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Editor
NICK O’BRIEN
Original Music composed by VICKI HANSEN