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I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.

A lot of terrorists fled out of Afghanistan.

Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.

To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.

The big risk to British lives in 2013 is in Afghanistan. Our troops, diplomats and aid workers have made a big contribution there. But while there is an end date for Western engagement, 2014, there isn't a proper end game.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

'Shortly Thereafter' chronicles all the aspects of an Afghanistan deployment, from the terrors of the unknown that await before leaving, to the perverse thrills and adrenaline rushes found in combat, to the return home to a land and a people now more foreign than the war itself was.

If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.

It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.