Over and out: former para on why he quit the Army after Afghanistan

"I felt being a good soldier was not just about rank but about how you treat people and look after them.”

Update, 21 July: Listen Again link to interview on BBC Today programme, with James Naughtie. "A former commander in Afghanistan has left the Army and is making his reasons public. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal says the Ministry of Defence underestimates the difficulty of the mission and wounded soldiers are still not being properly cared for."

From The Sunday Times July 20, 2008

In his first newspaper interview, ex-para commander Stuart Tootal tells Christina Lamb why his Afghan experience made him quit.

 

Tootal, a high-flyer who had been told he was in line to be made a general, reveals the mounting frustration of commanders on the ground about lack of equipment, poor pay and conditions for his men and their families, and “shocking” treatment of the wounded...

 

“I always knew we didn’t have enough helicopters.”... “We had seven Chinooks for a battle group of 1,200; now there are only eight Chinooks for four battle groups." ...

 

The task of motivating his troops became difficult for him after he visited wounded men in Selly Oak hospital, Birmingham, while home on leave. “I was shocked to my core by what I saw,” he said. “I’d expected to see a military ward with military staff and patients, but instead they were mixed with all sorts of civilian patients, young paras next to 80-year-old geriatric women.” ...

 

“It was those stories that I had to carry back to theatre with me, knowing I was about to lead people back into combat. It filled me with foreboding every time we flew on a helicopter, thinking if one of my guys gets hit they’re going to go back to that.” ...

 

Tootal has created a charity, the Afghanistan Trust, to look after the more seriously wounded and next of kin. “I’ve heard other regiments are doing the same, which is really disturbing – we shouldn’t be having to set up charities to look after our people.” ...

 

He also found he was losing a number of promising soldiers because of the poor pay and conditions, particularly the accommodation for families. “We definitely lost some good soldiers who said, ‘I love the regiment but I don’t want to be divorced.’”  ...

 

Afghanistan left Tootal with great pride in his men, as well as disturbing memories such as having to cut the burnt-out bodies of some of his soldiers from a vehicle after an ambush. This makes him infuriated by reports from the Foreign Office that it was a mistake to send an aggressive force such as the paras first into Helmand. ...

 

“[We] did not go looking for trouble and anyone who thinks we did has never been in sustained combat, never risked life on a daily basis, never had to make possibly the last phone call home to loved ones, never had to pick up the body parts of one of your friends, never spent the day covered in the blood of one of their men. You don’t go looking for trouble when you know.” ...

 

I felt being a good soldier was not just about rank but about how you treat people and look after them.”

The Sunday Times, 20 July 2008: Over and out: former para on why he quit the Army after Afghanistan, by Christina Lamb

The Afghanistan Trust

The Observer, 20 July 2008: Para hero slams government treatment of frontline troops