Lance Corporal Darren Hicks killed in Afghanistan

It is with sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that Lance Corporal Darren Hicks from 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday 11 February 2010.

Lance Corporal Darren Hicks died as a result of an explosion that happened in the Babaji district of central Helmand province.

Lance Corporal Darren Hicks

Lance Corporal Darren Hicks, aged 29 from Mousehole in Cornwall, was one of life's truly genuine people, immensely liked by his seniors and subordinates alike. He enlisted on 14 October 1999 and after training joined the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards stationed in Windsor in June 2000, in time to experience his first of many State Ceremonial occasions and Public Duties.

The Battalion was soon preparing for operations, but this time for a 2 year residential tour to Londonderry. On completion of the tour in Londonderry, Lance Corporal Hicks attended a Lance Corporal Drill and Tactics Cadre at the Foot Guards, and the Parachute Regiment Centralised Course, whereupon successful completion he was duly promoted to Lance Corporal.

Once posted back to Aldershot, the Battalion began to re-role as a Mechanised Battalion, where Lance Corporal Hicks proved to be invaluable, both as a qualified Saxon driver, and also in managing his Platoon fleet of Saxons. 2004 saw Lance Corporal Hicks deploy to Jamaica as a Section 2IC to conduct jungle training, where he excelled.

In April 2005 Lance Corporal Hicks deployed to Iraq on Operation TELIC 6 as a team commander and in October 2007 he deployed on operations again, this time to Afghanistan on Operation HERRICK 7. Lance Corporal Hicks successfully completed his Skill at Arms phase on the Section Commanders Battle Course prior to deploying back to Afghanistan in Oct 2009 on Operation HERRICK 11.

Lance Corporal Hicks was an all round great guy. He was adored by his men and respected by his seniors. Whether on parade at Buckingham Palace, training with his Platoon or more recently leading his team on complex counter-insurgency operations, Lance Corporal Hicks was always professional. He was a fine Junior Non-Commissioned Officer always leading his men by example – a true Coldstreamer.

Lance Corporal Hicks will be forever missed and fondly remembered by so many. Our loss is enormous but nothing in comparison to that of his beloved wife Katie, his daughter Daisy and his son Henry. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they come to terms with their loss at this incredibly sad and difficult time.
"The Coldstream Guards have lost one of the finest Lance Corporals currently serving."

Lieutenant Colonel Toby Gray

Mrs Katie Hicks, Lance Corporal Hicks' Widow said:

"I am devastated by the loss of Darren. He was a loving husband and father, he was my life and my everything. Darren was a proud Guardsman and he was taken doing the job he loved.

"I am immensely proud of what Darren has achieved in such a short lifetime. Darren was the finest husband and father you could possibly ask for, and he was immensely caring for us all. He loved to spend time with his family and friends, which meant so much to him."

Chris Hicks, Lance Corporal Hicks' Brother said:

"The whole family are utterly devastated by the loss of Darren. Darren was so kind, generous and honest; he loved life, he lived life to the full and he did everything with a smile on his face. Darren loved the Army, he enjoyed being a team player and always put others first in everything he did. He touched so many people's hearts and he will be greatly missed."

Outrage over kids used as shields

Attack ... raid last week

By DUNCAN LARCOMBE, The Sun

TALIBAN fighters were branded cowards last night for using kids as human shields during an assault by British forces.

Insurgents also forced locals into the line of fire in a "disgraceful" attempt to save their own necks, said military chiefs.

Details of the Taliban's tactics emerged after a four-day mission by members of the 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh and local Afghan soldiers.

More than 300 helicopter-borne troops surprised the enemy at their stronghold in a Helmand area known as Babaji Pear. The Taliban were smashed without a single British or civilian casualty. At least three insurgents died.

Commanding officer Lt Col Nick Lock yesterday told of the enemy's sick tactics during the assault last week. He said: "On several occasions insurgents were seen to use children as human shields and locals were herded into the open in an attempt to draw fire."

He said there was "no lack of courage" in the Afghan soldiers fighting alongside his men.

Last night the ex-commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, condemned the Taliban. He said: "They are cowards who have no honour."

Pictures: Major Paul Smyth

Winning confidence of Afghans who fear the Taleban will be tough

Picture: Maj Paul Smyth
Jerome Starkey in Babaji for the Times

The Taleban may not be strong enough to hoist their flag over central Helmand but they can still raise a radio mast. There are two of them in Babaji.

Just a mile and a half south of the nearest British Army outpost, the slender antennas on top of a muddy mound are rare landmarks in a battle for influence that lacks any front lines.

Made from bamboo canes crudely lashed together, the masts mark the edge of a modest security bubble that British and allied Afghan troops are trying to push outwards from their patrol base in the midst of Helmand’s farming heartland. The tips of the antennas tower 30m over the fields. They first appeared on Boxing Day.

For the farmers and their families who forge a meagre living tilling opium poppies and wheat, they are a constant reminder of the competing claims for their allegiance.

“The Taleban will beat me for talking to the infidels,” Mir Ahmad told British soldiers on patrol a few hundred metres from the mound that they call Re-Bro Hill. His two young sons clasped radios and sweets that the British troops had given them, but Mir Ahmad was anxious to leave. “When the Taleban come here it’s not one or two guys, it’s groups of five or six,” he said.

The soldiers and insurgents are in direct competition for the support of men such as Mir Ahmad, but neither group is strong enough to have a permanent presence in his mud-walled hamlet. “The Taleban say you are infidels and you don’t care about our religion,” he said. “They say it’s a holy war.”

Back towards the patrol base, the Coldstream Guards have paid to refurbish a mosque, a simple single-storey building without a minaret, with new carpets and loudhailers to counter Taleban propaganda and to build relations with local elders.

Farther afield though, in the shadow of the antennas, development is virtually non-existent. “You promised us help many times, but we didn’t see anything,” said Wali Jan, a farmer in his fifties. “We don’t want money, we just want security. The Taleban can come here whenever they want. If they see us talking to you they will kill us.”

What happens in Babaji and the neighbouring districts is likely to reflect the success or failure of Nato’s new counter-insurgency strategy in southern Afghanistan.

The area is one of five heavily populated districts in central Helmand identified as Nato’s “main effort”. British troops cleared the bulk of the insurgents during Operation Panther’s Claw last summer. They built four patrol bases in Babaji and are building a major road to connect the bases and make it easier for farmers to get their crops to market. But the protection they can offer to local people decreases with each step that they travel away from their camp gates.

“If the Taleban were here and asked me if I support them of course I would say yes,” Wali Jan said. The soldiers chatted to him for 20 minutes. He said that he had not seen the Taleban for at least two days — but, as we were about to find out, they were close by.

Babaji’s hand-tilled fields are criss-crossed with chest-deep irrigation ditches and are often flanked by trees. When the wheat was high, insurgents could sneak up on patrols, often ambushing them from 30 or 40m away. Today, spring seedlings are just beginning to turn the plots green. It is much harder for the insurgents to get so close; nevertheless it is difficult to project power.

“At the moment, the geography you can exert yourself over tends to be limited by how far you can go out in a day, with all your kit, and get back," Major Crossen, the battle group Chief of Staff, said. “We’re constrained by the numbers of Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.”

Commanders say that the “mass of soldiers” is the key to success. The bulk of the Coldstream Guards battle group, roughly 500 men, plus around 250 Afghan forces and their British mentors from the 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, are working to control an area roughly seven miles long and five miles wide that is home to around 55,000 people.

The long-term solution, officers insist, lies in building up this number by adding to the Afghan forces with whom they are currently patrolling.

Click here for the rest of the report on the Timesonline

The Taliban turned it into a bomb factory, but now this school is back in business

Picture: Lt Sally Armstrong
By: David Marley

An Afghan school that was turned into a Taliban bomb factory before being destroyed in fighting has reopened to pupils.

Six months after the school in Babaji, Helmand province, came under fire during a battle to drive out Taliban fighters, tented classrooms have been opened for more than 100 pupils. A permanent 12-room school for the site is due to be opened by the summer.

The move has been welcomed by the Britain's Department for International Development as part of its work to improve the Afghan education system. It contributes about £30 million a year to help support Afghan schools.

One of the key players in setting up the school in Babaji was Captain Martha Fairlie, a Territorial Army officer from St Andrews in Scotland and a former BBC Scotland education correspondent.

Captain Fairlie is head of the military stabilisation support team in Babaji, whose job is to try to restore normality to the area.

"The establishment of the temporary school is one of the most powerful signs that people are starting to have confidence in security in the area and are willing to send their children to school every day," she said.

The school teaches numeracy, literacy and religious education to pupils aged six to 20.

When the Taliban was forced from power in 2001, about 1 million children, almost all boys, were attending school, according to Afghan statistics.

Today, the government says, about 6.6 million children are enrolled in schools - about one third are girls.

Despite successes, Taliban attacks have forced some schools to close their doors over security fears.

Unicef figures for primary school enrolment between 2000 and 2007 stand at 61 per cent.

PICTURE of the day: Operation Lions Leap

Soldiers from Number 1 Company of the 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards on patrol around Kopak near Babaji. The troops were inserted by Chinook helicopter a few kilometres out from their patrol base to engage with local villagers and disrupt enemy activity in the area.

Photographs: Sgt Keith Cotton RLC

There'll be more losses..

By Rupert Hamer Sunday Mirror

GRIM WARNING BY DEFENCE SECRETARY

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth has warned that Britain needs to brace itself for more combat deaths in Afghanistan as troops prepare for the new "surge" offensive.

His stark prediction came as he toured two frontline positions in troubled Helmand Province to hear at first hand details of troops' struggle against the Taliban.

Later Mr Ainsworth said: "We've been through a difficult time. We have lost a lot of people. I can't promise that has come to an end. The enemy are trying to kill our people. That is what they are about. There will be losses."

Referring to the recent grim milestone of 100 deaths so far this year he added: "What we are finding is that huge chunks of the British population now know people personally who have lost their lives or been injured."

But he added: "The consequences of walking away when this is still something we need and can do - well then you betray the sacrifice that is being made."

Mr Ainsworth was flown in by RAF Chinook first to the isolated British outpost of Basharan in the Nad-e-Ali area near Helmand's provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. It was here - just over a year ago - that British troops moved in, smashing the Taliban in a series of airborne and ground assaults.

Now the area is showing the first tentative signs of a developing peace.

But a 20-minute flight to nearby Babaji - captured during costly fighting just five months ago in the bloody operation Panther's Claw - told a different story.

Here Mr Ainsworth was briefed to the sound of machine gun fire just a few kilometres away.

As the cackle of bullets subsided Mr Ainsworth sat with soldiers around a fire as 20-year-old Coldstream Guardsman Luke Fitzpatrick showed him his old helmet - ripped into by a bullet which was just inches away from killing him.

The soldier hissed in pain as a bullet went through both legs

The crack of a gunshot met the patrol yards after we exited the gates of the base in the heart of Taliban territory.

By Thomas Harding in Rahim Kalay. Daily Telegraph

Seconds later there were shouts of “casualty”. As the Afghan soldier hissed in pain through clenched teeth, bandages were wrapped tightly around the wounds from a bullet that had gone through both legs.

On this occasion he was shot by a machine-gunner from his own section who had just cocked his weapon.

As a stretcher arrived, 2nd Lieut Olly Morley ordered the patrol to continue without the section of the Afghan National Army, which would mean fewer troops on the ground.

The Coldstream Guards, who are in a well-defended base in the Babaji district, are pressing on with their mission despite news of the 100th British death this year.

“Everyone here knows of the risks because every time we go out there’s a danger, but we have a commitment to get on with the job,” said 2nd Lieut Morley, 24, who graduated from Sandhurst six months ago. “Of course morale is affected by casualties but we soon get back up on our feet and carry on.”

He spoke while we crouched behind a mud-brick wall overlooking the village of Rahim Kalay, from which an estimated 50 full-time Taliban launch almost daily attacks against the base.

Apache attack helicopters appeared overhead accompanying the Blackhawk medical helicopter, which swept in low to land at the base. A few minutes later intelligence came in that eight insurgents had entered a building 500 yards away, apparently to prepare for an attack on troops providing protection for a bomb disposal team. “If it does get hot then we have got Irene up here to smash them,” said L/Sgt Will Pates, 28, the section commander, referring to their general purpose machine gun.

The Coldstreamers’ faces tensed again when a report came in that “all the enemy had moved into position”.

“If it does kick off we will go for immediate action,” said an aircraft controller referring to the French Mirage bomber that had arrived overhead and seemed to take the fight out of the Taliban.

A few hours later we heard the distinct boom of an improvised explosive device, and news came in that an Afghan policeman had been killed.

There is incremental progress being made in the Babaji area but it is coming at a cost to the Afghans and the British.