Thursday 7 April 2011 14.59 BST
- Article history
One measure of the length of time British forces have been in Afghanistan is that museums are beginning to curate exhibitions about the conflict, and the UK's role within it over the last 10 years.
Perhaps the biggest to date will open this weekend at, of all places, the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.
Its aim is to give people an insight into the conditions faced by troops, and the kind of equipment they are using.
There are no actual tanks in sight, though the museum has put on display other armoured vehicles and equipment that have proved vital for soldiers.
I went to the museum earlier this week to talk the curator David Willey, and he showed me around the exhibition and explained the rationale behind it.
It is not a pro-war exhibition, he said. If anything, he hopes it will surprise and shock people, as well as give children the merest taste of the conditions faced by troops.
"When we did some sampling and asked people why we were in Afghanistan, nobody knew," said Willey. "And they had no idea what the troops were doing when they got there either."
He and his team have mocked up a FOB - forward operating base - just like the ones used by British troops in Helmand province.
The exhibition comprises a number of short films, most of them are introduced by the BBC presenter and former war correspondent, Kate Adie, who offered her services for free.
The real stars of the show, though, are not the vehicles, but the troops from the Royal Armoured Corps, whose experiences are the backbone of the exhibition.
The troops offered expert advice and their own pictures so that the 'set' is as lifelike as possible.
They also contributed short films, in which they explain what they did in Afghanistan - how they identify and then disable IEDs, the ways that they have countered Rocket Propelled Grenade attacks, and the injuries that many of them have sustained out there.
Twelve members of the RAC have died in Afghanistan, and relatives of the dead have been invited to the official launch of the exhibition tonight.
Willey accepts that it will not be to everyone's taste, and that some people will ask why the museum has focused on the British military effort, rather than, say, highlighting civilian casualties.
But the feedback from people who have had an early look at the exhibition has been very positive. "I think some of them found it quite moving," said Willey.
Certainly it would be hard not to feel humbled after watching one of the films, in which the mother of a severely injured soldier, Lance Bombadier Ben Parkinson, explains what happened to her son.
This is the transcript..
"Ben was the machine gunner on an armoured open-top vehicle that went over a 30-year-old Russian anti-tank mine.
They were very lucky, if they had been in a bigger vehicle he would have been killed but because it was a smaller vehicle, it was picked up and thrown.
The other two boys mercifully walked away, but Ben's legs were trapped around the gun turret. He lost both his legs above the knee, he broke his back in four places, he lost his spleen, broke his pelvis, broke his coccyx, both his lungs collapsed, every rib shattered, all his fingers were broken, an open fracture of his left elbow and then the real killer injuries - the massive brain injury, five fractures of his skull, five fractures of his cheeks and five fractures of his jaw."
"His life was saved by a young boy barely more than a first aider who kept him breathing and then he was airlifted to Camp Bastion within an hour...Ben was flown back to the UK to be with his family when he died.
"So injured on Tuesday and back in Selly Oak by Thursday, two days. We were preparing for the worst but we thought the worst was the loss of his legs. That's a nothing injury. The bad injury was the head injury."
Ben talks a little too, though it is obviously very difficult for him. Amazingly, with the help of the charity Pilgrim Bandits, he is beginning to rebuild his life.
The exhibition will last for four months.
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