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Afghanistan 2007 Camp Bastion is the main British military base in the south of Afghanistan. Imagine a rectangle, four miles long by two miles wide, drawn almost at random in the flat emptiness of the southern Afghanistan desert. Fill it with cargo containers, white polythene tents and a bulldozed airstrip, and you have an idea of Camp Bastion, the main British military base in Helmand province.

In places the talcum-like dust is so deep that it can come over the top of your boots; in the distance, spiky mountains rear up from the plain without so much as a preliminary foothill.  Not that you can always see the mountains - in summer, the air is distorted by temperatures of up to 50º C (122º F), and even in late autumn, dust devils suddenly blow up in the heat of the day.

Everything in Bastion is imported, from the shower blocks to the food. In the air-conditioned ‘Cook House’, despite the nearest ocean being 600 miles away, there is defrosted Black Forest cake for pudding every night.

Thanks to modern military logistics and prefabrication techniques, it is possible to drop a capsule of Western living conditions almost anywhere on the planet, with Rolla-Trac plastic flooring for the tents and ramparts made of Hesco. Described on the company website as ‘the most significant development in field fortifications since WWII’, Hesco consists of giant plastic bags surrounded by steel mesh and filled with local dirt. If a base is ever constructed on the Moon, it will probably be made the same way.

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Afghanistan 2007

Parade & Awards | Camp Bastion | The Chief of the General Staff | Forward Bases
Operation Lastay Kulang | Operations Ghartse Gar and Silicon | 3rd Battalion in Kabul