Afghanistan

For seven months in 2012, I was deployed on operations as a Platoon Commander in the Grenadier Guards Battle Group. It was a unique and humbling experience for someone in their early twenties to lead soldiers, many still teenagers, in to an environment as uncertain and as kinetic as the one we found ourselves constantly in.

Throughout the tour I kept a small camera in my body armour, using it to catch occasional fleeting moments from that time. The photos were never going to be perfect, often captured from behind a dusty lens with only seconds to guess at framing and fingers crossed for a usable image. As any frontline soldier will tell you, and operational tour is a time of immense highs and lows, moments of invincibility and utter vulnerability. Alongside the diary I kept, the images I took are incredibly important to me as a permanent record of those months as time dulls the edges of the moments we lived through. Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.