Afghanistan 2012: Episode 4 - Helicopters & Partner Force

Episode 4 - In this episode you will see our Afghan Partner Force - special police from the Provincial Response Company - Uruzgan, or PRC as we called them for short. They are the guys wearing the desert camouflage uniforms and carrying the AK-47s and other Soviet-era weaponry.  Due to the nature of our operations, and the extended time coalition forces had been in Afghanistan, in 2012 we were mandated to have a certain percentage, quota if you will, or Afghan Partner Force attend each of our missions. We were not allowed to go out and conduct unilateral operations - operations without our Afghan Partner Force. This is a key fact that is commonly missed in media reporting, and certainly not captured in the Brereton Report - our partner force weren't even interviewed as a part of the Brereton inquiry... Yet they were there with us on every mission. Our Afghan Partner Force, the PRC, provided us with the local expertise - they knew right away if someone in the village was out of town, wearing clothes that indicated they were from Pakistan or if something was not right at the social or cultural level.  They were often a force multiplier to our operations - helping us to sift through the human terrain faster and gathering unique intelligence and information that supported our missions.  If you happen to see a person in the footage wearing our Multicam pattern uniforms and a helmet but not carrying a weapon, that is one of our interpreters - US contractors usually of Afghan heritage who accompanied us on all our missions also. Those poor guys often found themselves in the exact same situations and firefights as we were, but unarmed...  A few of you have been asking about all the dirt and dust blown up by the helicopters inserting or extracting us on target. Yep - we would get blasted as the helicopters would 'brown-out' with the rotor wash kicking up everything around. We would pull up our face wrap covers during these times, as you will see the guys faces covered getting on to the helicopters at the end, and always had our ballistic glasses on anyway for eye protection. We would change to our clear lenses for night time operations. Regardless, back at base there was always plenty of dirt, sand, rocks and leaves to brush off our selves and clean out of our equipment after each mission. Context: July - November 2012, I deployed to Afghanistan with my Commando Platoon, November Platoon, within the Special Operations Task Group - Rotation 18. Now 10 years, here are some snippets of our time on deployment - footage that can be shown publicly. All footage was taken from my helmet camera or others and was authorised for personal possession during our end of deployment screening process.