PART ONE

By Tony Harnden

March 16, 2011

I’m still not quite sure whether Franz Kafka or Monty Python wrote the script for what happened to my pulped book, Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan, now safely reprinted and on sale this week after very minor amendments.

For those who haven’t heard, the Ministry of Defence bought the entire first print run (reportedly 24,000 copies) at a cost to the taxpayer of £151,450. An MoD official then oversaw the destruction of all the books, a process that took some seven hours, courtesy of Tiptree Book Services in Manningham, Essex ~ the place where books go to die.

According to the MoD, “at a late stage the text of the book was found to contain information that could damage national security and put at risk the lives of members of the Armed Forces”.

Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that the “late stage” was when the book had been printed, after being OKed by the MoD following a four-month review, and deconstruct this statement.

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that wouldn’t they. The MoD’s style is to cover up its own ineptitude and deceit (not a word I use lightly) by hiding behind “national security” and a risk to “the lives of members of the Armed Forces”. So, move along here please, nothing to see, just protecting our country and service personnel.

The truth is that the MoD was really motivated by politics and by embarrassment.

Politics in that it wanted to avoid a certain Nato ally pulling out of Helmand.

Embarrassment that the book reveals what happens to soldiers when there are not enough helicopters to keep troops off IED-infested roads.

Embarrassment that the results of the MOD procurement system failing to supply the right counter-IED equipment (which other nations were able to buy off the shelf) are shown.

Embarrassment that the book details how Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, one of the finest Army officers of his generation, lacked the equipment and manpower to do the job the Welsh Guards had been told to do and believed that British strategy was flawed and Operation Panther’s Claw was misconceived.

Right at the end of the tortuous negotiations (which I describe in more detail in this Spectator piece) about how the MoD would get out of the hole it had dug itself into, the Ministry’s lawyers emailed to us a 48-page document detailing wholesale changes.

Quercus, my publisher, rejected it outright. Essentially, it was a demand for the heart of the book to be ripped out. If we had succumbed, it would have left an airbrushed account that let the MoD off the hook.

At this point, the MoD was cynically playing the “relatives card”, what it apparently sees as the third ace in its pack, after “national security” and risk to “the lives of members of the Armed Forces”. As part of this, a government minister from the Nato ally that the MOD was coordinating with accused me and Quercus’s chairman of “morally unacceptable” behaviour in detailing how men died.

Certainly, the feelings of the relatives of those who died are a key consideration. I agonised over how much detail to include and some things I decided to leave out. But when the MoD proposes to delete whole passages about what happens when an IED explodes underneath men in vehicles that are not properly armoured, one suspects another agenda might be at work.

I have no doubt that some relatives of those who died will be deeply disturbed by what they read in Dead Men Risen. Certainly, the account of the death of Rupert Thorneloe (a friend of mine), serialised in Saturday’s Telegraph, was very harrowing.

But the reaction from some of those who have already read distressing passages about a person they loved dying horribly indicates that they are rather more eager than the MoD to have the facts laid out.

I won’t use their names but two relatives emailed me this weekend. The first one said:

Your book is something which I will treasure as long as I live and I will read it again and again.

The second told me:

I hope that pressure from MoD has not made you tone down descriptions of the deaths of these servicemen.

Being informed that “he had not suffered too much…one listens with disbelief and in quiet resignation”. The relative detected that what had happened to a dying soldier was “not thought a proper topic for discussion”, perhaps because too much knowledge might alter views about the war.

This second relative added:

I therefore welcome descriptions of what happens when a man is killed on the battlefield, as I read today in your account of Lt Col Thorneloe.

Readers can rest assured that the changes I agreed to amounted to about 50 words of almost no consequence in a 160,000-word, 610-page book. The reality of war is there. And as Major (Retd) John Thorneloe, 88, Lt Col Thorneloe’s father, said recently:

Too bad if it makes uncomfortable reading for the Ministry of Defence and Her Majesty’s Government.

In the spirit of Maj Thorneloe’s words, from tomorrow I’ll post an example each day of a specific thing that the MoD did not want you to read but does in fact appear in the book.

Dead Men Risen, published by Quercus Publishing at £18.99 RRP, is available from Telegraph Books at £14.99 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk.

The MoD’s style is to cover up its own ineptitude and deceit (not a word I use lightly) by hiding behind “national security” and a risk to “the lives of members of the Armed Forces”. So, move along here please, nothing to see, just protecting our country and service personnel.

Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, killed by an IED in Afghanistan, was a friend of the book's author Toby Harnden. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

PART TWO

EVERY COPY OF AFGHANISTAN WAR BOOK BOUGHT AND PULPED BY MOD

New edition of Dead Men Risen with sections removed to be published after military claims book of memos could harm national security

The entire print run of a highly critical and embarrassing account of Britain's role in southern Afghanistan has been bought and pulped by the Ministry of Defence at a cost of more than £150,000.

A new edition, with some 50 words taken out, will be published this week despite continued opposition from within the ministry, officials said on Monday.

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan, by Toby Harnden, says Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the most senior soldier killed in war since the Falklands, lacked adequate equipment ~ including anti-IED protection ~ and sufficient manpower to do the job his soldiers were asked to do.

Thorneloe, a family friend of the author and commander of 1st Welsh Guards, was killed on 1 July 2009. The book draws from memos he sent to his commanders, including criticism of the British strategy.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the book, which includes accounts of how civilians were killed by British forces. It describes a farmer being killed by a Javelin missile at night, how seven civilians, including six children, were killed by a 500lb bomb ~ an incident described by the Guardian from classified US material passed to WikiLeaks ~ and how eight civilians, including five children, were killed by a 500lb bomb fired by a French Mirage plane called in by British troops.

The book describes how in the summer of 2009 a British officer was mentoring Afghan troops who captured a six-man Taliban IED team. He later asked an Afghan sergeant major to see the prisoners so they could be tested for explosive residue, and charged, and processed.

The Afghan soldiers described how three of the prisoners were strangled to death as the others watched. The soldiers said the remaining three were shot in both kneecaps and ordered to crawl back to their villages to tell people what would happen to them if they laid IEDs.

British military police are understood to have carried out an inquiry into the incident but concluded there was insufficient evidence to take the matter further.

Harnden said the British officer, Major Rob Gallimore, had backed up the description of the incident involving the captured Afghans.

An MoD spokesman said:

"The MoD has bought the entire first print run of the book. This action was taken because at a late stage the text of the book was found to contain information that could damage national security and put at risk the lives of members of the armed forces."

He added:

"Faced with the stark choice between compromising the security of members of the armed forces and their families and making payment to the publisher for amendments to a book which had already been printed, MoD had little option but to negotiate a settlement."

Dead Men Risen: What MoD doesn't want you to read #1

Dead Men Risen: What MoD doesn't want you to read #2