A LIEUTENANT Colonel who grew up in Croydon has described his experiences fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Lt Col Jamie Coates, 43, who went to Whitgift School between 1981 and 1988, returned to talk about his four tours in Afghanistan since 9/11 and one in Iraq, in 2003.
"I joined the army in 1994 after leaving Whitgift, going on a gap year, going to university and joining Sandhurst," the officer told the Advertiser.
"My first tour in Afghanistan was right after 9/11, when there was a lot of combat in the initial security operation.
"We were all over the country at that point and the Taliban were withdrawing down to the south.
"There were still pockets of resistance but it was not until the reinsurgency of the Taliban in 2006 that the UK was pulled into Helmand province in the south."
Lt Col Coates said the fiercest battles were seen during his tour in 2006, when Nato forces were determined to defeat the insurgents.
At the time, he was a company commander in charge of 90 troops.
By the time he went out in 2010 and 2011, Lt Col Coates was in charge of 1,000 soldiers, commanding the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment in the northern Nad-e Ali region of Helmand.
It was there that he carried out Precision Strike, a counter-insurgency strategy.
"We needed to understand the issues in the area and we knew that if we didn't, we would get dragged into offensive operations with civilian casualties," he said.
"We spent a lot of time talking to the district governors and the people that lived there, and found out there were a specific group of people causing grievances to the local population.
"When we discovered this, we worked on a strategy to arrest them and disrupt their networks, they were the Taliban of course."
In the end, Lt Col Coates' troops secured three towns in the area with Afghan soldiers using intelligence, surveillance technology and precision missiles. In August 2013, the entire Nad-e Ali region was handed back to Afghan government control.
Although the officer said he had also been part of the initial ground campaign in Iraq in 2003. it had not been as violent as Afghanistan at the peak of the Taliban's insurgency.
"I think Afghanistan has much better opportunities than it has for decades," he said.
"In the last few years, my soldiers and I have seen a real change which has been really important to them to know progress is being delivered and they've done the right thing."
During his evening at Whitgift School, a video message from ex-pupil General Sir Peter Wall, the Chief of the General Staff and head of the British Army, was played.
"I was really touched by that as he is a fellow ex-pupil," said Lt Col Coates.
"I think we owe a lot to Whitgift and what we learnt there."
