Ross Kemp and his BAFTA-winning documentary team experience life on the front line, providing an unprecedented insight into the heat of a war zone in this landmark five-part documentary.

Ross Kemp In Afghanistan Episode ONE
In the first episode, Ross prepares for deployment and joins up with 1 Royal Anglian as they train during a cold British winter on Salisbury Plain. They're training for what they will face in Afghanistan, which includes convoy protection and deploying from Chinook helicopters. During one exercise, Ross' group is attacked and Ross and several others are told that they have been 'killed' by the enemy.
It's a sobering thought.
Three months later Ross will be playing this scenario for real.

Ross comments on the making of these programmes; "Conditions in Afghanistan are intolerable. The heat is stifling and there's the constant threat of snipers, RPG attacks and land mines. During one engagement between B Company and the Taliban we were pinned down by enemy fire in open ground; bullets fizzed by inches from our heads, hitting the ground on either side of us. It was the most frightening experience of my life. I’ve never hugged the ground as tightly as I did when that happened. It's definitely the closest I have ever come to dying. I was so scared."

Kemp points out that "we did not go to make a so-called traditional documentary. What we tried to show was what the ordinary soldiers are facing, what they are going through. I have seen incredible bravery from very young guys, the young generation that people write off. Look what they are doing in Helmand, and they are doing it for such appallingly low pay."

Kemp's father served in the army for four years and his regiment was amalgamated with others to form the Royal Anglians, the troops he was with in Afghanistan. "I know the areas they came from, so, yeah, I had an affinity with them. Others in public services – nurses, teachers, the police – have a voice. These guys don't and I hope I can help. We tried to show the reality they are facing on the ground."

The footage, shot with high-definition cameras, is striking and gritty and conveys well the sense of isolation and silence punctured by prolonged bursts of sudden ferocious violence, the fear and excitement, one experiences in the type of combat being undertaken by British forces in Afghanistan. The scenes of ambushes and scrambling under fire, the confusion followed by sheer relief at survival, often expressed by cathartic streams of swearing by Kemp, his crew and the soldiers around them would also be very familiar to anyone who had been there.

Having access to the troops over a prolonged period of time allows the series to show the changes which take place to young soldiers after deployment. Kemp is shocked to find that one trooper, Josh Hill, a fresh-faced 18-year-old back in England seemed to have aged five years when he runs in to him again at Kandahar airbase a few months later. This is very real and something one has seen repeatedly among soldiers, British and American, in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the first taste of combat. They become physically leaner, weather-beaten, introspective with the "thousand yard stare" of people who have seen an awful lot of not very nice things in a very short time. John Conroy, the producer and director of the series, had worked with Kemp on his Gangs programmes, which also used high-definition cameras to impressive dramatic effect. "We had long discussions about the HD cameras. The advantages are pictures of amazing sharpness, how all the awful things of war are caught in a kind of surreal colour, war in all its terrible detail. There was, of course, a price to pay for this."

HD cameras area about four times heavier than the Z-I cameras which are mostly used in this type of filming and more than 20 times more expensive, costing up to £100,000 each. Seeking that high-calibre of footage meant that the crew, including Kemp, had to carry an awful lot of heavy loads on top of their body armour and bandoliers of water bottles needed in the heat of the Afghan deep south.

To prepare themselves they spent weeks alongside the Royal Anglians carrying out their pre-deployment training at Salisbury Plain. They learned to fire SA 80 rifles and .50 calibre machine guns. This is unusual, the British military is not known give firearms training to embedded media.
"This really isn't hard man Ross Kemp playing at soldiers, it really isn't," says the presenter. "What happened was that the CO insisted that we must be able to defend ourselves in an emergency situation. That was one of the conditions of us being allowed to go with the troops."

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