HMForces.co.uk

THE Army training camp at Pirbright in Surrey sits in lush countryside, trees towering over its quietly ordered barrack blocks and parade grounds. In a light drizzle, recruits in smart new uniforms march up and down in drill formations, arms swinging with precision.

The surroundings are a long way from the heat and dust of Afghanistan. Yet within a year, many of these young soldiers could be risking life and limb.

Last month was the blackest since the conflict began in October 2001, with, at one point, an average of almost one death a day. Many more troops return with disabling injuries. Among the youngest of the current recruits at Pirbright is Daniel Murphy, who turned 17 in May. This time last year he had just left school in Luton and was waiting for his GCSE results; today, he is four weeks into a training course that will prepare him for possible action against the Taliban.

Asked how he feels about serving in Afghanistan, Recruit Murphy admits: “It scares me a bit. But it is something you have to do as a soldier, you have to go to war. It is what you have been trained for.”

With poor GCSE results, Murphy saw joining up as a good career move. He hopes to enter the Royal Corps of Signals and qualify as an HGV driver. “My dad thinks it is a good move. Mum is still worried, but I keep telling her it will be all right.”

Murphy shows us his home for 14 weeks of basic training: a dormitory shared with about a dozen other recruits, many several years older. In another barracks room, recruits are just over halfway through their 14 weeks.

As with Murphy, 22-year-old Aaron Montenegro, from Southgate, saw Army life as a way out of a career dead end: "After school I qualified as a grade-II electrician and couldn’t get a job, so I was working part-time in Ladbrokes. And I realised I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I signed up.‘’ Army life has been a revelation: "I’m so happy I feel I’ve a big smile on my face all the while now. I’ll be here for as long as they will have me, 22 years or longer."

The harsh realities of Army life were something a third recruit, Chris Murray, 22, grew up with. His father, grandfather and other relatives served; he grew up in Colchester, an Army town. “I always knew that was what I would do. There’s a picture of me in an Army beret, aged three,” said Murray. After school he went travelling, then signed up. He adds: “I’m looking forward to it, fighting the enemy. These are good lads doing a job.”

It is, he says, a worthwhile cause, with a “horrible” enemy. A proper conflict, he suggests, unlike the one his father fought in Northern Ireland. Until recently, there were about three applicants for every one of the 14,000 or so who enter basic Army training each year, with no sign of falling.

The reality of current campaigns is not ignored at Pirbright. Lt-Col Tim Hill, commanding officer of one of the two training regiments there, said: “There are discussions, lessons, briefings. And we need to balance what they read in the press with the benefits of the operation for the future of the country.”

Lt-Col Hill insists that casualties do not act as a deterrent to recruits: “They all look forward to serving. If they don’t get on an operation, they would say they felt cheated.”

‘I always knew that was what I would do… I’m looking forward to it, fighting the enemy’.

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