Police officer reflects on Army service in Afghanistan

During the two-minute silence on Wednesday, British Army veteran Lee Holmes will be thinking about his fellow soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan.

Holmes is now a North Yorkshire Police officer, and reflecting on his involvement in the conflict, believes it should not entirely be viewed in a "negative light".

He was deployed to Afghanistan with the Yorkshire Regiment between 2009-10, and suffered a combat injury.

More than 450 British service personnel were killed in the war - but Holmes says he does not see their deaths as a "waste" and that military objectives were achieved.

"We were there doing our job," says the 39-year-old, who spent six years in the Army from the age of 21.

In 2010, he was five months into a tour of duty when he was injured in an improvised explosive device (IED) detonation and repatriated.

Holmes also worked as a trainer and mentor with the Afghan National Army and says it had its "challenges".

"But at the same time, we got close to quite a few of them because we were out on the ground with them."

While on patrol on during an operation in Marjah, in southern Afghanistan, an IED detonated in a wall.

He says he did not realise what had happened immediately.

"When I came to, there was a Welsh lad in a ditch to the side of me and he was shouting at me, going, 'you've been hit, you need to get down'.

"I was like, 'oh, right' and my left arm was just absolutely sodden with blood, dripping out onto the floor. I was like, 'oh dear, I have actually been hit'."

Fragments from the explosion had gone into his left bicep.

He was flown to the field hospital at Camp Bastion where he was initially treated, and then sent back to the UK, spending a week at Selly Oak hospital before being sent home to recover.

"I was in a ward with a lot of other injured soldiers, and I felt a little bit of a fraud to be honest.

"My injuries compared to some of them were just nothing."

He returned to work just two months before his unit left Afghanistan. He left the Army in 2013, but found the return to civilian life challenging.

"I could not really get the soldier mindset out of my head for a long time. It took me a long time to sort of get over that," he says.

Homes travelled and worked offshore in the oil industry before joining Cleveland Police, transferring to the North Yorkshire force two years later. He is now a sergeant.

He says his transition into the police was helped by the skills he gained in the forces.

"You have got all the discipline and you do not mess about.

"We share a lot of the same values and standards. It is a uniformed discipline service."

He says for many veterans the transition out of the armed forces into "civvy street" can be tough.

"A lot of veterans are lost when they come back. It is very tough. I know people who still struggle."

He says he does think about the impact of war on him, especially the injury to his left arm.

"It could have been a very different story.

"There was many other situations that were similar that fortunately I was not injured in, and I think about it a lot".

Looking back on his service in Afghanistan, Holmes says it was a time when he "got to be a proper soldier".

"From the moment I rocked up at the gates in Catterick for my training, it was like, you will go to Afghan. This is what we are doing, all the way until I left."

He said he is aware of the controversy which surrounds the conflict and the way it ended.

"It does seem like all that work, and then it returned to as it was, but I do not see my time out there in a negative mindset."

When it comes to remembering all those who have fallen as a result of war on Armistice Day, Holmes says he has been thinking about the "wider picture" and the "huge loss of life" on all sides and in all communities.

"There was not a household in the country that was not affected in some capacity," he says.

To honour police officers from North Yorkshire who enlisted and died while serving with the armed forces during wartime, he recently campaigned for a memorial plaque to be added at Eden Camp Modern History Museum near Malton.

Holmes said even the chief constable of the Scarborough Constabulary during World War One served in France for two years.

"They went out and served and they potentially were not thought about in the same way as a regular soldier."

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