Afghanistan: ‘Don’t tell me my son died in vain’
FALLEN HERO: Gregg Stone was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2012
EXCLUSIVE
By Kevin Shoesmith
Pictures courtesy of Angie Moore
The mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan has urged ‘armchair critics’ of the conflict to spare a thought for grieving families, insisting her son did not die for nothing.
Private Gregg Stone, 20, from Atwick, near Hornsea, believed in the mission to keep the Taliban out of the corridors of power, and paid the ultimate price for it on June 3, 2012, when he was shot during a bold mission to free a kidnapped Afghan policeman.
His wife and childhood sweetheart, Sam, was expecting their first child, Grace, at the time of the tragedy. Gregg was one of 457 British forces personnel or Ministry of Defence civilians to have died since the start of operations in 2001.
Today, as the Taliban claimed victory after taking over the country’s capital Kabul, Gregg’s mother, Angie Moore, delivered her verdict on Britain’s 20-year campaign.
POIGNANT: Gregg Stone pictured at a memorial for fallen soldiers at Checkpoint Shaparak in Nahr e Saraj South, Helmand Province
She said: “If you say that it was all for nothing, you are saying my son died for nothing, and I cannot live with that. Walk a mile in my shoes, then say that to me.”
Fighters have seized the presidential palace in Kabul and the government has collapsed, with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing abroad.
Amid wide condemnation of Britain’s involvement in the conflict, Angie admitted: “I did initially think, ‘What on earth did my boy die for?’ But you can’t say that because it diminishes what has happened to all those boys and girls.”
Angie believes ordinary Afghans have benefited from Britain’s decision to back the US-led coalition sent to topple the Taliban in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.
“There are now schools,” she insisted. “Girls are being educated, although who knows what is going to happen to all that now.”
REMEMBERED: Gregg’s comrades erected a makeshift memorial to him at their remote checkpoint
Human Rights Watch report that the number of children in school at all levels increased from just 900,000 in 2001 to 9.2 million in 2017 - with 39 per cent of them girls.
Photographs survive of Gregg, who served with 3rd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, on patrol in Helmand Province, smiling beside wide-eyed children.
“Gregg sent me an email from Afghanistan saying, ‘Mum, if people are saying that we shouldn’t be there, tell them they’re talking rubbish. Tell them, we need to be there’.
“It’s important that we are here. These poor people had a hell of a life under the Taliban.”
Time has done nothing to dull the feeling of intense pain and loss that Angie feels.
Recalling the moment her daughter-in-law told her of her son’s death, Angie said: “I was at home with my other children, Kallum and Rosie-Ann. Sam wanted to ensure that I got to hear before his name was released to the media.
HAPPIER TIMES: Gregg Stone, in his Number 2s dress uniform, with his siblings
“I might have collapsed. It felt like my whole world had fallen apart.”
Just eight months after Gregg was killed, Angie’s daughter, Jennie Stone, herself a mother-of-one, was killed in a car accident on the main Hull to Bridlington road at Fraisthorpe.
“After Gregg died, I didn’t think it could possibly get any worse,” said Angie. “Then Jennie was killed. It was then that I realised that there were more bad days to come.”
In light of the double tragedy, Angie believes she is past being hurt.
“The comments I’ve seen over the past few days do not make me hurt because nothing hurts anymore,” she said. “But they do make me angry.”
Gregg was a natural entertainer, according to his mum.
“He was just so cheeky,” she said. “He could be so rude to people but they would never take offence because of the way he did it. Gregg always got away with it. We always said that he should have been on the stage.
CLOSE: Gregg Stone with his sister Jennie Stone, who was killed in a car accident in February 2013
“Everyone used to say to him, ‘You’re such a mummy’s boy’ and he would just reply, ‘Yeah I am!’ He was proud of it. He had been so looking forward to becoming a dad.
“Gregg had the biggest heart of anyone I knew but not when it came to his Haribos. We’d send a shoe box containing his favourite sweets but we later discovered that he would sit them and eat them himself – he wasn’t going to share those.”
The Taliban has now seized control of all major cities in Afghanistan. More than 600 British troops have been sent to Afghanistan to help airlift UK nationals, as well as Afghan interpreters who worked for them, as part of Operation Pitting.
Earlier this week, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News that British forces going back to Afghanistan is “not on the cards” – something welcomed by Angie.
“I fear us going out there again,” she said. “I do not want any more families going through the same heartache as mine.”
‘We must never forget the fallen’
Award-winning Hull journalist Kevin Shoesmith visited Afghanistan three times to report on the conflict. He reflects on his experiences here
Today, I’m a primary school teacher in the East Riding, teaching mainly seven and eight-year-old children – children the same age as the daughter Gregg Stone never got to meet.
Prior to 2018, I was employed as a journalist and much of my career was dominated by this conflict.
I consider it a privilege to have visited Helmand province, Afghanistan, on three occasions. Each time, I insisted on leaving the relative safety of Camp Bastion – the nerve centre of the operation – to speak with local soldiers in their remote checkpoints and patrol bases dotted around the province.
As well as gaining a good, ‘on the ground’ understanding of the conflict, the experience meant I could look family and friends of the deceased in the eye. It made me a better journalist.
I interviewed the family and friends of five soldiers from Hull and the East Riding killed in the conflict. I can remember each and every name and the unit with which they served. And I can clearly remember the tears of each family as they told of their immense pride and loss.
On November 11 last year, I stood with my children to observe a minute’s silence to Britain’s war dead. Right then, with time to think, my mind raced back to Helmand Province.
I thought about Gregg and how he must have felt charging through thick undergrowth on the banks of the Helmand River, crawling with Taliban fighters.
I thought about the hundreds of soldiers I had met in Helmand; the men and women with whom I had shared jokes over a brew made on a hexamine stove at dusty, remote checkpoints.
In that classroom, 4,500 miles away from that country that has absorbed so much British blood, I cast my mind back to the fear that raced through me when the Taliban opened up on our patrol in 2012. I could hear the young section commander, a corporal, screaming, ‘Contact front’, as rounds struck a low compound wall we sheltered behind.
One child on the front row happened to look up and noticed a tear roll down my cheek.
Those children knew nothing of the conflict that dominated my career in journalism. We located Afghanistan on a map before giving them an age-appropriate account of my time there.
I told them of Gregg, a local lad from Hornsea, who lost his life out there. I reminded them that we remember the victims of all conflicts, past and present.
I have stayed in contact with Gregg’s mum and she is pleased that he is still being talked about. Like many other families, she dreads the day that he becomes just another name on a village memorial.
As for the debate that rages around whether Britain should have got involved, I’m going to abstain. That’s a question for people like Angie and those brave lads and lasses who continue to carry the physical and mental scars of this conflict.
For now, this military campaign – as far as Britain is concerned, at least – is over, but it’s left an indelible mark in communities across our nation.