Civilians can find it difficult to relate to...

Civilians can find it difficult to relate to soldiers who have seen combat, who have pointed and a fired a gun at their predetermined enemy, who have witnessed their mates killed or returned changed. Photographer, journalist, and filmmaker Lalage Snow has photographed and interviewed soldiers in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland before deployment, three months into their service, and days after their return home for a stunning new photo essay in The Telegraph. As you see their faces weathered, hardened, shaken, you can literally read the psychological toil of war. It gets particularly heartbreaking when a teenager who eagerly joined the force as a kid talks of crying every night. It gets you thinking about the war, its alleged purpose and its realities. It’s a heavy insight.

Private Chris MacGregor, 24

11th March, Edinburgh: “Obviously I’ll miss family but other than that I am going to miss my dogs more than anything. They are my de-stressers and keep me sane. I think I’ll miss TV too though. I try not to think about the worst case scenario.”

19th June, Compound 19, Nad Ali, after an IED incident: “Most people get used to being away from home but I find it hard. It’s your fear that keeps you alive here. But I believe if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and theres nothing you can do about it. If the big man upstairs could do anything, there’d be no dead soldiers. They’d all be alive. It still hurts when you hear about a soldier dying. You think about what their families are going through. You ask what they died for and what we are achieving here. I am not sure any more. That Afghan soldier losing his legs just now… I don’t know….”

28th August, Edinburgh, after being evacuated due to sustained knee injury from Iraq: “My legs just gave up. I think it was the weight – 135 pounds or something. I just had to accept, my body was telling me to give up as I had pushed it. I was telling it to go, it was telling me to stop. When squaddies come back they still have a lot of adrenaline and anger in them. I had to have anger management after Iraq. If I get like that now, I just go for a walk with the dogs. It is the best way to deal with it, instead of being all tense and ready to snap at folk. The first thing I did when I came back, appart from kissing and cuddling the misses and my bairn, was go for a massive walk with the dogs. I walked for miles and miles not caring where I stepped.”