I WON’T forget flying into Afghanistan nor my first night trying to sleep in the night-time heat while soaked in sweat.

We sat in the belly of a C17 transport plane, with a ceiling the height of a two storey house, as it dived in complete darkness to avoid any incoming fire.

The howling of the engines and glare of arc lights in the darkness of Camp Bastian brought a 16-hour, three-leg journey from RAF Brize Norton to an end.

I am spending two weeks out here to see Dorset and New Forest soldiers from South West based 3 Commando Brigade.

listen to ‘stephenbailey talk about RAF Aircrew announcing arrival at Camp Bastian’ on Audioboom
RAF Aircrew announcing arrival at Camp Bastian on the C17

1 Rifles, the former Devon and Dorsets, are in the middle of their tour and are backfilled with TA men from detachments in Poole and Weymouth.

I am due to visit one of their patrol bases soon and will later spend time with the Royal Marines, who recruit strongly in Dorset – around 40 men a year through the Bournemouth office.

We touched down shortly after news broke that a soldier had been found dead outside his base during David Cameron’s visit.

I barely slept with the adrenaline rush of arriving. The next day, along with colleagues from the regional press, I had an induction on the dangers.

At one stand Lance Corporal Matt Littlewood, from East Stoke near Wareham, talked us through different Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

We tried the metal detectors – they were fantastic at even picking up a ring pull but the signals from the mainly wooden IEDs were frighteningly faint.

Corp Littlewood, 30, from the Counter IED Task Force, also mentors the Afghan army and they are the big hope for the future.

The generals and politicians seem to agree the troop surge that began last year is making great progress.

Finally there are enough men so that once an area has been cleared of insurgents, it can be held.

Then civic society can be built up, with schools, police, and hospitals, to hopefully win the people away supporting the insurgents.

But American troops will start to leave by the end of the year and race is on to get as much work done as possible, especially with the Afghan Army, before complete withdrawal in 2015.

The resources being put in certainly seem massive.

Camp Bastian is a huge sprawl of tents but everything seems to be one storey high and hidden by blast walls.

There’s dust, blazing sunshine, and stacks of chilled bottled water everywhere to replace the sweat that pours out of you in temperatures over 40C.

On one vast training ground, we saw newly arrived troops carrying out a patrol and IED drills, one slow step at a time.

The evening before I left I heard a colonel on the radio saying soldiers vomit with fear before doing that job, but still go out on patrol.

Instructor Captain Nick Stone, a former Sherborne School pupil, watched the drill and told us with understatement: “As you can see, it can be a fairly nerve wracking process.”

A lot rests on the shoulders of teenagers and young men units like 1 Rifles, fighting in a war they often feel the public little understands.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to them back in the UK but it is still hard to understand what their lives are like out here.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to see glimpses into what their experience of war is all about and whether the strategy is working.