At its further extreme, I met a Royal Marine Captain who always refused to run under fire, to the abject terror of his radio operator. Captain Martin offered a more poignant example when he spoke of the death of one of his men in 2006. The man's wounds were horrific. It appeared that a bullet had entered his leg and come out through his eye. In the wake of the shooting, as they patrolled back across the desert, Martin started vomiting. Each time he made the driver stop his vehicle so that he could walk away and throw up out of sight of his men. Appearances, he said, were all-important.

There is no escaping death as a soldier in Helmand. The small print has not changed and at the lower end of the command chain the soldiers' traditional contract with death, so necessary to bind them to the concept of military honour, remains intact. Without it, troops prepared to kill but not to die become simple killers, stripped of soldierly status. It remains the junior commander's task to inspire the soldier to reaccept these terms in every action they take.

Under fire, the fulcrum between a soldier’s instinctive reaction and individual decision is that at which he turns to his commander for a reaffirmation of this deal. It is a unique moment that is described with remarkably few variations by junior commanders.

“You are under contact from guys in several positions,” explained Sgt Daniel Carter, aged 28, 5 Scots, of the average Helmand fire fight. “Their fire is accurate. The rounds are pinging around your feet. There’s a million things on your brain. Do I peel out now or stay, do I try to get around and assault from another angle? Those few minutes feel like hours, they go on for ever and ever… and you see your subordinates looking at you with puppy-dog eyes, waiting for you to make that decision.”