The Sunday Times Magazine - UK (2021-12-19)

Four months on, the defence secretary

still feels it: “I think we’ve let people down.

People lost their lives for a better cause and

at the last minute we left.”

Britain left behind 311 people on the

government’s list of those who had helped

the UK during the conflict. Exfiltrations

have continued. There are now thought to

be about 190 people left in the country.

I join Wallace in early December to fly

to Merville Barracks in Colchester, home

of 16 Air Assault Brigade, to meet members

of the Parachute Regiment who defended

Kabul airport as the UK successfully

evacuated more than 15,000 Afghan

nationals and their families in a fortnight.

He arrives at the departure point, the

Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) in

central London, with a couple of minutes to

spare. He’s wearing what look like military

issue boots and practical blue trousers.

His army-green Beretta jacket is a world

away from some of his predecessors who

rammed a parka awkwardly over a suit.

Wallace is a cheery barrel of a man, bald

and bustling; while I’m fumbling with my

helmet and seatbelts he happily leaps

aboard the Puma helicopter and settles in

for a chat with his military assistant.

Our first stop is Stanford Training Area,

the army’s 30,000-acre site near Thetford

in Norfolk, where we join members of

he plans to deploy more troops in potential
flashpoints: “No one wants to sit on their
arse in Thetford,” he says.
He tells me later: “We have to be prepared
as a government for greater risk in our
deployments.” He recently sent a contingent
of engineers to Poland. A deployment in
Mali, where soldiers are helping Nato
combat the insurgent group al-Shabbab,
is already “dangerous”. “I think we are in a
place where we need to show we are ready
and we can be present in the world, and in
doing so make our adversaries think twice.”
Wallace’s informal approach means the
paras, in turn, feel able to complain about
the need for more night-vision goggles and
better helmets and body armour. “We call
it ‘ground truth’ in the forces,” he says.
“ ‘What is the bloody ground truth?’ ” He
tells the paras they are better trained than
soldiers “in my day” and makes the case that
most kit is much better. “My first army boots
had soles made of reconstituted cardboard.”
Wallace’s day was the 1990s. Now 51,
he graduated from Sandhurst in 1991. In
seven years with the Scots Guards he
rose to the rank of captain, with tours in
Germany, Cyprus, Belize and two in
Northern Ireland. In 1992 he was
mentioned in dispatches after the patrol he
was commanding captured an entire IRA
TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, GETTY IMAGES, PA unit attempting to carry out a bomb

Above: with Boris Johnson at a VJ Day

service in Staffordshire, August 2000. Top:

joining 3 Para on an exercise in a Chinook

3 Para in a Chinook for a mock raid to clear

a building of enemy combatants. Wallace

is considerably less out of breath than I am

as we run with the paras to the building,

where they throw stun grenades and enter

with the defence secretary in their midst.

The soldiers seem at ease with him, and

he with them. One officer remarks: “It’s a

lot easier when you don’t waste time having

to explain what a battalion is.” Wallace gives

the paras a pep talk, praising them as the

“tip of the spear” — the rapid reaction force

that is first into a combat zone. He promises

the squaddies they will have ample

opportunity for action over the next year, as

The Sunday Times Magazine • 21