There had been little activity for a few days and, personally, I had all but forgotten the sensation of coming under fire as we had climbed The Travellator on 28th May. As I said in part 1 of this story, we simply didn’t expect casualties on routine patrols in our safe bubble; several of them went out each day without mishap.

The small area around the three bases was considered our ‘safe bubble’. The roads were relentlessly patrolled and were watched over by sophisticated surveillance assets mounted on a blimp that floated high above the patrol base. We believed it was almost impossible for insurgents to move undetected within the bubble.

In essence, the tourniquet is a very simple bit of kit. It is simply a strip of material tied very tightly around a limb to stop bleeding. But, despite its simplicity, the history of the tourniquet is one of fierce debate and lives lost.

Over the centuries one simple principle has remained: Get the casualty off the battlefield and into the hands of a surgeon as fast as possible.

Unable to compete with the coalition in conventional warfare, the Taliban soon became an insurgency, moving covertly amongst the Afghan population and employing guerrilla tactics. Nowhere was this more so than in Helmand Province, where British forces were most active, as Helmand was the historic heartland of the Taliban movement.

2012.

After ten years of fighting, the British Army and its allies are still locked in a deadly struggle against Taliban forces in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Captain Alec Collard is a newly trained army doctor who is bored by the safe, middle-class existence of home. He believes he will find adventure and purpose on the front line of the conflict.

Humans are very unusual amongst animals in that female humans have an extended period of life after the end of fertility. Average life expectancy in the UK is now around 81 so, as menopause most often occurs around the age of 50, many women spend about a third of their lives post menopause.

The notion of a defendant being tried by a jury or his or her peers is a cornerstone of our legal system and has been for centuries. We see some signs of this kind of justice right back to Saxon times, and then more recognisably after the arrival of the Normans.

Herman Boerhaave was a 18th Century Dutch physician of European renown. He is known as the ‘father of physiology’ and his contributions to medicine were legion. His name lives on in the ‘Boerhaave Syndrome’ which is the rupture of the oesophagus after forceful vomiting which he described in 1724 when the Dutch admiral Baron Jan van Wassenaer died of the condition after a particularly gluttonous feast.

Mechanical clocks were first seen in Europe in the 14th Century and, when these first clocks were being made, someone had to decide which way the hands would turn.