Mirror photographer Phil Coburn was blown up with a US convoy in Afghanistan in 2010. Here, he gives his thoughts on Donald Trump’s insult to our forces who served in the Afghan conflict
Donald Trump ‘s remarks are beneath contempt.
But he has a history of insulting not only the British but his own military, and he has no grasp on morality.
He repeated his complaint that the US had been treated “unfairly” by Nato despite the US being the only country ever to seek help under Article 5 of the Nato treaty.
He said of the other nations: “They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front lines.”
Yet so many UK personnel died in the conflict.
Some 405 British servicemen and women lost their lives due to hostile action during the campaign in Afghanistan.
Last year JD Vance made a similar remark about the UK as ‘some random country’ that ‘had not fought a war in 30 or 40 years’. I am still in contact with some of the American soldiers who I worked with before I was blown up.
I think many will be equally appalled and embarrassed by Trump’s remarks. In Afghanistan, they fought alongside Dutch Apache pilots; the Danes lost more lives per capita than the US.
Trump’s remarks are an insult to him, and so many like him. It is ignorant to say there was no contribution. When I lost my legs below the knee, I was sitting across from Rupert Hamer, the Sunday Mirror reporter who died. I was the only person with knees in my ward when I got back for treatment at Birmingham’s Selly Oak hospital in 2010.
There was a kid of 19 or 20 next to me who lost his legs well up into his thigh, they found the eyelets of his boots in his stomach during surgery.
Another lad would say to his mother ‘please let me die, please let me die’. I will never forget that.
The surgeon in Selly Oak, Mr Sargent, hated to hear news of a death in Afghanistan; it meant not just another life lost, but others horrifically injured in the same blast, and he knew they would be on their way in for treatment.
I saw the nine-year-old daughter of a man who had lost both his legs and a hand, the haunted look on her face as she met her dad. Trump forgets all the daughters like her, and the sons, mothers and fathers of the UK soldiers who we lost in Afghanistan and Iraq.
