In the spring of 2012, David Cameron was prime minister and British troops were still fighting in Afghanistan under the stewardship of the then defence secretary, Philip Hammond.
Before deploying, soldiers from the UK would be flown 3,000 miles south-west of Helmand province, to Kenya, for hot weather training. They would train at Batuk, the British army base that still operates today, close to Nanyuki, a poor market town in the east of the country.
