'Ground truth' is a term used by soldiers. It means what is really happening in a situation, rather than how it is perceived from afar. It is, aptly, the title of Patrick Bishop's book about 3 Para's redeployment to Afghanistan in 2008.
I bought a copy as holiday reading back in February. Since then, whenever Afghanistan is mentioned in the news, I am reminded of the interviews with the soldiers of 16 Air Assault Brigade on which the account is based.
This week's conference in Afghanistan, David Cameron's meeting in Washington with President Obama and the announcement that troops could start pulling out early next year brought it all back.
I wonder when anyone will bother to ask the solders what they think, because journalists rarely do.
Patrick Bishop (and BBC Newsnight's Mark Urban) are exceptions. Thanks to their journalism, the views and experiences of the rank and file are starting to be aired. But they are in a minority.
Why is this? Could it be a matter of secrecy?
Unlikely, since the soldiers who contributed to Bishop's book appear to have done so candidly and freely. Some names were changed or omitted to protect operational security, but it seems Bishop went about his journalism pretty much unfettered.
Ground Truth reminds us that the British Army is a professional organisation. The men and women who are in it choose to be there. They are intelligent individuals whose views deserve to be heard.
Moreover, they are in Afghanistan on a mission. The conditions are arduous. They risk death and serious injury daily, but they are there to do a job and they want to get it done.
At the start of the deployment to Afghanistan, it was all about fighting. Units such as 3 Para were good at that and found it rewarding. But the fighting had a purpose: it was - and still is - necessary to restore stability and allow reconstruction to take place. Bishop writes:
"They were prepared to endure the risk because most of them had faith in the value of the mission.
They believed that fighting a war thousands of miles from home brought a greater measure of security to their family and friends back in Britain. 'If what I'm doing reduces the number of heroin overdoses in the world then it has to be worth it without a doubt,' said one sergeant."
The mistake many journalists make is that, as civilians writing for a civilian audience, they miss the 'ground truth'. As Bishop puts it:
"Seen through civilian eyes the Afghanistan mission seems daunting, uninspiring, thankless. Soldiers see it differently. The daunting, the uninspiring and the thankless, they say, is 'what we do'."
'Thankless' manifests itself in various ways if you're a soldier in Afghanistan.
You are up against more than the insurgency. You face the "cynicism and venality of the Karzai administration". You know that, while you grapple with the tentacles of the beast, "the brain and vital organs [lie] in Pakistan ... across the border and beyond British control".
When you have an achievement to celebrate, this too is under-reported. Take the installation of a turbine at the Kajaki dam hydroelectric power station. This operation involved delivering more than 200 tonnes of components across 100km of rocky track through the Sangin valley. The convoy was menaced by roadside bombs and came under direct - and indirect - fire.
The generator had to be encased in armour plate before they set off. Even so, one direct hit from a rocket would have rendered it useless.
The closer they got to their destination, the more intense the resistance became. But they did it and the turbine now produces electricity for an estimated 1.8 million Afghans.
How much coverage did this success attract?
Hardly any, because, among other things, it was overshadowed by the row at Westminster over helicopters. On the day, this was deemed more newsworthy than one of the biggest feats of logistics undertaken by the British Army.
Did editors assume that the Kajaki dam convoy was less interesting? Did they think its significance would be too difficult for their audiences/readership to appreciate? Were there simply no decent pictures? Was it just bad luck?
Perhaps their priorities betray the trap Bishop says civilians fall into when they report Afghanistan:
"The truth that civilians overlooked on the occasions when they thought about what the Army was doing in Afghanistan," he maintains, "was that the soldiers were pursuing their own personal goals as hard as they were any task set for them by politicians ...
... Most of the soldiers seemed to believe the overall strategy was the right one and their struggle and sacrifices were worthwhile. The main frustration was that there were not enough of them to do their job effectively."
The final word goes to a Territorial Army reservist who had put his career as a lawyer in Edinburgh on hold to go to Afghanistan as a platoon commander. He told Patrick Bishop he felt "frustrated when I hear people say we support the troops but we don't support the war ... I think that just undermines the efforts of the blokes and I think it's contradictory."
Patrick Bishop began his career covering the British re-capture of the Falklands in 1982 and has reported from the frontline of most subsequent conflicts, mainly for the Daily Telegraph. He was the newspaper's correspondent in the Middle East and Paris and served as its foreign editor from 1995 to 1997.
