Sandbag wall, Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2011

Digital photograph by Sergeant Rupert Frere, Royal Logistic Corps, 2011.

British bases and outposts in Afghanistan were often vulnerable to mortar and rocket attacks by Taleban insurgents. Traditional sandbag defences were used along with concrete blast walls and the ubiquitous Hesco defence system which, harking back to seventeenth and eighteenth century field defences, utilised earth filled baskets, or gabions.

From a collection of digital photographs associated with Operation HERRICK, Afghanistan, compiled by Sergeant Rupert Frere, Royal Logistic Corps.