Next month the British army will make its biggest deployment in southern Afghanistan in more than a century.

Their ancestors packed up and left southern Afghanistan in 1881 after two disastrous wars.

The Afghan militants today don't outwardly look much different from their forefathers who picked off the British troops struggling down the snowbound passes after the first Anglo-Afghan war.

But today's British soldier is almost unrecognisable. Their leadership has been a lot more thoughtful about this new deployment than some of their predecessors.