Stalked by a suicide bomber – life as the youngest ever female war artist

Charlie Calder-Potts had always been adventurous. After falling in love with the Middle East in her twenties as she travelled through Lebanon and Syria, she was desperate to tick Afghanistan off her list. 

‘I’d read about it and wanted to explore the mountainous area. I was also fascinated by the way throughout history we’ve attempted and failed to take control of the region,’ Charlie tells Metro.

A successful artist in London, she came up with a novel way to achieve her dream by writing to as many different Army regiments as she could find, asking to be embedded with the British troops to experience the country on the ground, as a war artist. The role would see her documenting people, places and experiences connected to conflict – rather than the fighting – through a range of media.  

‘I didn’t know anyone in the army at the time and had never experienced war. So I thought becoming a war artist would provide insight. At 26, I was young enough to be relatively ignorant and probably a bit braver than I would be now,’ Charlie, now 40, adds.

When she got a letter from the 9th/12th Royal Lancers with an invitation to bring her on a tour, Charlie was over the moon – and also ‘a little frightened’.

When she told her parents of the plan, she admits they ‘were not delighted’ that she took on the mission, but with adventurous siblings and a background of living all over the world, they couldn’t help but be supportive as Charlie took on the role of the youngest ever female war artist commissioned by the British Army.

After a training camp in Dorset and her first ride in a Chinook helicopter, Charlie packed her camera and sketchbooks and flew with the British Army in 2013 to Camp Bastion, Lashkargah, the main hub for British operations during the Afghanistan conflict.

‘It was very surreal – the camp was the size of Reading and Take That had performed there the week before I went,’ remembers Charlie. ‘It was very weird because there was a Costa Coffee and you would get tokens to spend there. But it was surrounded with wire and felt like a prison in a lot of ways. You’re desperate to get out, but after a couple of days, you’re desperate to get back in to feel that security and safety again.’

Just as Charlie arrived, the Government announced that British troops were being withdrawn from Afghanistan, meaning many of the soldiers were just waiting to go home.

‘As well as those being out on the front line there were also people whose jobs were to remain in Camp Bastion for the entirety of their six month tour counting out ammo boxes with no reprieve. So there was a sense of danger, but also so much boredom,’ she explains.

After going through mine detection training, Charlie was able to visit bases around the region, Kabul and the mountains beyond, where she would spend time observing and taking photographs.

Looking back, she appreciated the chance to see the beauty of the region on helicopter trips.

‘It was very hard to marry up what was happening when you’re watching a beautiful sunset from an observer tower, surrounded by barbed wire and with the sound of gunfire in the distance,’ she says.

’Outside of the camp, it was like looking at everything through a screen – either from the other side of barbed wire or from a bulletproof vehicle window.’

One image Charlie captured was of a man holding a bunch of helium balloons that soared over the landscape: ‘It provided a slight feeling of hope, which we know now in hindsight was overly optimistic. ‘It was taken from behind barbed wire yet it was such a normal thing in a wartime environment. It’s that contrast.

‘You’re always reminded that these are normal people trying to live their lives and that everybody should get the chance to do that.’ 

She also salvaged metal from army vehicles and ammunition casing and etched photography on top combined with oil painting. ‘I was literally working on a piece of history, documenting people who were part of that,’ Charlie explains.

To deal with the heat, Charlie would wear thin clothing in layers and can still remember the exhaustion she felt from the heat, along with the dust and the weight of the body armour.

‘It was so heavy – I don’t know how soldiers managed with their ammunition and everything else on their backs,’ she says.

At night in camp, she would sleep in the women’s quarters – sometimes alone – in a sleeping bag on a camp bed in a tent. But there weren’t always separate facilities, so she had to put up a message to warn people when she was washing. 

One one base, Charlie found herself the only woman out of around 100 men, but says she always felt so well-looked after. ‘People were grateful for the opportunity to share their experiences. I made some good friends out there. Everyone just wanted to talk to me about their girlfriends and their wives and how much they miss their kids.’ 

She saw people counting down the days until they could be reunited with their family, and the joy with which they received care packages from home full of Mars Bars and jars of Marmite.

‘Politically, I hadn’t agreed with the UK being in Afghanistan but I came away with real respect for the people out there.You can never understand a situation until you’re in it,’ she explains.  ‘They were living away from their families, potentially losing their life, losing their limbs, risking PTSD. And I had a huge amount of respect for how they looked after each other and really tried to protect each other.’

Charlie’s most terrifying encounter didn’t occur until she was getting ready to come home, traveling with army personnel in a four-by-four from the capital back to Helmand towards the end of her month-long tour. 

‘Everybody was deathly silent in the car. And that was not normal. I could tell something was up, but I didn’t know what was going on. It was a quiet, calm anxiety. No-one was panicked – it was just – stillness,’ she remembers. 

‘When I got to the airport, they told me they had intercepted Taliban radio to find out a suicide bomber was aiming for our convoy vehicles. I was made very aware of the dangers before I went out there, but at the same time, I was pleased I didn’t know exactly what was going on when it was happening. That journey was only half an hour but it felt like forever.’

While that was to be Charlie’s only tour as a war artist, she has spent a career visiting conflict zones in Iraq and Syria, collaborating with the British Arts Council in Iran and working in refugee camps, but her life is quite different now. 

Having had two children, she is less likely to be found in Europe than in her local Herefordshire woodland, foraging from plants and seeds from which to make paint.

She has also recented worked with War Child in the Sound & Vision exhibition, providing work inspired by the lyrics of Kate Bush.

Now, she is now documenting more peaceful work, collecting soil, rock and oak apple galls from which she can make pigment in the same way as ancient artists from Mesopotamia.

It is part of a new project based on medieval medical manuscript called the Tacuinum sanitatis – a handbook on health and well-being written in the 11th century in Baghdad in Arabic and later translated into Latin and distributed around Europe. 

‘I have a huge love for traditional techniques and the way they link us together. I’ve followed the silk road through my career, and I love how many ideas have been shared because of trade.

‘The Tacuinum sanitatis says the most important things to stay well are herbal remedies, breathing, exercise and mental health. Just like they are today. I love that these ideas bring us all together in a modern setting and speak to us about the essence of being human.’

You can donate to War Child, who support children caught in conflict zones around the world, at warchild.org.uk