IT IS a pointless war with no end in sight-fought on dusty foreign soil soaked in the blood of British troops sent off to battle inadequately equipped by penny-pinching politicians back home. This is the terrifying picture of the Afghanistan conflict painted in a chilling new book by acclaimed front line reporter Stephen Grey-and it exposes the desperate plight of an army left scandalously unprotected by our government.

IN this extract from Operation Snakebite, Grey focuses on the last hours of a brave soldier who foresaw his end in a flimsy army vehicle which was not up to the job. Grey also reveals how one army chief was forced to buy the spares his men needed on his own credit card off the INTERNET before eventually resigning in disgust. And what emerges from it all is the nightmare of a war gone wrong . . .

DOOMED soldier Lee 'Jonno' Johnson tapped the Send button-and the last email he knew he would ever write to the girl he loved back home disappeared from the screen.

Then he slapped the laptop shut -and trudged off through the Afghan mud to see the army chaplain . . . so that he could prepare for his death.

Jonno's sense of foreboding that fateful night on the eve of one of the biggest showdowns of the war at Musa Qala was not just triggered by last-minute battle nerves.

DEVASTATED: His fiancée Lisa with their daughter Lilly

Instead it was the culmination of years of government neglect of our delapidated forces in foreign fields. For Sgt Johnson knew the notorious Vector vehicle he would drive into battle for the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment was a thinly-armoured death trap.

And that if it hit one of the thousands of landmines in the Helmand province badlands, he would be blown to pieces.

"Angel, I'm going at 2 in the morning. This is the biggest thing since D-Day and I am not lying. I am worried," the young dad wrote to fiancée Lisa McIntosh.

"You must understand this could be my last message to you. I really love you and will try my hardest to come home safely."

Two days earlier, poor Jonno, 33, had tried his best to make sure he would be safe and see Lisa and his children again.

But what he did-and what many other fearful soldiers had tried to do before him-pours shame on the penny-pinching politicians who sent him to die in the bloody fields of Afghanistan.

Blast

He attempted to reinforce the old army banger himself with Kevlar armour plates. But he had to throw them out again because there wasn't room left for him to get into the cab with his own helmet and kit on.

KEEN: Jonno wanted to be in battle

War reporter Stephen Grey reveals how Jonno had told him, "I don't feel safe in this" days before he died.

"Everyone 'bastardized' their Vectors. It was almost a kit car," says Grey. "Unlike the American's Humvees, they had a crucial design flaw which made the driver or front passenger particularly vulnerable to being killed if the vehicle struck a mine."

And that's just what happened to Jonno on Day Two of the battle to retake a key Taliban stronghold-the biggest British operation of the war.

His Vector got caught in sand trying to struggle up a hill outside Deh Zohr e Sofla village, south- west of Musa Qala.

As its wheels spun it struck an anti-tank mine. The blast destroyed the front of the vehicle, sliding it down the slope until it hit an Afghan ammunition truck also stuck in the mud.

And as the soldiers in the back of the Vector scrambled forward to find Jonno they were horrified by what they saw. Both his legs had been blown off. One look at his eyes told them he was gone. All he had for extra protection that day was the bible the 2 Yorks chaplain Fran Myatt had given him.

They found it under his combat armour.

"I would like you to play one song for me if it happens," Jonno had written of his death in his last email to Lisa. He wanted a Razorlight song with the lyric, 'Really wish I could be somewhere else'.

"And I want my photos played at wherever the wake is which are all on the DVD marked up 'Kajaki' and the footage I got from there which is on my camcorder which you will receive in my box.

"Please do this because I want people to understand how things were over here-and why I love the army so much and the buzz."

And now Jonno was gone. But perhaps the most tragic thing about his death was the fact that he didn't have to fight in the first place.

DEATH BLAST: Wreckage of the Vector Jonno died in

It was Jonno's love of the army-despite the lack of proper equipment and public apathy back home-that put him in that deathtrap Vector at that moment.

Just back from defending NATO positions in nearby Kajaki he could have gone off on R&R-Rest and Recuperation. But after a heart- to-heart with his brother Don, himself a lance-corporal in Afghanistan, he decided to stay and go into battle.

Don had told his brother what he wanted to hear. "It's up to you," he said. "This is the biggest battle the battalion has ever had, and if you missed out on it, you would kick yourself for ever and ever."

But the people who should kick themselves over this eager and loyal soldier's death were safe back home in Parliament when Jonno was blown apart.

The Vector design flaws and a dangerous lack of helicopters are just two examples from an appalling catalogue of chronic equipment shortages on the Afghan front line.

Author Grey reveals a secret memo sent from British forces commander Brigadier Andrew Mackay to London that warned of a "grave crisis" looming on the eve of the battle for Musa Qala . . . concerning equipment that was "tired, limited and failing regularly".

According to Brigade staff only one fifth of the total of heavy machine guns needed in Helmand were available. Only half of the required number of WMIK Land Rovers had been supplied and many that had arrived lacked crucial fittings.

British soldiers only had half the chance of an American to be equipped with night vision goggles. Many of the ageing Scimitar tanks weren't working and those that were couldn't go into reverse gear.

Hindered

A quarter of brand new Mastiff armoured vehicles were out of action for weeks because a supply of cheap suspension springs went missing and many Vectors were out of action because the wheels kept falling off.

Deputy chief of staff Major Nick Haston revealed he was regularly hindered by bureaucracy from a government back in the UK clearly not on a war footing.

FAREWELL: Comrades carry his coffin

Bending the rules, he had to buy spares with his own CREDIT CARD off the internet or source suppliers HIMSELF in the UK.

Grey reveals Haston was so furious at the lack of support given to troops out there he has since quit the army in disgust on returning from Afghanistan.

Haston told him: "I've resigned for a reason-and some of that reason is that I think there are some mediocre, high-level managers who are unwilling to admit and face up to some of the issues we've got . . . I would say that some of the people that procure (equipment) in our Ministry of Defence haven't a clue."

And because of that, into one of the most crucial engagements of the Afghan war, went Jonno and his comrades, ill-equipped but ready to die for their country.

The battle to recapture Musa Qala was seen as a crucial strategic move in Helmand. British-led forces had previously taken the town in 2006 after a ceasefire agreement with the Taliban. But in February 2007 insurgents reneged on their deal and 200 militants reclaimed it and enforced archaic Taliban laws.

Codenamed Operation Snakebite, the battle commenced with British and US air-strikes, before about 2,000 troops began an assault.

The fierce fighting on both sides lasted three hellish days before the enemy fled to the hills.

About 100 Taliban were killed and there were 40 civilian casulaties. One American died and there was only one British casualty- Jonno.

Medic Matt Hughes was among the first to see what the Vector's lack of armour had done to his comrade.

Matt's mind was already spinning with the unjust terror of this war. During the battle he'd witnessed the needless slaughter of seven innocent civilians-including two children-when American special forces and British troops had opened fire on a Toyota saloon in the mistaken belief it was being used in a suicide attack.

Now he was faced with the horror of Jonno's injuries. Months later, after receiving counselling from the army's welfare team, Hughes told reporter Grey: "I still think about it now. There are times when I can't sleep or times when I think about it so bad I get myself worked up."

What was left of Jonno was at peace as he lay in the smoking wreckage-but for his brother Don the suffering was only beginning.

DEATH TRAP: The lightly-armoured Vector

He was playing his guitar outside the operations room in Kajaki when he was told to board a chopper and get back to the 2 Yorks HQ.

As Don was packing his Bergen backpack, Sgt Andy Morrison came in. He was a big bloke but tears were streaming down his face.

"Look, I'm sorry, your kid's dead," he said.

On route to HQ, Don's Chinook helicopter was made to stop at Sangin to pick up a wounded local man who'd lied about his background but later admitted he was a Taliban fighter who'd been hurt handling a bomb that went off early.

Furious

Despite the man being an enemy fighter, British troops were doing all they could to help him.

Grey writes: "Don took a look at the wounded man covered in burns and, for some reason, it made him furious. 'The back was open and I honestly really just wanted to kick him out', he said."

Don's agony was not to end there. Because of the chronic shortage of helicopters, Jonno's body could not immediately be recovered from the wreckage of the Vector.

Don, now 33, feared the worst for his brother's remains, out there in the wilderness. He had visions of "dogs in the middle of the night".

To safeguard against that, soldiers kept guard over his body until a chopper finally arrived nearly 24 hours after the blast.

One of those was Andy Breach, who only 24 hours earlier had been listening to Jonno saying how happy he was to lead men forward in the village. "If anything happens to me," Jonno had said. "I want to die outright. Lisa would kill me if I came home in bits."

He had told Andy of his forebodings-and that he was going to see the chaplain. "I know something will happen," he had said. But Andy said his comrade didn't seem deterred from what lay ahead despite his fears over the Vector.

On Armistice Day last year, Grey visited Jonno's family in Stockton-on-Tees. The soldier had been due to marry Lisa, the mother of his two-year-old girl Lilly, when he returned from Afghanistan.

Lisa, 35, also has a son Ashley, 17, who Jonno treated like his own. She works in Tesco where senior shelf-stackers earn more than most soldiers. She told Grey she feared that no one understood the war our troops were fighting.

She said: "They don't know what they are doing or the brave things they are doing. And the sad thing is they have to die before you find out."

Last night an MoD spokesman admitted there were concerns over the Vector and said steps had been taken to reduce its role in Afghanistan since Jonno's death.

But he added: "Over the past two years we have spent over £1 billion on vehicles including Mastiff, Ridgback and Jackal. Along with the new logistic vehicles Wolfhound and Husky we are currently purchasing, this will be a total of 1,200 new vehicles for operations.

Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox retorted: "The government has never invested in or procured a full range of modern vehicles which give adequate agility and protection to our armed forces."

But all the political blustering in the world will not bring back Lisa's fiancée. Little Lilly's dad.

Now all Lisa has to treasure of her man is that last email. It ended: "I want you to get on with your life and live it to the full.

"The thought of not holding you in my arms again is awful.

"Tell my daughter and son I love them. Love you Lisa. My angel forever and a day."

OPERATION Snakebite by Stephen Grey will be published by Viking on April 2 at £16.99. To buy it for £15 (with free P&P) call 0845 271 2137 or visit notwbookshop.co.uk. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme based on Grey's war reporting- Afghanistan: Mission Impossible?-will be shown on Monday April 6, 8pm.

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