A year ago this week, five soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Rifles were killed and another five injured in Sangin, in a single bloody incident that brought home to many the dangers that UK troops faced in the area.
Lucy Aldridge, whose son William, 18, died that day trying to rescue colleagues in what turned out to be a "daisy chain" IED explosion, told the Guardian she believed that pulling UK troops out of Sangin was "too little too late".
Aldridge, from Bromyard, Herefordshire, said: "Come Saturday it will be the first anniversary of my son's death and, in fact, there's been more loss of life this year than last year. So many of them have been killed by IEDs. Lessons have not been learned by previous deaths and previous situations and I'm shocked that things haven't changed."
She said: "The 10th July was the catalyst for the grave concern about the number of lives lost in Sangin, about the number of IEDs laid. The day my son died there were 10 men removed from the same platoon. Following the incident they obviously struggled and had to draft other men in.
"There was no way they could keep the situation under control. There was not enough equipment, not enough troops to be able to safety patrol the area. There is also a lack of bomb disposal experts. There were no bomb disposal experts out on patrol when my son was on patrol. They were left out on a limb with very little back-up. They were sitting targets.
"Then you get an incident like the one that killed my son. Morale was low and a lot of the guys in his regiment were severely traumatised by what they had seen. I don't think anyone who has been sent out to the Sangin area has emerged unscathed physically or mentally."
Deployed three days after his 18th birthday, her son became the youngest soldier to die in Afghanistan and one of three teenagers to die that day.
Aldridge said: "At William's inquest, it came up that in previous tours there was not the threat there is now. So for me pulling the troops put of Sangin is too little too late. Too late for the guys who have lost their lives to IEDs. This is something that should have been picked up a year ago ... I've always been decidedly disillusioned that lessons have not been learned earlier, that more hasn't been done to analyse previous incidents. We've lost a greater number of men and some of those deaths have been avoidable."
Aldridge has launched the William Aldridge Foundation in her son's memory.