When the British war in Afghanistan becomes just a paragraph in a War Studies textbook, the effects of decades of conflict, tribal and religious divisions, corruption and death will still hang like a fog in the air over the country where our troops spent 13 years.
The final deployment of British combat troops to Afghanistan will take place in June this year, the last phase of Operation Herrick - the UK's operation in Afghanistan - with the drawdown of combat troops due to be complete by the end of the year.
This week, Task Force Helmand, the UK's military headquarters in Afghanistan, was disbanded.
What has over a dozen years in the desert cost both us, and the people the troops leave behind? Here are the figures for the historians, but it will take many decades to assess if the war was worth it.