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A six month tour in Afghanistan takes its toll on a regiment. That is not just measured in the obvious ways - of wounds and death - but talking to the soldiers and families of the 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment (the Green Howards) over the past eight months it is clear that the stresses of a deployment in Helmand run deep

At Patrol Base Blenheim, on the violent fringes of north-east Sangin, and scene of almost daily firefights, Colour Sergeant Marty Simpson told me how the satellite phone the soldiers use to stay in touch with home has an infuriating tendency to cut out:

"When the signal breaks up after three minutes it breaks you," he said.

Colour Sgt Simpson's marriage has survived the deployment, but four of the seven men serving with him at PB Blenheim have seen their relationships broken by it.

Even so, speaking to the soldiers' partners back at Weeton Camp in Lancashire, it is apparent that e-mails and calls play a vital role in saving some relationships.

Last September, when the Green Howards were about to leave for Afghanistan, Hayley Harle told us about her fears that her husband Lance Corporal Mike Harle would return angry and introverted, as he did from a previous stint there.

This time, Mike is telling her everything - including distressing details of a 24-hour period in January were two British and two Afghan soldiers were killed nearby.

Mike recorded a raw video diary for Newsnight just hours after those events took place:
"It's nasty, it isn't worth it," he said, sitting in his Jackal patrol vehicle, "I don't get paid enough".

Hayley feels that phone conversations they have had about the incident have helped both of them, but it is clear that time in Sangin has taken its toll on her husband.

All of the soldiers featured in Newsnight's series of reports serve with A Company of the Green Howards, which has just a few weeks left to go in Sangin.

Their mission is mentoring the Afghan National Army, and the battalion has teams spread across Helmand Province.

In recent months Sangin's reputation as the grimmest British sector in Helmand has been reinforced, as the death toll in the Battlegroup serving there has climbed to 27 since last October.

Visiting A Company last month, the fact that it (and indeed the Green Howards as a whole) have not yet lost a soldier on this tour was a topic that provoked a good deal of superstition, or indeed evasion.

Some soldiers said they have simply been lucky - and they have certainly been in enough firefights - others that their role alongside Afghan soldiers, with their local knowledge, has kept them safer.

Major Rob Palfrey, who is in command of A Company told me: "I just want to take 50 people off that plane with all their limbs. That will do me."

Even since filming that interview, just weeks ago, the Green Howards have suffered casualties.

Chris Hale, a 19-year-old private whom Newsnight has been following since last summer, was shot in the leg.

He is now recovering in the UK, and is likely to remain in hospital until his comrades come home.

Chris' mother, Linda, and sister Samantha, have been frequent visitors to his bedside.

Both said that they were shocked by the number of wounded soldiers they have seen on the military wards of Selly Oak hospital.

New casualties were arriving in the hospital near Birmingham "literally every day," Samantha said. "You just don't hear about these guys... it was heartbreaking."

"It's a hateful place," Linda said about Afghanistan, though she had nothing but praise for the soldiers serving there:

"The determination in them lads is overwhelming," she said. "They just want to get out there and do it again."

In just a few weeks Green Howards soldiers and families will be together again and will start to work out what they have been through.

Infantry battalions now face a future in which one Afghan tour will follow another in a couple of years.

It will be fascinating to see how many veterans of A Company's time in Sangin will be ready to do it all over again.

Among British soldiers in Afghanistan, Sangin has the grimmest reputation.

Half of all UK forces casualties occur in this one area of operations, with about one tenth of Britain's forces in Afghanistan deployed in it.

When the 2nd Battalion of the Rifles finished its tour in Sangin in the late summer of 2009, soldiers spoke about their six-month stint as an epic of hard fighting.

It had certainly been a difficult time, with 22 soldiers killed and dozens seriously wounded.

And while the attention has been on central Helmand and Operation Moshtarak, the losses incurred by the 3 Rifles Battlegroup, the battalion that took over in Sangin last October, have climbed to 27 killed, with around one month of their tour still to serve.

Eight Afghan National Army soldiers have also lost their lives there during the same five month period.

Yet all of the key players you meet there, from the British military commanders to the Afghan district governor talk about great progress.

When I asked Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kitson, the battlegroup commander, about the heavy price being paid by his troops he said:

"We've made a very conscious effort to keep going in the face of that, and it's not blind optimism or anything like that or throwing more cannon fodder forward.

"These are very carefully considered operations and the casualty figures just don't reflect the progress we've achieved."

District Governor Faizal Haq said: "I became the governor last year... [at that time] nobody could come here to attend any meetings because it was too dangerous, no-one alone could go out to the bazaar, you had to go to bazaar in a group of five or six, now the total control of the bazaar is in our hands."

People who know Sangin agree that things have got much better in the past year.

There are now three times as many shops trading in the bazaar, and 41 primary schools and one high school have opened.

The "ink spot" of security around the district centre has grown too.

By establishing a denser network of security posts around the bazaar and government offices, the 3 Rifles battlegroup has brought relative calm to an area around those central landmarks.

People who served with the last battlegroup have told me that IEDs used to be laid as close as 10 metres (yards) from their camp gates, and gun battles often started as soon as they left them.

However, the growth of this "safer" area can be measured in the hundreds of metres rather than kilometres, and it cannot be said that soldiers are completely safe from attack in these areas even now.

A couple of this past week's fatalities have happened within the inner group of patrol bases that surround the district centre.

Why then does the casualty rate remain so alarmingly high?

To start with Sangin has long been considered to harbour an unpleasant combination of tribal, criminal, and extremist elements.

Appoint a mayor from one tribe and you will inevitably incur the displeasure of another. Local politics are a Gordian Knot of violent rivalries.

In recent months, Lt Col Kitson and his people have been using different tactics.

These are the "population centric" ideas espoused for the past year by the Nato commander, US General Stanley McChrystal.

In order to win people over, members of the 3 Rifles battlegroup have been inculcated with ideas of 'heroic restraint' - refraining from returning fire or using heavy weapons under certain circumstances.

Gen McChrystal has always been candid that 'heroic restraint' involves patrolling soldiers accepting greater risk.

In Sangin you hear differing views about this doctrine and whether it is contributing to high casualties.

Some of the troops I met at Patrol Base Blenheim, on the violent fringes of north-east Sangin, and scene of almost daily firefights, were pretty frank about their intention to shoot insurgents as soon as they had positively identified them as being armed and presenting a threat.

They considered ideas like firing warning shots in such circumstances to be nonsense.

Elsewhere, many people were more on-message.

There can be little doubt though, that in getting "closer to the people" through the establishment of increased numbers of patrol bases and more patrolling by foot, the 3 Rifles battlegroup has embraced greater risk.

The fact that most of the recent British fatalities have been killed by gunshots rather than IEDs can be seen as evidence of these new realities - it is harder for the Taliban to place bombs inside the coalition's larger security bubble, while patrolling these areas exposes the soldiers to gunfire.

The sense that the new tactics have shifted the shape of the struggle into a contest for the support of the district's people extends more broadly too.

The Taliban Civil Commission, the Taliban's unofficial government in Sangin, has agreed that schools should re-open and apparently feels it is not in the movement's interest to attack the reinvigorated bazaar.

The Taliban too then, perceives that it must not wreck the possibilities for greater education and business.

So where does this leave the struggle in the months ahead?

Just securing an area of several square kilometres currently consumes around 1,500 British and Afghan troops. Extending it could require hundreds if not thousands more.

Yet Britain, paying the fearful price for a slow improvement in the district, would have to think hard before sending any more troops there.

The answer seems to lie in the re-drawing of boundaries currently being considered by senior Nato commanders.

The Americans will take over from the British in some places - and this could free up some troops.

They may also chose to place the British battalion in Sangin under a US brigade, which would bring US marines to secure some parts of the district.

One thing is clear - that those running Nato's operation think that what they are doing is working in Sangin and that they want more of the same.