New Zealand blogger WhaleOil emailed me a link to these photos of New Zealand SAS taken after a firefight in Kabul, Afghanistan. What is odd about the photos is that the elite SAS troops appear to have tied their magazines to the trigger guard with cord … ?!?!

The British, Australian and New Zealand active and retired soldiers who read the blog may have to correct me, but I remember reading somewhere that British soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are not allowed to throw away empty their magazines in a firefight. I also recall reading that in the Vietnam war the NZ and Australian soldiers where also not allowed to dump empty magazines.

That seems the most likely explanation for the above photo but it seems bizarre!

Can anybody shed light on this?