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The Ministry of Defence (MoD) publishes its lists of operational honours twice a year. .

Sergeant Major Karl Ley is getting the George Medal for defusing 139 bombs during his tour.

Flight Lieutenant Ian Fortune managed to keep control of his Chinook helicopter despite being hit between the eyes by an enemy bullet that came through the windscreen and shattered the visor of his helmet. Both Sgt Maj Ley and Flt Lt Fortune (who had the responsibility for so many other lives) are under 30-years-old.

Inevitably the 3 Rifles Battle Group that was involved in countless contacts with the insurgents around Sangin, and lost 30 of its members, features extensively in the lists.

Its Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kitson, received the Distinguished Service Order, the Army's top medal for command in combat. Lt Col Kitson and some of the other personnel decorated today .

This list also announces the award of the Queen's Gallantry Medal to Sergeant John Swithenbank of the Yorkshire Regiment (the Green Howards).

John was one of the soldiers shown during (and indeed, his wife Vicki featured too).

He was decorated for an incident in Sangin (where his company was part of Lt Col Kitson's Battle Group) when he helped to save the life of one of the Afghan soldiers he was training was blown up.

There are obvious reasons why the great majority of these acts of bravery were not recorded at the time. But because of Newsnight's project with the Green Howards, the whole series of events involving the wounding of that Afghan soldier (who tragically lost all four limbs when he trod on a booby trap) were .

If you want to know the reality of a story behind one of today's 131 names I would recommend you watch it.

As Sgt Swithenbank tended the wounded Afghan soldier, he did so knowing that other, unexploded, explosive devices had been detected within yards of where he was kneeling - the whole compound was booby trapped.

The recipients of these awards will often say that they regard it as recognition for a whole team of people. Watching our report, I hope you will see in practical terms how this was true of that incident in Sangin last November.

This is one reason why many fighting soldiers regard the award of decorations as invidious. The platoon commander, medic, a corporal who helped Sgt Swithenbank, and the American aircrew who flew into the fight might all be said to be deserving of recognition for saving that Afghan's life in apparently hopeless circumstances.

But if they cannot all be decorated, for fear of what the military sometimes call 'medal inflation', then at least Sgt Swithenbank can pick up his QGM on behalf of all of them.

The handover of Sangin to the US Marines has rid the British of their most troublesome district in Afghanistan. Some 106 British lives were lost there, and several times that number of Afghans has perished, since Paras were first sent there in the summer of 2006.

Many soldiers will be only too pleased to see the back of the place. A six month tour meant running the gauntlet of snipers, booby traps and ambushes sometimes placed just yards from the gates of your patrol base.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has tried to handle the situation with due deference to British, Afghan and US political sensibilities. It wants to suggest that much has been achieved during the British time in Sangin but to shy away at the same time from body counts or claims that might sound like bravado.

So the emphasis has been on a doubling of shops open in the bazaar, hundreds visiting the district health centre weekly, and the reopening of schools. All of these are no doubt significant measures of society trying to get back to normal in Sangin. But , the Taliban commission in the district has also played a role in agreeing to health or education improvements.

The key issue or indicator is therefore security. British officers tell me there has recently been a distinct improvement in security there, speaking of an 80% drop in attacks on coalition forces. Two British soldiers were killed in the district during August, compared to ten during August 2009.

So it's possible that at the eleventh hour, the British generals who believed that some kind of turnaround had to be achieved before the place was handed to the Americans have had their prayers answered.

The MoD, however, when asked today by Newsnight for monthly figures for significant attacks on coalition forces in Sangin declined to provide them. Why, you might say, if these figures do indeed reveal any sort of positive trend? The answer seems to be that it is MoD policy not to release such figures because doing so would set a precedent. Naturally, there are many places where they would not show a positive trend.

Such a policy underlines the difficulty of reporting the war, in trying to make an assessment of what is really going on in many parts of Afghanistan. So perhaps it's not surprising that so many of those working on this conflict - from journalists to aid workers or academics - therefore welcomed the Wikileaks publication of secret files on the conduct of the war.

WASHINGTON: President Obama's speech announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq did contain the "V" word. Towards the end of his Oval Office address he noted, "in an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation".

This sentence followed one in which he noted 1.5m American troops had served in Iraq, experiencing the darkness of war, and had "helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace". So the president suggested that the success of Iraq's democratic transformation could provide victory in the long term.

When in 2008, the strategy pursued by General David Petraeus had already brought about a dramatic downturn in violence, I well remember officers at the headquarters in Baghdad telling me that their commander had "banned the V word". Indeed I heard Gen Petraeus himself talk about "pushing the champagne to the back of the fridge".

So it was curious last night to hear President Obama - formerly such a vociferous opponent of the war, and indeed of Gen Petraeus's surge strategy that finally delivered results - speak of victory. Of course his speech writers could argue that he did not use it in a way that claimed it for US forces or that mimicked the awful mistake of whoever wrote the "Mission Accomplished" banner that hung behind President Bush in May 2003.

What the speech did however was to use the word "victory" in a speech marking the end of US combat operations in such a way that his people would hear it, but at the same time would allow the White House truthfully to say "we never declared victory".

This reminds me how the Bush Administration argued it never accused Iraq of being behind the 9/11 attacks, while making speeches that contained reference to Saddam's support of terror or the Axis of Evil. And indeed, Bush's White House could argue that the president never said the mission in Iraq had been accomplished, even if the banner behind him did. It's a familiar political technique, in other words, to do with the power of suggestion.

Even if a president uses carefully chosen phrases, those around him may go further. In an interview published today, for example, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, talking about the positive effects of administration policies on Iraq, Iran and the Middle East peace process, said "victory begets victory, and success will be reinforcing".

It is true of course that as commander in chief, President Obama had to say positive things about the sacrifices made in Iraq. He had to leave his people feeling something good had come out of that violent maelstrom. In this sense his speech was genuinely statesmanlike in that it explicitly buried earlier partisan differences. Indeed, President Obama even managed to be generous about his predecessor, noting his commitment to America's armed forces and security.

The idea that the ultimate declaration of victory will depend upon the fortunes of Iraq's nascent democracy is an interesting one too. I'm not sure it would have been so alien to those who did take part in surrender ceremonies in any case. If, for example you'd asked Field Marshal Montgomery as he stepped from the tent on Luneburg Heath in 1945, having received a formal surrender, whether the real test of victory over Germany would be what kind of country it was in five or 10 years' time, I suspect he might well have agreed.

Today, in an era of non-state actors, insurgency, and asymmetric warfare the key difference is not in the declarations of victory. Indeed it might be argued that everybody now insists they've won - constantly - as part of information warfare.

However finely crafted the speech, even President Obama attempted that yesterday, by suggesting that the US had put the Iraqis on the path to victory. The real difference between today and 1945 is that nobody concedes defeat.