Last night’s TV review: Heroes of Helmand: The British Army's Great Escape (Channel 4); First Dates (Channel 4)

Former soldiers who served in Afghanistan tell their story

The incredible story of Easy Company, a small group of British soldiers who withstood a Taliban siege for more than 50 days in 2006 to hold Musa Qala (Channel 4)

It has been 10 years since the 88 men of Easy Company were holed-up in a compound in Musa Qala, Afghanistan, successfully fighting off some 500 Taliban with woefully scant resources. What Heroes of Helmand: The British Army's Great Escape skilfully showed was that the enemy and fighting methods may change – how crude the Taliban set-up now seems compared to Isis – but war is war is war. Bearing witness to combat creates awful, bloody memories that are hard to erase.

This story was told by the ex-soldiers who were there and contemporary footage taken by the company. We heard that the Ministry of Defence stopped any serving forces members from taking part. Video was grainy in parts but we could see deserted streets lined with mortar-torn buildings, ideal for harbouring insurgents. It looked like a set of a spaghetti western, where a gun-toting baddie could pop up at any moment, from any dark corner or narrow alley. The men told how they were in a state of permanent fear of death, how unlike previous battles, the relative insecurity of the compound meant they could be hit from any direction in this state of “360-degree combat”.

Three of Easy Company didn’t come back alive from Musa Qala. We were told how the luckier ones had tried to save their colleagues. One said how he treated his friend’s wounds with cotton wool: “His nails were jagged and ripped up, [the cotton wool] was catching on his fingernails and pulling. It was such a horrible feeling.” As he recounted that moment, voice cracking, you could tell it was a scene that had stuck with him for the past decade. That image of that unravelling cotton wool so vivid in his mind but hard to put into words that could convey the true horror.

Soldiers are good at understatement. “I could have cried when I saw the chinooks,” one said, recalling how, after a truce was agreed, they were driven for eight hours by the Taliban into the desert, spending the whole time convinced it was an ambush. He missed the irony that he had spent much of this interview breaking down into tears.

We briefly heard how the return to civilian life was hard for most. One of the snipers now spends lots of time on his houseboat with his dog. He long has given up his former hobbies of hunting and shooting, “I don’t want to see anything really get killed,” he said. I would have liked to hear more from the men individually, but this was their shared tale. Earlier this year, the Taliban retook Musa Qala. The whole thing was entirely futile, yet Easy Company’s major’s verdict after a decade of reflection with his men? “Collectively, we wouldn’t really have missed it.” It’s complex, this war business.

There was some light-hearted (and non-Olympic) stuff to be found last night, and there are always unexpected flashes of poignancy in Channel 4’s First Dates that elevate it from silly-season fodder to a surprisingly emotional watch. This second visit to the restaurant that only welcomes couples on their initial (blind) outing was no exception. Not least boat-builder Abbey, who had been before. Last time she’d got trussed up in a spangly frock but she’d decided that it was all about being herself. “My idea of love is finding a friend that you don’t mind having around all the time, who doesn’t get on your nerves too much.” She rocked up in a flat cap and when her date Eddie – who told how struggled with relationships after his parents split up – joked that he was going to wear one too that day, we sensed that this pair might be quite well suited. It turned out they were – they’ve apparently already been on two boaty dates. We could all learn from Abbey, it seems.