Loi Lala's children were playing inside their home in Nowa district when stray bullets from British heavy weapons smashed into the building.
According to Lala, a 60-year-old businessman , British forces nearby had managed to confuse a crowd watching fishermen using an electricity generator to stun river fish with a gathering of insurgents.
A five-year-old girl was killed and two other children were left disabled.
Apart from the suffering caused to civilians, mistakes like this risk turning the Afghan population against the coalition forces. "The foreigners came to me and said they were very sorry because you are responsible for the security of our convoys," Lala said. Nato provided helicopters to race the children to hospital and the equivalent of £1,370 in the local currency.
"They asked for forgiveness and the elders also asked me to forgive," he said. "They were children, they were not Taliban, but I know they were shot by mistake. I have no education, but I know you need weapons to bring security."
Perhaps because of the importance of the British and American presence in Helmand to his livelihood – Lala profits from contracts to provide armed security to convoys that ferry vital supplies to military bases all over Helmand – he was prepared to forgive. On top of the compensation payment for the children, foreign forces also gave him a contract to build a bridge worth more than $8,000.
But for others, receiving compensation can be a drawn-out process. Several people in different Helmand districts complained that payments are frequently seized by tribal elders and power brokers before they can get to the right people.
According to Haji Mirza Khan, an attack on his family's house in Babaji killed two of his brothers, and wounded him and women and children. "It was an airstrike from a plane," he said. "We don't know what they were thinking or what intelligence they had."
It took a couple of trips to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and lobbying government officials before, he said: "The English people came and said we are very sorry, please forgive us." But he added: "We still haven't got the money."
Babaji has seen regular conflict ever since British forces launched Operation Panther's Claw in 2009, with many families having to abandon their homes to find safer places to live. But for the family of Abdul Nasir Janan, a 38-year-old labourer, the fighting simply followed them to their new home on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah about a year and a half ago.
His two brothers, Ghafar and Rabani, were killed by an airstrike by a "computer plane", as he calls the unmanned drones that are constantly busy above the skies of Helmand. A third man, a cousin, who had fled the fighting in his home district of Musa Qala, was also killed. The missile left behind carnage: the bodies of the victims were blown apart, with some of the bodies unrecognisable.
"The governor and the police chief came to us and asked us to forgive. The British came and said that they were very sorry but on their computer they thought they killed Taliban," Janan said.
His family received $4,000 for each man killed and $1,000 for each person injured.
