Day 86 Week 12

Well a quiet day but enjoyable nonetheless as no news is always good news.

Had chance to catch up on the world and was horrified to discover some idiot had tried to blow up himself along with several hundred other passengers on an aircraft. Obviously he feels passionately that there is a worthy cause to fight and die for, but why does that always have to include the slaughter of innocents. Has done, I know, for millennia but then that brings us back to the old point of learning from past mistakes and not repeating them.

Have just read a fascinating feature in the Sunday newspaper about how the impact of developments in wartime trauma treatment has had a beneficial effect on accident and emergency procedures in the NHS. The Colonel in charge of the Camp Bastion Field Hospital described how the wounded, who would have certainly died not too many years ago, are now surviving. Seemingly Sunday is the day of most activity, the theory being the killing stops for Friday prayers, planning the attacks is done on Saturday and then they are carried out on what the medical team call "Holy Shit Sunday". Statistically four people are harmed for every one killed and the total number of British losses and injuries combined since 2001 is more than thirteen hundred.

Then I read that every soldier operating in the 'isolated, mud-walled forward bases in rural Helmand' has been given thorough training in the immediate treatment of limb amputation and must always carry a tourniquet as the body can loose all its blood within forty seconds. That must include C.

God I hate this war.

Heard on the village grape vine that two of C's junior school friends have been sent to prison for a very long time. And then there was a serious incident at our local pub the other night when two more of his childhood peers (one of whom is out of the nick on licence) viciously assaulted two unsuspecting guys having a pint, one being an off duty policeman. Consider whether I would rather C remained at home and was continually in trouble or accept he deals in violence but in the name of the rule of law - an arresting conundrum. The answer is I suppose I am privileged to be proud of his actions and thankfully not forced to be ashamed of them.

R upstairs having a snooze and H gone for a run as he feels his fitness levels have plummeted and when he returns to Dartmouth he suspects he will be humiliated by the juniors. Heavy snow forecast for the Chilterns tomorrow so might be housebound again.

No news from C. More prayers said.

Speak soon. A soldier's Mum x