Day 131 Week 18

Yet another soldier killed. This one from the Coldstream Guards RIP. A few weeks ago my dear friend and I were in Windsor and there was a group of them collecting for Help for Heroes, and we chatted to them and they told us they were due to go out in a couple of weeks. Oh Lord, hope it wasn't one of them, but then by wishing that I'm passing the loss onto a different group of people just like us. That's four taken in the last five days and apparently Moshtarak hasn't actually begun yet after all. How can we sustain such losses? How will this end?

Fellow soldier's Mum really fraught too and we just keep sending each other messages of support, and then last night Another soldier's Mum called and she's constantly hoping and praying for a safe return for C, and her boy goes back out in October. During his last stint when he came home on his leave he also told his mother he didn't want to go back, and how nobody knows why we're there. He said it's not a war that follows the accepted rules in that the Talliban and insurgents, in their everyday dress with their absence of uniform look just like the local population. That must explain all the accidental killing of innocents.

If C returns home safely and I remain sane then the Guardian Angels really will have been working overtime. Just hope they keep putting in the extra hours, not for me, just for him.

I see on the news that the former US Congressman Charlie Wilson has died aged 76. He was a vociferous campaigner during the seventies and eighties against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and working on the assumption that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', he went on to raise thousands and thousands of dollars to fund covert operations to support what was then the Mujahadeen in their fight against Communism. The Mujahadeen were embryonic and in the years since then evolved into a much more effective force, now known as the Talliban.

What goes around comes around.

Work was really good, apart from the fact I cocked up one of my registers and failed to notice I was dealing with the correct day but in the month of September, not January. Then had an axious young student who couldn't complete her assessment so had the privilege of having the most relaxing facial imaginable. Came home and as it was still sunny if not bitterly cold went for a walk around our village, and mulled over the roller coaster of a ride that the last fourteen years of single-parent life have been.

Heard from H and he's fine. Not heard from R but think she could be home this weekend. And no news from C, which is to be expected so long as everything is OK.

Please look after them Lord.

Speak soon. A soldier's Mum x