From Kay Smart.
I READ all the comments and statements made from the public and some officials regarding the war in Afghanistan, in particular Helmand Province.

I watch the return of battalions, marching through streets lined with people giving them such a welcome home. Then I see the bravest of the brave being carried shoulder high, covered with a Union Jack, and I wonder why.

Then, when at last my grandson, Captain Westley Smart, of the 2nd Battalion, Paras, came home after six months out there I realised that six months of watching TV news, with the dreaded yellow band of updating news running under the picture telling us of yet another soldier, sometimes two or three, even once six men were killed, it was agony waiting to read the family had been informed and, when it wasn’t us, relief – and yet somewhere a family mourned.

So I asked my special soldier when we met: ‘Why are you out there?’ He said: ‘Nanny, if we don’t stay and get it right we will have that war in the streets of England.’

Since that reply, I have listened carefully to any soldier that came back from there and the answer was almost the same: ‘We don’t want that war on the streets of Britain, because they are training the children to dislike us and our way of thinking.’ This from the boys on the spot.

I don’t think the general public really know enough about that war. It would do us all good to listen to the soldiers who have been there.

Let them talk to any of them; we will listen and, perhaps, understand better than just listening to politicians.