The knock on the door can come in the middle of the night, or while you're feeding the kids their breakfast. For the wives and girlfriends of men serving in Afghanistan, it's the sound they most dread. They say afterwards they knew who it was and what it meant before they even opened the door.

At the time of writing, 221 British service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan. By the time you read this, only a miracle will prevent there having been more. The vast majority – 69% – were men in their 20s. They leave wives, fiancées, girlfriends, babies. What the military charmlessly calls the "kinforming officer" – the person who knocks on the door – may or may not have had training in dealing with a disintegrating young woman who might not be hearing, and who has no interest in letting him tick off his checklist of information-to-be-conveyed. The news has to be got out quickly (all phone lines from the unit go down until it is) and who gets the job depends on who's available. He – it is usually a he – will be replaced an hour or more later by the visiting officer, who should, with luck, have had some training, and whose job it is to offer practical support. The visiting officer will inform a widow about the repatriation of her husband's body and the options for funerals (military or private), and will stick around as long as she feels she needs help. It's his job to protect her from unwanted media, to advise on form-filling, the inquest and pension arrangements.

The stream of casualties in the past couple of years has led to the military taking its responsibilities to widows more seriously, and accepting feedback over matters that might seem trivial to a commanding officer but which matter greatly at home. Time was when a soldier's effects were cleaned up, neatly packaged and sent home in a box. It took bereaved women to point out that what they actually wanted was everything as it was, a shirt that smelled of their husband.

The ceremony of repatriation is the first tangible evidence of a death that up until then has only been a report. But this is the military's moment – "the army honouring its dead" as one widow puts it – and families are merely spectators. "You have no control over what happens," says Chris Gemmell of the Army Widows Association. "You tend to get two or three bodies back at a time, and it's very regimented."

The coffin can seem detached from reality. Perhaps for this reason, as well as because of the number of mourners who want to pay their respects, some widows choose to have their husband's body on view for a period before the funeral. This may require reconstructive surgery, and if that is what a widow wants and it's possible, the service in question (army, navy or air force) may organise and pay for it; each funeral is a matter of negotiation between family and military, with the principle that what the bereaved want, the military should make an effort to provide.

The practical matters of money and accommodation were generally felt by the widows to whom I spoke to be dealt with fairly. Widows are entitled to a lump sum compensation payment and a pension dependent on rank and length of service. There is no pressure for them to move out of married quarters for at least two years, although staying is often more painful than going.

The biggest problem is not to do with the military but with losing a partner so young, often early in the relationship, when parents still feel they have a greater claim. More than one widow described to me what felt like a competition with her mother-in-law to see who could grieve the most. A group of mothers recently set up their own organisation, Afghan Heroes, because they felt all the attention was on young widows and little was done to acknowledge their own loss. They refused to speak to me for this article, on the grounds that it was not about mothers. Conversely, where the bereaved partner wasn't married, she can feel left out. Various criteria are used by the MoD to assess whether she qualifies as a "recognised partner" – the length of the relationship, evidence of financial support or a joint mortgage, a child. This may well affect pension arrangements, particularly if there is no will. But a recognised partner is not next of kin, so unless the soldier has specifically asked, she won't be officially informed of the death.

According to the War Widows Association, a batch of wills made on the advice of the military was lost. In one case the bereaved partner is fighting to stop reversion to a previous will, which would mean losing her house. In another, the will did turn up, but too late for the girlfriend to manage the funeral as she knew her partner wanted. "People are often planning weddings when they are killed," says Gill Grigg of the War Widows Association. "If they'd only nip off to the register office, and have the big white wedding later, it'd solve a lot of problems."

To the inevitable media questions of whether they feel angry, whether the government isn't to blame, some widows do say they feel their husband or boyfriend shouldn't have been in Afghanistan. Others say it was his choice, that he was doing good, or doing what he loved. But for all of them, the question is, in a sense, beside the point. It is a public question, to do with a public death. For them the death is private and interminably painful, something no amount of politics can alter.

Diana Barnes holds a picture of her husband, Corporal Jason Stuart Barnes. Photograph: Richard Saker





DIANA BARNES, 26, COLCHESTER

On 22 July 2008 Diana's husband, Corporal Jason Stuart Barnes, 25, of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, was killed when his patrol came under attack in northern Helmand Province

I was living in Exeter, working on the night shift at Tesco with Jason's dad. On 26 October 2004, Jason arrived back from Germany, on leave before he was deployed to Iraq. His dad introduced us. Jason said: "I suppose you want to see it, too?" He meant his tattoo. I thought that was a bit forward on a first meeting. It was a dragon, and it went all the way up his back.

We went on our first date two days later. A fortnight after that, he left for a six-month tour to Iraq. Every Wednesday I sent him 15 pages of A4, a diary of what I was doing, news, what was happening in the soaps, jokes, songs. It made him feel he was still in the country. He phoned me twice a week. And he used to send me something from the shop every week, often teddy bears. The first time he told me he loved me was by teddy bear.

I'd had to go home to Middlesbrough because my little sister had been killed. She was 17 and was a passenger in a car. The driver was drunk. She died instantly. Jason wasn't due to come home till March. He felt helpless because he couldn't comfort me. But writing to him about it helped. When he did come home he'd been promoted to lance corporal and was posted to 657 Squadron at Odiham in Hampshire. He was an armourer in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). Before he started we went up to Middlesbrough to see my family, and in my uncle's pub, in front of everyone, he proposed to me.

We moved into a flat in Aldershot in July. I got a job in a petrol station. My family had a standing joke that we were joined at the hip, because we'd even shower together. They'd say: "Can youse not do anything separately?"

We got married on 6 October 2006, two years to the day after we met. That was Jason's idea; he was very romantic. We were always laughing and playing practical jokes on each other; my family loved him to bits. He'd take my nana and granddad if they needed to go anywhere. He'd stop and help people. His smile was infectious. No matter how cross I was with him, if he smiled I couldn't be cross any more. We moved into married quarters. Any time he had in this country, we spent together. He didn't go on lads' nights out; he said he preferred to be with me.

We found out he was moving to 2 Para at Colchester at Christmas 2007. I felt sure it was to go to Afghanistan. This will sound insane, but I had a feeling something was going to happen. He'd never served with an infantry unit before, never been as close to the front line. He took out life insurance before he left. He said: "I want you to have a house if anything happens to me." I told him not to talk like that.

His flight out was on 23 March. He phoned when he could, and sometimes asked me to send things: a duvet to lie on, Pot Noodles, shower gel and deodorant, a calendar – in April: where was I supposed to find one? He wanted to cross off the days, so I made him one out of a St George's flag, with April to October the only months, and I wrote our wedding song – "My Immortal" by Evanescence – on the bottom. He thought it was ace, and everyone else was like: "She must have spent hours on that." For his birthday I bought a white polo shirt and had his family and mine sign it. I got the dog to do a paw print. We got the dog in November 2006. Jason was worried about me. And I was missing having someone to look after, to pick up clothes after. He was very clumsy, Jason, always dropping things.

He died on Tuesday 22 July 2008, a fortnight before he was due to come home on R&R.

My dad had brought me home from a week at my mum's and he was staying with me. We were watching the news at 6pm and I started to cry. I said: "Something's happened to Jason." I couldn't sleep. I was tense every time a car came near the house. The knock came at 20 to two. I just lay there. I knew what it was. My dad looked out of the window and said: "There's someone in army uniform at the door." The dog was going mental; my dad couldn't hold him. The man said: "Is this 7 Alamein Road? Are you Mrs Barnes? Your husband's died," as he came through the door. They have to say it quickly, in case you think he's injured.

I was desperately hoping he had been injured. I thought: "I'll forgive the army if they've got this wrong." The man said it was a mine strike, which confused me because I think of a strike as coming from above. He wanted a photograph of Jason to release. I didn't want them to release the news yet, and he said they were going to anyway. I said: "What are you asking me for, then?"

He left, saying someone would be round in the morning. I couldn't sleep. The same man came back at 11. I was a bit hostile. He said someone else, the visiting officer, would be taking over. The army brought my mum from Middlesbrough. I'd been told Jason was driving an ambulance, but I didn't take much in. From then on it's like a bad dream. You're in it. It's like watching the television, but you're in it.

The ambulance was blown up by an IED [improvised explosive device]. The people in the back survived. I learned from the Sun that Jason had volunteered to drive. That was typical.

His body was repatriated to RAF Lyneham the following Monday. When the plane flew over and dipped its wing, I collapsed. I just kept thinking: "You are on there, aren't you?"

The coffin lid was closed in the chapel of rest. All I was worried about was whether there'd be anything for me to see. There was a post-mortem at Oxford and then the coffin was brought back to Colchester. I went in to see him on the Wednesday. Horrible is the word to describe it. I didn't want him to be there. He looked asleep. But Jason was never quiet; he was always bouncing. I just wanted him to get up.

I agonised about what to dress him in. He hadn't got married in uniform; he'd said he was marrying me, not the army. He'd bought a suit in Germany I'd never seen him in, so I chose that. His ginger hair was so bright on the white cushion. I put one of the teddy bears he'd sent me in his coffin.

All my family came for the funeral. I got the army to erect two tents in the back garden and we slept there the night before, in military sleeping bags. My nana cooked for everyone. I called it Camp Sexypants. Jason was about fun, and I wanted the funeral to reflect that. Even though my heart was broken, I wanted people laughing and sharing memories about him.

Angela and Lance Corporal Ross Nicholls on their wedding day. Photograph: MoD/PA

I had "Sexypants" in flowers. The woman who did them thought I was off my head. When the coffin went through the town, all the people on one side of the road were smiling, and those on the other were confused, because it was a coffin. There was a gun salute afterwards. The first time, the guns worked – but the second, third and fourth time they didn't. Someone called out: "Leave it, lads: Jay's trying to tell you something."

By the time of the funeral, lads were starting to come back to Colchester from Afghanistan. I kept seeing desert uniforms and "Welcome home" banners, lads coming home and giving their kids cuddles. Jason and I had been trying for children, but we didn't get that far. So I moved out of married quarters. I had only bad memories there, of him leaving and then the knock on the door. He was one in a million. I won't find another one like him.

Jason wanted me to buy a house, so I did. But this house makes me want to be sick. I've only got it because my husband's dead. I'd give it all back in a heartbeat for a single moment with Jason. I'd rather have him. But I can't.





ANGELA NICHOLLS, 33, MILTON KEYNES

On 1 August 2006 Angela's husband, Lance Corporal Ross Nicholls, 27, of the Household Cavalry Regiment, was killed following an incident involving insurgent forces in northern Helmand Province

Ross and I met in Germany, in the Royal Signals. We were in the same troop, doing the same job. We liked each other straightaway. We got married in Milton Keynes in 2000.

I decided to leave the army because we weren't seeing enough of each other, and in 2003 I went to work in IT for the Foreign Office. Ross was bored by not being part of the action, so he applied to transfer to the Household Cavalry. I fully supported him.

We moved to Windsor and I had Cameron soon after. I liked the married quarters. All the husbands were doing the same job and you knew how the other girls were feeling. By 2006 I was pregnant again. I'd had bad morning sickness with Cameron, so we moved to Knightsbridge, the ceremonial headquarters of the regiment, so I could be closer to work.

Erin was born in May 2006. When she was three weeks old, Ross went to Afghanistan. I knew it was going to be dangerous. The only conversation we ever had about it was when we were watching ER. One of the doctors was killed in Iraq. He said: "You're not going to be like that, are you?" and I said: "No, I'm not going to make a scene over you."

Once he was there, if he could get to the phone he'd speak to me every day. There's a lot you're not allowed to talk about on the phone, but he sounded excited. A few days before he died, he phoned, saying he was going off to do something and might not be in contact for a while.

At 6am, just before he left, he called and was really quiet. He said: "I want to say I love you."

A couple of days later I'd just sent off an e-bluey ["bluey" is army slang for an airmail letter. E-blueys are printed out because of the limited number of computers]. I used to send three or four a day, and in this one I told him I was going to buy him a PSP. I was feeding the children, the milk was boiling, and there was a knock on the door. I was on the 14th floor of a block of flats where I didn't have that many friends. I looked through the spyhole and as soon as I saw there were two men in suits, I knew what they were there for.

One said: "Can you take the children into another room?" and I said: "They're too young to understand what you're going to say."

They couldn't tell me much, because the ambush was still going on.

I went numb for a while. His body was repatriated to RAF Brize Norton with the other two men who'd died. They'd been in a convoy, trying to resupply a detachment of Canadians. The only route was through a settlement. The first vehicle got through, then the Taliban detonated a wired IED, which killed Ross and two others in the second tank.

I couldn't understand that it was him in the coffin; it was just a box. The army holds a service. It's all quite clinical. I didn't even get to go near the coffin. You feel like it's your coffin. That's the only thing I didn't agree with. I'd got a rose and a thistle I wanted to put on the coffin and they wouldn't allow it. There's only supposed to be a flag and the caps. It was the only thing I'd asked for. I'd gone along with everything. I was upset. I thought: "He's dead now. He doesn't belong to the army, he belongs to me."

It was a couple of weeks before his body was released. Then we had the funeral here in Milton Keynes, a full military funeral. You just tell them what you want and they organise everything; the army brought all his family down on coaches from Scotland.

Private Jason Lee Rawstron on service in Helmand Province. Photograph: MoD/PA

I only stayed in the flat for a few months. We were about to exchange contracts on this house anyway. Ross was planning to leave the army the February after he was killed. He didn't want to be away from the kids. I paid for the house with his life insurance and the Armed Forces Compensation.

In a way I was lucky that I had a newborn baby. I still had to get up in the night and feed her. For the first six months I was like superwoman. Anything that needed doing, I could do it straightaway.

I hate it when people say time's a great healer. The pain's always exactly the same. It never goes away. Anniversaries and birthdays get a bit easier to cope with, that's all.

Cameron's started asking questions. As far as the children are concerned, their daddy's a star. He's in the sky. He went to help some people, and the bad people there didn't want him to help and they killed Daddy. The Army Widows Association has helped.

The regiment's been good to me. They've set up trust funds for the children of families who have lost someone. I also had a meeting with the guys who were in the vehicle, who told me what happened.

The only thing I resent is that if your husband is still serving overseas, you get a Boarding School Allowance, and that doesn't apply after death if your children aren't already in boarding schools.

I've only got two pictures of him holding Erin, and none of us as a family. People ask if I feel angry. But I don't allow myself to think about it. I can't have all these thoughts going round in my head.





MICHAELA WALSH, 27, BURNLEY

On 12 September 2008 Michaela's boyfriend, Private Jason Lee Rawstron, 23, of the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, was killed while on patrol in northern Helmand Province

Jason grew up in Clayton-Le-Moors. Like half the Clayton lads he worked at Slingers abattoir, but then it went bankrupt and they all lost their jobs. Jason wanted to go into the Paras – he said: "Only the best."

He joined in October 2005, went to Catterick for training and passed out the following July. We got together after his passing out parade, though I'd known him for a few years because I was his brother's lodger, and when he went into the army I moved into the flat where he'd lived.

He had a month off and we spent all of it together. Then he was posted to Colchester and we spoke every day on the phone. He used to come home for weekends. I'd been working as a volunteer for the Youth and Community Service but at that point I was on the sick. I haven't got any family – my mum threw me out when I was 13 – and I was depressed.

Jason was posted to Afghanistan on 13 April 2008. I did nothing but think about it. I went to sleep with Sky news on and woke up with it. I read the papers every day. In June he came home for a couple of weeks' R&R. He was withdrawn. It was like everything was closing in on him. It was very good to see him.

We were in contact through letters and phone calls, but he couldn't say how he was feeling because the connections weren't secure. Being dyslexic, he wrote things as they sounded, but I knew what he was saying. I wrote every day, and between June and September I sent 44 parcels: sweets, crisps, local newspapers. He'd go through phases of wanting things: tinned fish, tinned fruit, Lucozade, cordial.

When he went back it was to FOB Gib [Forward Operating Base Gibraltar in Helmand Province; one in three of the 160 men who manned it that summer were killed or injured]. He was experiencing contact with the Taliban every day, and once I didn't hear from him for 10 days. One time he was on the phone and gunshots went off and he said: "I'll have to go." In a letter he wrote that one of the lads stepped on a landmine 100ft away from him.

He only had five weeks left to do and he wanted to come home. He actually wrote: "I know I'm out here doing good, but I'm doing the thing I hate the most." As a Para he had to put all feelings to the back of his mind. Another time he wrote: "I have to be a man, not a boy." It was very hard, what he was experiencing.

I spoke to him the night before he died, and he was sending me text messages: "Don't worry, we'll get through this." We lost connection on the phone three times. He didn't want to worry me. He had to stay focused and not get emotional. But obviously he was going to be scared to death – he was being shot at all the time. You always knew when something had happened, because the phone lines went down for 24 hours so they could tell the relatives first.

I was watching the news and hearing that another soldier had died when his auntie phoned me, asking me to come round. His mum and dad were the next of kin. I said: "It's Jason, isn't it?" and she said: "Just come round." I ran round. It was a couple of streets away. I said: "How bad is it?" and she just looked at me. I said: "He's dead, isn't he?" And she said: "I can't tell you." She just started crying. His mum came round two minutes later and she hugged me. I remember throwing up outside the house. It made me physically sick.

Jason was the only family I had. We had a future planned. We were going to buy a house and have money to go on holiday. I was going to college. It didn't hit home at first. Nothing seemed real. I went to the repatriation at RAF Lyneham. The army put us up in a hotel, and I'd never been in a hotel without him. I didn't sleep at all. But there was still that bit of excitement, because he was coming home. I wouldn't be able to see him, but he was coming home.

They play that stupid "Last Post" and bring the coffins off one by one and put them in a hearse and drive them to the chapel of rest. Knowing he was in that coffin and I couldn't see him or get to him was horrible. They took him straightaway to London for reconstructive surgery on his eye. He'd been shot from about 94 metres away. They couldn't see who was shooting because the maize was so high. The bullet went through his left eye at a 45-degree angle and into his oesophagus. No medical assistance could have saved him. He was 23.

He was in an open coffin in the chapel of rest at Clayton-Le-Moors for a week. I sat with him every day. He looked like an empty shell. It was Jason, but it wasn't because he wasn't there. They'd done a good job with the reconstructive surgery, but I could pinpoint everything. He felt funny. He was cold and his skin had toughened. He was freezing. Only his hair felt like his.

More than 1,000 people came to the funeral. The police had to close the roads off. There wasn't a person in Clayton inside their house. He'd grown up there; he was a very liked person. Afterwards we all went to the pub, but I only stayed for one drink. I couldn't cope. I didn't want to be around that many people. They'd lost a local hero, but I lost my partner.

I still haven't grieved properly. Words can't express how much I miss him. I shove it to the back of my mind. I keep trying to find things to cling to. I got his name and number tattooed on the back of my neck. In February I did a sponsored parachute jump for Help for Heroes.

I've gone to college and I'm going to qualify as an electrician. I haven't been able to look much at the letters. I've got more than 100. He used to write pages, but at the end it was only a sentence or two. He left a will. I haven't seen it but he told me what was in it. He left me 95% of his personal effects and 65% of his estate, which I think has upset his family. It's been dragged out – the repatriation, the funeral, waiting nine months for the inquest, his birthday, then 12 months since it happened. People say time's a healer, but it's not. They also say: "You've got your memories," but what good are memories if I haven't got him?

It's taken half my life away. Where are you supposed to go from here? I was writing to him every day, and he was writing to me, and it's just stopped. I used to have my phone out all the time in case he rang. I feel I need help to cope with these feelings, but then I'd have to admit what's happened. The thought of having to start again without him is unbearable. It's the worst feeling ever – just this despair that there's nothing I can do about it. I feel empty and lonely, and it makes me cry every time I talk about it.★

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