In France, fallen soldiers receive very public state funerals attended by the president, while in Britain any politicians intruding on personal grief is frowned upon.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose relations with the military were often described as strained amid spending cuts, was harshly criticized in 2009 over sending a condolence letter with multiple spelling mistakes to the family of a fallen soldier. Brown apologized and his defenders argued that tiredness and bad eyesight were to blame, but by then the public debate had already tied his “underlying disregard for the military,” to the flawed letter. He had little time to repair his fraught relations with veterans and service members; months later he resigned due to electoral losses.

Other leaders reacted more quickly to prevent a similarly lasting fallout. After Germany’s Angela Merkel faced criticism in 2010 over plans to not attend a funeral for three fallen Bundeswehr soldiers, the chancellor interrupted her vacation within hours and flew back to Germany to attend the ceremony. The decision to attend the funeral came only months after Brown’s letter, and as Merkel was evolving from being mostly silent about and detached from military affairs to becoming one of the Bundeswehr’s most vocal defenders. When three more German soldiers died the following year, Merkel attended the funeral along with other military and public officials, and criticism of her alleged lack of support for the Bundeswehr faded.

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The two episodes may not have shaped their personal stances on the military, but they did shape future relations with their forces.

In contrast, France's then-President François Hollande — often blamed domestically for lacking the confidence of a leader — appeared the most presidential in times of grief, following terrorist attacks or military missions gone wrong. Having done military service himself, Hollande maintained high support among service members and his defense minister was widely popular across the political spectrum, even as he had record-low public approval ratings.

French practices to honor fallen soldiers are among Europe’s most extensive. When three French soldiers were killed in Mali last year, Hollande asked the families to join him for a televised funeral in the center of Paris where he posthumously awarded them the French Legion of Honor, and met with their relatives. Similar funerals took place in previous years.

Public military ceremonies play a bigger role in France than in other European countries or the United States, and what was perceived as an appropriate way of honoring fallen soldiers there may have been criticized elsewhere as an attempt to make political capital out of their deaths.

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It also depends on the nature of the conflict. Mali was recognized as a success. For Britain, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were much more fraught.

The idea of meeting or calling relatives of dead soldiers would have been quickly rejected by many British politicians, given that even personal letters were considered exceptions rather than the norm. Like Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War, Gordon Brown was one of the few prime ministers committed to hand-writing letters to each family.

After he was widely criticized over his spelling mistakes, Brown reached for the phone and called the mother of the dead serviceman. What may have been appropriate elsewhere further aggravated the situation. A transcript of the conversation quickly leaked and the mother, Jacqui Janes, blamed Brown for worsening her grief. Apart from his unfortunate handling, the criticism also put a broader spotlight on the difficult balancing act for British leaders who both seek to pay respect and still maintain distance.

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Writing in the Guardian newspaper at the time, commentator Simon Jenkins explained how a probably well-meaning call had gone wrong — and why it could happen again: “A distant, busy prime minister cannot realistically enter the thoughts of a bereaved mother whom he does not know and is unlikely ever to meet. Though well meant, such an offering cannot be heartfelt,” wrote Jenkins. Brown may have attempted to offer sincere condolences, but to the soldier’s mother he mainly was the man who had sent his son to war, and to death.

Whereas other societies may disconnect personal grief and the responsibility of political leaders more easily, respect for the privacy of families has weighed more heavily in Britain than leaders’ desire to honor the men and women who fought for them.

“The familiar boundary between collective grief and personal sadness, which the nation handles well in the rituals of Remembrance day, is better left to individuals to negotiate in their own way. Politicians are well advised to remain aloof,” as commentator Jenkins summarized the British approach in 2009.

Instead, Jenkins argued, writing letters of condolence should be left the Queen in her role as a nonpolitical head of state.

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It is an approach that has also to some extent been adopted by other countries, such as Germany, where presidents — who mostly have a ceremonial function here in contrast to chancellors — have delivered the most powerful condolence speeches at funerals for fallen soldiers.

Removed from day-to-day politics, Germany's then-President Johannes Rau gave a widely praised speech in 2002 at a funeral for seven killed soldiers. The speech addressed both the relatives present at the ceremony and the wider German public in an attempt to bridge the divide between personal grief and public justification of a controversial war in ways an acting political leader would probably not have been capable of.

In countries like the United States or France, where the head of the state is also the country’s political leader and commander in chief, making that distinction is much more difficult.