The number of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan reached 297 this month. Behind each returning coffin are ordinary families destroyed by grief – mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and children mourning their loved ones. Over the past month Dan McDougall has interviewed many of the relatives of the 'Fallen' to coincide with a BBC documentary chronicling the suffering of the families. This is their story
'I think about the families, and a life torn apart'
The locals line up pints of bitter at the Kings Head bar in Droylsden, Greater Manchester. Behind the till Ronnie Downes, 60, reads his son's last letter home. Outside the pub hangs a huge picture of Tony and the words: 'Tony: Our son, Everyone's Hero'.
Guardsman Neil 'Tony' Downes, aged 20, was travelling with the Afghan National Army close to the town of Sangin in Helmand province when their vehicle was hit by an explosion.
Before going out to Afghanistan, Tony wrote his family a letter to be opened in the event of his death. Standing in their pub, Ronnie recites passages: 'I love you all from the bottom of my heart. Please don't be mad at what has happened. I did what I had to do, and serving the British army was it. Don't be sad - celebrate my life, because I love you and I will see you all again.' As he finishes, Ronnie falters and breaks down in tears.
'What amazed me most was that my mum and dad were really strong. That really brought us together as a family,' says Ronnie's eldest daughter, Katie, 21. 'My mum campaigned for the soldiers, for the job they were and are doing out there in Afghanistan and Iraq, and inspired us all. Everyone expected her to be the other way. She urged the government not to bring troops home - because it would mean Tony died in vain.
'Tony loved serving with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards. He died doing something he loved. It doesn't stop our pain, but it comforts us to know how fulfilled he was in his career and life as a soldier. My brother had only been in Afghanistan for 12 weeks and was due to return home on 28 June 2007. That date became the date of his funeral.'
Katie says the hardest thing was listening to her brother's letter: 'I think about what must have gone through his head when he was writing that, knowing that he could die.
'Before he left for good, and I remember this vividly, he was packing up one of his huge rucksacks and out popped two letters, from the top of his bag. They both said: "Not to be opened unless deceased." I remember catching my breath as I saw the writing on the envelope.
'My brother was the 60th member of the armed forces to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in November, 2001, and for the first time it really made me think about what all those other families have gone through and all the families since - each death of a child, a brother, a husband, a boyfriend or a father, a life torn apart.'
The soldier's younger sister, Jodie, 17, describes how she now visits her brother's grave more than ever. 'I talk to him in the cemetery. Sometimes I stand, other times I kneel down and talk to him like he is there,' she says. 'Some days I cry; other days I just pass the time of day. I feel silly and self-conscious speaking to a grave, but whenever I look around, nobody is paying the slightest bit of attention. There are other people there at the gravesides, crying and mourning in their own way, talking to their loved ones and praying. It is definitely therapeutic.'
She adds: 'What has helped me above everything is knowing he is in a better place, a happy place, in heaven. It may sound daft, but I believe angels are looking after him up there, and he is looking down on me and probably laughing at me crying. If he could speak he would probably just laugh and tell me not to be so daft.
'Losing my big brother has definitely brought me closer to all my siblings and to mum and dad. In some ways it makes you special having a brother as a war hero; people look at you and feel sorry for you, but also admire what you have gone through.
'I am only young, but what I do know is I never want to feel pain like this again. I have cried enough now.'
'I couldn't bear to see his coffin in the flag'
Ruth Rayment lost her brother Christopher when she was 16. Photograph: Robin Hammond St George flags hang limp in the suburban gardens of Eltham in south-east London. Inside her family home, Ruth Rayment, left, sits in front of an electric fire, her knees scrunched up around her neck. She is surrounded by army memorabilia that belonged to her brother, Christopher.
'I was 16 when he died,' says the nursing student, now 20. 'When the men in uniform came knocking on my door, we knew what it was straight away. I remember my mother screaming and collapsing in the front room, I will never forget the wailing.'
Christopher Rayment, a private with the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, died aged 22 when a security barrier fell on him while he was manning a checkpoint. He had been in Iraq for more than five months and died just 10 days before he was due to return home to his parents, Pamela and Gordon. Four years on his room remains virtually untouched.
'Everyone expected it to hit me hardest, but I didn't mourn for a year,' says Ruth. 'I started crying on the anniversary of Chris's death - that's when the trauma hit me. It came like a black cloud; it consumed me, and I realised I was depressed. I kept hearing my brother's voice. His presence wasn't frightening, just permanent.'
Ruth thinks her decision not to go to Brize Norton to watch her brother's body arrive back in the UK contributed to what she calls 'suspended reality'.
'For me he was still out there, in Afghanistan, patrolling as a soldier,' she says. 'That's what I convinced myself of, anyway, that he wasn't coming back because he was still out there.
'I think this feeling was because I couldn't bear to see him come back, to see his coffin in the flag. When the realisation he was gone finally hit me, a year later, it felt like I'd been hit by a huge black wave, like a tsunami, and the water was pouring into my ears and nose, suffocating me. It was the most terrifying experience of my life.'
Ruth's sister, Mandy, 29, says her experience of Chris's death was different. She went to Brize Norton to see his body arrive. 'I can honestly say it was the proudest, and in a strange way the happiest, moment of my life,' she says. 'I sent Chris a little charm to take to Afghanistan, a little St Christopher, and it was returned with his body. I keep it with me at all times now.'
Both sisters share a strong sense of spirituality and, like many relatives of the 'Fallen', Mandy has started seeing a clairvoyant. The medium, she claims, brings her closer to her brother's spirit. That is why she finds it hard to visit his grave; she thinks his soul is elsewhere: 'Since Chris died I've been going to church, and last week I was finally baptised. People might think I could be angry with God for what has happened to my family, but my belief in God helps me to come to terms with what has happened. It is his plan and my brother, in the middle of all of this, is in a happier place and is smiling down on us.'
'Daddy is happy in heaven eating crispy duck'
Seven-year-old Courtney Ellis at home in Manchester. Photograph: Robin Hammond In her small room in the family semi in Wythenshawe, Manchester, seven-year-old Courtney Ellis, above, strums her guitar, singing a song she has written about her father, Private Lee Ellis. To the tune of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', she sings 'I love daddy in the sky'.
Later she flicks through the album of photographs she keeps under her bed, images of her last holiday with her 23-year-old dad. Her favourite picture shows her father looking on as she opened her presents on Christmas Day.
A Para from 2nd Battalion, Ellis died on attachment to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Al Amarah, Maysaan province, when he was killed by a roadside bomb on 28 February 2006.
'This is a picture of our last holiday together,' says Courtney. 'Daddy is in heaven now, and although he is dead, he is happy. When someone dies and they are naughty, they go to hell. My mum says that my daddy is eating a lot of crispy duck in heaven. It was his favourite food, and he wouldn't share it, even though he is in heaven.'
'He brought us here. And now we are alone'
Camari Babakobau with a picture of her husband, Ratu. Photograph: Robin Hammond Saturday night television blares in the background as a crescendo of game show applause drowns out Camari Babakobau's faint voice. In mid-sentence she breaks down in tears and walks, head bowed, towards the front windows of her cramped barracks home. At her feet, her two young sons fight over the remote control, increasing the volume further as they clamour for her attention.
Outside, the rain is pounding the glass. 'The weather is the hardest thing about living in England,' says Camari. 'He brought us here from the islands - my man - to give us a future, and now he has left us. We are alone. This is an army house. We will lose it in two years and have to go elsewhere.'
On the wall of her lounge is an oversized portrait of her dead husband, Trooper Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau, in his Household Cavalry uniform. In the hallway, next to a calendar of the Pacific islands, is another photograph of the guardsman in desert fatigues; behind him, the scrubland of Afghanistan's Shomali Plain. It is the last picture taken of him before he died.
Next Sunday, Camari, 28, who lives on a bleak housing estate on the outskirts of Windsor, will be one of thousands laying wreaths at memorials around the country. Her husband was killed on 2 May 2008 in the Nowzad area of northern Helmand, the victim of a Taliban landmine.
Ratu's journey began in an MoD recruiting interview in Suva, Fiji's port capital. He was one of a growing foreign legion fighting for someone else's queen and country. He arrived in the UK in May 2004, and his first deployment overseas came four years later. But within a month of arriving in Afghanistan, the 29-year-old Fijian was dead. On the other side of the world, uniformed officers and a Household Cavalry chaplain were dispatched to Windsor to knock on Camari's door.
'Other wives and mothers tell me they knew when they opened the door and saw the uniformed officers standing on the doorstep,' she says. 'I didn't know. I didn't expect it, because I probably didn't understand how dangerous my husband's job was. I thought they had come to see me about my son's British citizenship. I couldn't stop crying.
'He returned six days later in a coffin with a foreign flag over his body,' says Camari. 'All I could think about was that my boys would never know their father; they would never play rugby with him, or be scolded for not doing their homework. To them, their father would be a photograph - not even a memory.
'The band played at Brize Norton and I stood there weeping, clutching my children's hands. The aircraft looked terrifying as it came in to land. I kept thinking, "Why is he in there, not breathing, his useless body coming back to me - for what?"
'Young Fijians join the British army for financial reasons, for citizenship, for an escape from poverty and island life. My husband made this choice. For what? We Fijians don't understand anything about foreign affairs. Sure, the money is good for us, but you only have one life. My children will be told their father was a hero, but maybe he was foolish. Maybe others who follow him from Fiji are foolish.'
• The Fallen is a three-hour film in which families and friends of the soldiers who have died talk about their feelings and grief. It will be broadcast at 8pm on Saturday 15 November on BBC2.1
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