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The mother and son... who went to war; TERRIFYING ORDEAL: Christopher was caught in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan SO PROUD TO SERVE: Joan as a Captain at Camp Bastion and in mess uniform.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Gwyneth Rees, Kitty Dimbleby

LIKE every mother, Joan Welsh worries about her three sons. And like most young men, they get in touch sporadically - usually through a garbled telephone call or a hastily written email. As all three brothers are in the Armed Forces, Joan knows they have a good excuse. In the age-old tradition of military families, she just 'got on with it' until the day she opened an email from her middle son Christopher in Afghanistan and read the dreaded words: 'Mum, I've been in an accident.' With her heart in her mouth, she read on: 'Our helicopter crashed. It was pretty terrifying and the aircraft is destroyed. But I'm OK, don't worry..

It was a lucky escape.' On the surface, Joan's story is similar to that of thousands of military mothers, wives and girlfriends.

Except that she wasn't waiting for news thousands of miles away in Britain. She was a few hundred miles away from her son, serving as a theatre nurse at Camp Bastion, the British base in southern Helmand Province. Fighting back tears, she reread the email. She only had time to reply 'Thank God you're OK, xxx Mum' before her strict 20-minute computer allocation was up.

Every day she helped treat soldiers with the most appalling injuries - missing limbs, brain damage, shrapnel wounds - and every day she prayed Christopher would not be rushed through the doors of her makeshift field hospital.

While she shuddered at her first-hand knowledge of what might have been, Joan reflected on the extraordinary turn her life has taken.

Indeed, her situation is believed to be unique.

While it is quite common for fathers and sons to be deployed simultaneously to a war zone, Joan and Christopher...

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