Mercian Regiment in Afghanistan

Captain Becky Cansdale is a soldier in the 2nd Battalion of the Mercian Regiment, and is on her second tour of duty in Afghanistan - her mother, Lindsey Webb, lives in Worcestershire.

Lindsey told BBC Hereford & Worcester's Anita Woodhouse, about how she felt the first time her daughter was deployed into a war zone:

"I was very scared - I was very proud that she was an army officer, I was very proud that she’d been successful, but I was very frightened…

"You are worried all the time - if a phone call comes at an odd time.

"Also you see in the media, you watch on the television, and someone has died, and, sadly, it’s a real relief when they say that phrase "And the families have been informed.", because you know it's not your child."

She also made a conscious decision not to follow the war in the media:

"I didn't want to hear about the news, I didn't want to listen to the radio – I actually avoided it completely, because I was terrified I was going to hear that someone else had died.

"You've protected them all these years, in a cocoon, and you just want them to be safe."

Keeping in touch

The army prides itself on making sure that soldiers can keep in touch with their families, but Lindsey says that holding a normal conversation is never easy:

"They're allowed to phone home, a welfare phone call, which is a little false because you know that people are probably listening.

"They are allowed so many minutes, and then someone comes on and gives you the two minute warning – 'please end you call at this point'.

Captain Becky Cansdale

"You ask questions, you want to find out what's happening, because you know there is so much they can't tell you.

"You don't want to worry them, so all you do is tell them how things are going at home, and it's really quite a false thing, because she's probably giving me a bit of bull that she's absolutely fine, and I'm doing exactly the same."

There are also other ways of keeping in touch, and of reminding her daughter of life back home:

"I wrote, three times a week, to her… I sent her little parcels every other week of little things that I thought she might like, that would remind her of home – sweeties, some nice bath gel, and because she was getting married, I used to send her regularly bridal magazines.

"There was always that kind of positivity, she was always going to come home – you don't think the worst, do you? - but as a mother, it's always there in the back of your mind."

Leave

Her daughter came back to England in the middle of her deployment, and Lindsey noticed a marked difference in her attitude when it was time for her to go back to Afghanistan:

"We'd seen her mid-deployment, she'd actually come home for two weeks, and that was lovely to see her.

"That was an interesting time because when she first went it was with great excitement – this was her job, this was what she was in the army to do – but not so when she went back after her R&R (Rest and Recuperation), she was very tearful, and she'd seen things that she didn’t want to see again."

She also feels that the tour of duty in Afghanistan had a longer lasting effect on her daughter:

"I wouldn't say she'd changed, but she was infinitely more worldly.

"Despite what they do in their three terms at Sandhurst, it doesn't really prepare them for the change of culture.

"The people of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the things they do to each other is absolutely horrendous, it's awful."