Carla Cuthbertson and son Nathan, 19, killed in 2008

On the day six more British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, a heartbroken Army mother yesterday begged David Cameron to pull British troops out of Afghanistan. She spoke as youngest son Connan, 18, prepares to fly out to Helmand next year.

In an emotional letter to the PM, Carla Cuthbertson wrote: “In 2008 my eldest boy Nathan was killed in Afghanistan. I believed then he had died for a noble cause. Now, as I send my youngest son to war, I beg you to end this bloodshed. No more young men and women should die in this conflict.

“Nathan did give his life for something he believed in. But when another 100 lives had been lost, I started to question why we were sending soldiers to Afghanistan. Now I feel this is not a war we’re going to win and I don’t want any more families to suffer like mine.”

Carla told how she found out about the latest deaths when she turned on her TV yesterday morning. She said the news brought horrific memories flooding back of the day she found out Nathan had been blown up.

Carla added: “The circumstances were so similar, it was just too much. Some people say we shouldn’t bring our troops home because then all those who have given their lives will have done so in vain.

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NOT only do I believe British troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan immediately, I don’t think they should have been there in the first place. History tells its own story, the actual version of what has happened there. It has been a disaster.

Afghanistan has never been about democracy. Terrorism was just a hook to hang coats from – this has always been about oil.

We have seen the human cost of what has happened. It is the people on the front line, the young soldiers, who are being killed – not the people making the decisions. These young soldiers are often enlisting because they have no other jobs available – and they are dying.

The mission to Afghanistan has failed categorically, as it was always destined to. It is time for the British troops to come home. The only resolution to the mess that has been created is an Afghan-led one. We have no place there.

“But I don’t want another parent, a wife, a child or a brother or sister to go through this torment I’m still living with four years down the line. I know what the families of those six soldiers will have gone through when they heard their loved ones had died. “I know what that knock at that door is like. It’s like somebody ripping a hole in your body. It feels as though you’re being torn inside out. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

“And whenever I see that yet more people have died it brings it back even more. We need to bring the lads and lasses out of there.”

“The pain is unbearable. People say it gets easier but it doesn’t. You learn to cope, you learn to adjust. But the longing to see Nathan and hold him gets harder as time goes by.

“I’m reminded of Nathan all the time. It’s little things. He used to love chicken fajitas and for a long time I couldn’t bear to make them. If I see them in the supermarket, it all comes back.

“He loved watching Only Fools and Horses, Red Dwarf and whenever they come on the television it brings it all back.

“He had so much to live for, just like all those other boys and girls who have died. He was handsome, popular and at 19 he was still a child. I just miss him so much.”

Carla’s growing opposition to the war that has now claimed 404 British lives since it started in 2001, stems not only from her own loss, but the stream of heartache that comes out of the country with each passing tragedy.

She said: “This war has now gone on for longer than the combined total of the two world wars. That’s ridiculous. It’s too long.

“We should bring them back, hand the country back to the Afghan people.”

A longer version of this interview appears in The Mirror

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