A soldier’s tale

This picture is, for me, one of the most haunting images of the Afghanistan war – Sally Thorneloe at her husband’s funeral last week.  Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, who was killed by a Taleban roadside bomb three weeks ago, told me about her when we were on a trip to Iraq last summer. It’s weird, he said, he felt he saw her less working in London than he did on deployment. That day we left for the trip, he had arrived home at 2.30am – and left at 7am. Sally had seen him off. “Did you work as late as he did last night?” she asked the special adviser who had dropped by Rupert’s house to pick him up. But no-one worked like Rupert: 7am to 10pm every day. Then, he was military attaché to Des Browne- a bureaucratic job, but he approached it as if he were fighting on the frontline.