As an Army wife and sister of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, Moira Russell has written a moving letter to The Northern Echo championing the troops’ role in that country. She talks to Steve Pratt.

AYEAR to the day after her brother, Sergeant Major Michael “Mick”

Smith, went on his last, ill-fated tour to Afghanistan – only a month away from his retirement from the Army after 24 years’ service – Moira Russell’s husband arrived for duty in that country with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

There was, she says, never any question of him not going there “because we know what Michael would have said – ‘get on with it’.”

Sgt Major Smith, 39, died from injuries sustained when a grenade was fired at the UK base on March 8, 2007, in Sangin in Helmand Province.

Some 1,500 family, friends and Army personnel attended his funeral at Liverpool Cathedral.

He is gone, but far from forgotten, and the reason mother-of-two Moira Russell, of Catterick Garrison, feels aggrieved when hearing military casualties referred to as “another needless waste of life in Afghanistan”.

As someone whose life has been touched more than others by the conflict, and in the light of public calls for our troops to be brought home, she felt compelled to defend brother Mick and every other soldier’s role in the war.

“The public really need to be told why the boys and girls are there, because I just feel that they’re not going to support the war if they don’t know what it’s all about,” she says.

“Every time you hear of a death you feel devastated for the family of those who are killed, and that will never go away, but I know why Michael was there and even if people disagree, they should be behind the troops 100 per cent.

It’s to prevent terrorism on the streets.

“Even if a soldier doesn’t know the reason he is there, they took an attestation to the Crown and carry out the commands of war the government gives them, although I’m sure there are soldiers out there who don’t believe in it.”

This 47-year-old Army wife talks with enormous pride and fond memories of her brother.

She shows me a video of his Army life compiled by his colleagues in the 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, and the framed citation when he was Mentioned in Despatches for gallantry.

She reads me a passage from a book about the fight against the Taliban in Helmand Province in which the grenade attack that killed her brother is vividly described. She has kept it from her parents, as they would be upset reading the full details of Mick’s injuries.

As someone approaching his 40th birthday and who’d joined up at 17 after a spell as a furniture maker, Mick was something of a mentor to the younger soldiers. Those colleagues and friends, as well as the Army itself, gave the family marvellous support in the wake of his death, she says.

He was “a great uncle” to her children, Joe, 13, and Jenny, 11. She says: “He was a great example.

I was always saying to the children when they were doing cross country – if you’re feeling tired, think of your Uncle Mick. He used to run for miles and will give you a little bit of inspiration to go on. Mick used to say you are only as fit as your last 30 miles,” she recalls.

“ People will tell you he’s the fittest soldier they knew.”

Her comments seem even more important after the latest casualties, which have intensified criticism of Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan, with the Prime Minster describing the mission as a patriotic duty to keep the streets of Britain safe from terrorist attack.

In her moving letter to The Northern Echo, Mrs Russell argues that our engagement in Afghanistan is only right and proper: ❛ITRULY believe that Hear All Sides correspondent JM Gowland (HAS, July 7) is loyal to our troops, a decent person, one who truly believes in right from wrong. But please do not say “another needless waste of life in Afghanistan”.

I wish the public would understand why our troops are risking their precious lives on a daily basis. We have had the 9/11 and the 7/7 attacks and, my God, my heart goes out to the victims of such atrocities but don’t you realise, this is why our boys and girls are out in Afghanistan, gritting their teeth for the next terrifying instalment which the Taliban has laid out for them on their territory in the “dead of night”?

The terrorists, they don’t play a fair game.

Our troops are out in Afghanistan to bring independence to the local communities; to allow the terrorised villagers, those who have the gumption to stand up to the Taliban, to become independent.

It is through irrigation and protection of the dams, feeding the water into the communities, that they have a choice.

The elders have the most admirable courage to stand up to the Taliban and, believe me, they suffer terribly at their hands. The lives of their children and families mean nothing to the Taliban.

They terrorise villages.

THE villages which grow crops and not poppies run the risk of death. The Taliban want the opium from the poppy fields (ironically) which they need to sell in order to make money, set up their training camps, buy ammunition and produce bombs.

They also indirectly pay the networks which, in turn, will recruit the naive young Muslims in our country and elsewhere, who are brainwashed into becoming part of the cells which would then attempt to cause destruction of the streets of our homeland through terrorism.

My precious brother was killed in Afghanistan during the spring onslaught of March 2007. He was four weeks away from his retirement after 24 years service, aged 39. He was an Army Commando and was proud to do his job. He wouldn’t have wished to have been anywhere else at the time.

He was Mentioned in Despatches in July 2007 for gallantry, but that is not why we are so very proud of him. We were proud of him before.

I am an Army wife. My husband went to Afghanistan a year to the day that my brave brother started his last tour. I had no hesitation in him going. We believe in what is right – the protection of our own land, as well as that of those who are being terrorised.”