Mourners pay their respects as the coffins of Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40, Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, from the Grenadier Guards, Corporal Steven Boote, 22, Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from the Royal Military Police, and Serjeant Phillip Scott, 30, from 3rd Battalion The Rifles pass through the village of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire during their repatriation _300
AS GAYNOR Lawrence watched the smart young soldiers walk proudly into their home base, she allowed herself to suspend reality for a moment.
“I walked around the corner and saw them there in their uniforms and thought – he’s coming home,” says Mrs Lawrence. “Then I just broke down.”
Mrs Lawrence, from Wirral, had gone to see the Light Dragoons regiment return to their Norwich base, without her 22-year-old son Phillip.
He died on July 27 after he was caught in an explosion while driving his Scimitar armoured vehicle.
The father-of-one was the first person from Wirral to die fighting in Afghanistan.
Today Mrs Lawrence will go to his graveside in Landican cemetery, Arrowe Park, with other family members.
“I wanted to be with him on Armistice day,” she says. “He has not even got his headstone yet but he’s there and as his mum I want to be with him.
“We are going to release a red balloon with personal messages from us all pinned to it. Some of us went to the West Kirby memorial which has had his name added to it on remembrance Sunday too.
“It was horrendous in some ways watching the rest of the Dragoons come home. Reality hit me in the face like a steam train.
“All his friends from the regiment we’re brilliant though. There was a service and then a plane dropped hundreds of poppies over the base. It was lovely. Whenever I broke down one of the lads would come over and put his arms around me.
“I’ve lost a son but I think I adopted 50 that day.”
Despite struggling to come to terms with her son’s death, Mrs Lawrence does not blame the Army or the Government for the circumstances which led to him being killed.
“He was doing the job he wanted to do, they all are,” she says. “As his mum I took him to sign up and I went along, proud as anything, to watch him pass out in Winchester. I cannot put the Army down because I was proud of him being a soldier, but it’s just so hard.
“In a way you think they are invincible.
“Because they are in the army anyway you get used to them being away, but you know they will get leave. Now the realisation is sinking in that this is forever. I’m never going to see him again. It’s heartbreaking.
“At Norwich the Light Dragoons pulled out all the stops for us – they were great. They put us up in a house on base, and I wanted to see a tank like the one he died in so they took me to see one.”
