'He told us he just wanted to come home'

A few days ago the mother of a young soldier in the Black Watch spoke of her fears for her son's safety and of his own worries as the regiment prepared to move into the "triangle of death".

Helen Lowe's worst fears have been realised. Her son, 19-year-old Paul Lowe, was one of the three soldiers killed in yesterday's attack.

Mrs Lowe was too upset to speak today and was being comforted by relatives at the family home in Kelty, Fife.

This is what she said in that interview. "We are sick with worry and do not know what to do. Not knowing is absolutely terrible. It is a living nightmare."

Along with the rest of the regiment, Paul had been due home on leave when they were given their new posting. In a poignant final email to his family he wrote: "I just want to get home."

Mrs Lowe said in her interview: "Paul was due to arrive back on Sunday, so you can imagine just how tough this has been for us all. He's only 19 and he says he's had enough - he just wants to come home."

For hundreds of other families of Black Watch soldiers, now is a bleak time of waiting and hoping and fearing the worst. James Buchanan, 56, of Arbroath, Angus, whose two sons Gary, 32, and Craig, 27, are serving in Iraq, said: "When you hear news like this it puts the shivers through you. I spend all the time worrying, 'Is it to be one of my sons?' Or you wonder whose brother or whose husband will be next."

Rob Scott, 61, has an 18-year-old grandson, Private Charles Scott, in Iraq, the fifth generation to serve with the Black Watch.

Like other relatives he felt the regiment had done its bit in Iraq and was being unfairly asked to do more. "The Americans have left a mess. They go in and break everything up and then we have to go in and fix it. They seem to be extending their area of operation as well, and a lot of families are angry about that. Geoff Hoon said they would go nowhere near Fallujah, and Blair too. It has made them even less credible," he said.

Yvonne Hanlon, 45, from High Valleyfield in Fife, said: "I'm sitting here watching the television and dreading a knock on the door.

"I won't be voting for Tony Blair again. I could never trust him after the way he has treated the lads. He tells us one thing, then does something else."

Leslie Robinson, whose son David is a mechanic attached to the Black Watch, said: "When I last spoke to him he said it was the last time he would be able to speak to me because they were moving up. They were all a bit down at first because they were due home on leave. Now this. It's just terrible as a parent, particularly for my wife. It's nearly broken her."