A Mother's Worst Nightmare

Captain Terry Marsh decided to walk the short distance from his house to Mrs Bishop's. The morning was bright and the exercise pacifying. He glanced at his notes: Monica Bishop, mother of three: Odette, Nicky and Blair; Blair the only boy, aged 19. First husband, John, divorced. Second husband, Colin, deceased.

"I regret to inform you" - too abrupt? "I'm sorry to inform you ..." But perhaps "inform" sounded officious, like the wording of a letter from the council. "I have some bad news" - what an understatement. Captain Marsh hesitated on the doorstep. "I regret to inform you that your son has been killed. He died by the roadside, shortly after midnight." He glanced at his notes out of nerves not necessity and, raising a hand, rapped on the door.

A plane is due to arrive at RAF Brize Norton today carrying British dead on the final stage of repatriation. Families of those killed will have been treated, over the past 10 days, to what the military calls "delivery of the covenant" - the pledge given to a soldier that in the event of his death, his family will be cared for. What constitutes care has been codified through years of trial and error, into a system based on speed, accuracy, compassion and, to a surprising extent given the reputation of the military, flexibility. When a member of the armed forces dies on duty, a vast machinery whirs into action which within hours boils down to an officer, standing on a doorstep somewhere, his heart in his shoes. He is a man at the top of a high human pyramid, the wind in his ears - supported by many, but very much alone.

On the morning of Friday, August 19 1988, Monica Bishop took her 19-year-old son Blair shopping in Birmingham. He wanted a distressed leather jacket, which they couldn't find in his home town of Hereford. It was the last day of Blair's leave from serving in Northern Ireland with the Royal Shropshire Light Infantry and he was returning with mixed feelings. Blair loved the army - his late father, Colin, had been a member of the Special Air Services - but the hostile reception they got in Ulster confused him. When his mum washed his uniform, he asked her not to hang it out on the line.

At four o'clock, Monica Bishop put her son on the train. "Big, lovable Blair Bishop, steady as a rock," is how his commanding officer described him at the memorial service. On Saturday morning, Mrs Bishop woke to the news that an army transport coach, travelling on the A5 between Ballygawley and Omagh had been blown up and eight soldiers killed. When, at 10am, she answered the door to a man in army uniform, she didn't wait for him to speak. "You get this feeling, I suppose," she says. "When Blair's daddy died, a policeman knocked on the door. I could tell from the uniform and his expression that this was the same thing. So I told Captain Marsh what he'd come to tell me. He said afterwards I made life so much easier for him because as he was walking to the door he didn't know quite how he was going to say it. He said it was the first time he'd ever done anything like this."

Ministry of Defence protocol for breaking news of a soldier's death to the next of kin has moved on. It is now unusual for the officer charged with the duty to arrive at the house in uniform. A suit is thought to be less alarming for the family, unless they live in a barracks, where all army personnel wear uniform. It is never, as it sometimes used to be, done over the phone - more than one trip will be made, if necessary, to inform the parents and the partner.

At the end of last year, the term "next of kin" was replaced by "emergency contact", to reflect the changing nature of families. Soldiers can nominate whomsoever they choose, a girlfriend, for example, as a priority contact. For reasons of expediency, personnel chiefs also lifted the ban on waking families in the middle of the night. Before the era of 24-hour news this was thought to be unnecessarily traumatic, but now the knock on the door comes at any time. "We don't compete with Sky News," says a senior army personnel coordinator, "since speed for us is subordinate to accuracy. The mobile phone is a marvellous bit of kit, but thoroughly dangerous for my notification chain."

Pressure to get news to families fast is one of the biggest sources of tension in the procedure.

Anyone who stays in the armed forces long enough will inevitably have to perform the rotational duty of the casualty notification officer (CNO), the person sent to break news of incapacitation, illness or injury (known as a "Triple I") or death. In the case of the army, CNOs are sent out by the 24-hour casualty response unit at Upavon, Wiltshire. Since army families don't all live within easy reach of regimental headquarters, the CNO could be retired, or a member of the Territorial Army, or in extreme cases, from one of the other armed services. It takes a couple of hours for news of a soldier killed in action to reach home from the Gulf: divisional headquarters inform joint force logistic headquarters, who, after doing some checks, send a flash signal via the military's satellite communications system to Upavon. This takes nine to 15 minutes. Personnel at Upavon look up the soldier on the wired army manning index, which lists his - or her - emergency contacts and any requests he or she might have made, such as hymns for the funeral. A call is made and the officer sets out.

On a morning in June 1982, Freda McKay was at work in the personnel department of British Steel, South Yorkshire. At 9.30am the phone rang. Mrs Patton - "Major Patton's wife" - whom McKay had met a couple of times at army do's, said hello. She was with Mrs McKay's daughter-in-law, she said, which made no sense at all. Then she said: "I'm very sorry to tell you that Ian's been killed. He died very courageously." After that, says McKay, she "can't remember a great deal" other than work colleagues diving to catch her as she slumped from her chair. Her 29-year-old son had been killed on Mount Longdon, in the Falklands, while storming an Argentinian bunker with fellow members of the Parachute Regiment. It was two days before the end of the war. "There was no bereavement counselling in those days" she says, (it is offered as a matter of course now). "But I think I found my own way."

In the US, the cradle of counselling, a minimum of three people always attend a serious notification. Contrary to the British approach, US Army guidelines recommend full "Class A" uniform for informing what it calls PNOK (primary next of kin) of a soldier's death. In the US, the CNO is called a "briefer", his duty of notification "the mission", and the two people who accompany him - a clergy- man and a casualty assistance officer, the "presentation team". They are advised to "avoid a military briefing technique. Instead, consider a conversational style to present the facts to the family", and are encouraged to use maps and graphics as "they are always received well". In the event of accidental death, the briefer is reminded not to "jeopardise the army's litigation posture by admission of liability".

The British armed forces take a slightly more informal approach. There is no script, no formal way to introduce the news, no preparatory role-playing. The CNOs - who may be accompanied by a clergyman - are advised to be as human as possible, while remaining detached, and to be ready for anything. Experienced CNOs say that most families go into immediate shock and take the news passively. Occasionally, however, there is anger: officers experienced in this duty warn juniors to be prepared to be expelled from the house, possibly through the front window (this has only happened once). CNOs are not allowed to drive themselves to the location. When they return to HQ, they are made to sit down and talk their experience through.

"As the car turns into the road and stops, your whole stomach turns to bloody water," says one experienced CNO, who has notified several families of a death during this war in the Gulf. "You go to that front door and inside there's a television on and you can see it reflected through the window and all the normal trappings of suburban life in England are going on. And you know that you're just about to bombshell someone's life. It is an awful moment."

"I once did it out in Singapore," says Major Jeremy York, of the Shropshire and Herefordshire Light Infantry. "You don't know how people will react. It could be total shock or it could be total fury. It is very stressful. It is getting the balance right between being totally human and not being sucked into their emotional state. Being compassionate, but retaining an element of detachment."

Freda McKay had no complaints about the way in which she learned of her son's death. "Major Patton's wife did it well. It's no good cloaking it with words and that. It's irrelevant how you get that kind of news."

For the most part, Monica Bishop says she has been well served by the army. Captain Marsh was a godsend, she is still in touch with him - he was both her CNO and CVO, casualty visiting officer, the officer assigned to help the family in the longterm. The one shortfall was a visit she received some weeks after Blair's death, from an officer whose duty it was to assess how much compensation she was due. He asked her to estimate how much Blair spent on Christmas and birthday presents per year, and whether he paid her housekeeping. "That was one of the worst points," she says. "So insensitive." She threw him out. Later, £1,000 was paid into her account. "You get these vicars and what have you - and they mean well - who say that time heals. It doesn't do any such thing. What happens is, you learn to cope. You get used to waking up every morning and facing it."

Blair's distressed leather jacket still hangs in her closet.

"Facing it," of course, is the army's typifying gesture. "We don't go in for this 'pull yourself together attitude'," says the veteran CNO who now counsels less experienced officers for the duty. "The modern army is about compassion. It understands that notification is extraordinarily difficult. But then sometimes, people have to swallow hard, step forward and do their duty."