The mother who accused the Prime Minister of being disrespectful over the death of her soldier son has accepted his apology after he told a press conference that he understood her grief.
Last night Jacqui Janes, whose son Jamie died in Afghanistan, said she was content that the Prime Minister had looked “humble” at the press conference. It was dominated by questions about his letter to her and their conversation on Sunday evening.
Asked whether she was satisfied, Mrs Janes replied: “Yes, I am. Because he didn’t sound apologetic in the phone call; he didn’t actually apologise. He said sorry an awful lot, sorry that I didn’t understand his writing. Today he looked sincere. He looked humbled.”
In a veiled allusion to the death of his baby daughter, Gordon Brown insisted he understood the pain of families of troops killed in conflict. He again apologised for apparent errors in the handwritten message to Mrs Janes expressing condolences. The sentiments in the letter had been genuine, he said: “I’m a parent who understands the feelings when something goes terribly wrong, and I understand how long it takes for people to handle and deal with the grief we have all experienced.
“I understand very well the sadness that she feels, and the way that she has expressed her grief is something that I can also clearly understand.”
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Mr Brown said: “I wanted to say during that conversation with her, but thought I could not really do so because I do not know her, that when there is a personal loss as deep and immediate as she has experienced it takes time to recover. That loss can never be replaced — you have got to take every day at a time ... Over time, comfort comes from understanding that your son has played an important role in the security of our country and died in such a courageous way that nobody will ever forget it.”
The Sun released a recording of the telephone conversation, in which Mrs Janes described Mr Brown as “disrespectful” for appearing to spell her son’s name wrongly.
“I know every injury my child sustained that day. I know that my son could have survived but my son bled to death,” she told Mr Brown. “How would you like it if one of your children, God forbid, went to a war, where he was helping protect his Queen and country and because of lack of helicopters, lack of equipment, your child bled to death and then you had the coroner have to tell you his every injury?”
At his press conference, Mr Brown defended the provision of medical support and equipment to Forces stationed in Afghanistan. He said that he had asked for a report on the circumstances of Guardsman Janes’s death to establish whether Mrs Janes’s belief that better helicopter capability could have saved his life was right.
The Falklands veteran Simon Weston described Mr Brown’s handwritten letter to Mrs Janes as “done with the greatest of sincerity”, and not intended to damage or insult. Mr Weston urged people to keep a sense of proportion: the return of the five personnel murdered by an Afghan police officer was “far more important than something which was maybe a bit clumsy”.