Honouring 'The Fallen'

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Camari Babakobau widow of Pte Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau, who died in May By Fiona Leach BBC News Three hundred British troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in seven years - a death toll film-maker Morgan Matthews set out to honour in a three-hour programme. What drove him to make such a harrowing documentary?

For a year Morgan Matthews has been on a mission to reconnect the British public with the human cost among British forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was 12 months ago that he started work on an ambitious TV programme to chronicle all those who have died for Queen and country in these ongoing wars.

Matthews recalls well how the project crystallised in his head. He had been "flicking through a newspaper" and noticed "on about the fourth or fifth page... a report of the latest British service personnel to be killed, with a small thumbnail picture and a couple of paragraphs". 300 DEAD IN SEVEN YEARS <a class="" href="/1/hi/uk/7616301.stm">British military fatalities in Afghanistan</a><a class="" href="/1/hi/uk/3847051.stm">British military fatalities in Iraq</a>

This increasingly "generic way" of reporting soldiers' deaths seemed, to him, to be inevitably accompanied by a growing public indifference to those deaths.

"I felt the public were in some way becoming desensitised to this loss. And this is a loss that is essentially happening in our name," he says, in an echo of the ubiquitous slogan in the build up to the Iraq war.

The film names every British serviceman and woman to have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since those wars began in 2001 and 2003 respectively. It also features interviews with the families and loved ones of many of those killed.

It was an immense task that saw Matthews and his team try to contact the next of kin of each casualty from both conflicts, doing so via the different regiments involved. Despite the sensitive nature, the reactions of loved ones was broadly positive, and Matthews found the experience humbling.

"It was a real honour to hear people's stories, to be invited into their homes and for them to share their feelings with us." They don't like being asked 'was it worth it?' Nobody would say, 'yes, it was worth losing my son or my daughter Morgan Matthews

Yet whether he intended it or not, the film can be seen as a kind of redress to an otherwise headline-chasing media which seems to want to talk to the families only if, in Matthews' words, "there's some kind of controversy attached to the death or their son, daughter or loved one".

But the subject of a loved one's death is not, in families' views, a matter for politics.

"They don't like being asked 'was it worth it?' Because, of course, it's never worth losing a son over. Whether they believe we're over there for the right reasons is another thing. But nobody would say, 'yes, it was worth losing my son or my daughter'."

It was Matthews' aim to "go beyond that" and give the families what he calls a "neutral space" in which to air their feelings.

The film takes the viewer into family homes the length and breadth of the UK. In one scene, a little girl sings the song she has written for her father. In another, grandparents show the video diaries sent by their grandson.

Jokes amid pain

To the degree that politics does enter the film, Matthews says the documentary reflects "a mixed set of opinions" on the rights and wrongs of these post-9/11 conflicts. This, he adds, is because those same families "are the British public". FIND OUT MORE... The Fallen is broadcast on BBC Two at 2105 GMT on Saturday 15 NovemberOr watch it after that on the BBC <a class="" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/">iPlayer</a>

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken more British soldier's lives than the 250 lost in the Falklands war. At the time of writing, a total of 124 servicemen and women have been killed in Afghanistan, since the start of that war in October 2001.

In Iraq, the death toll is even higher, with 176 killed since the March 2003 invasion - although, with operations scaled down there, it has been several months since the last death.

The figures, which include non-combat deaths, make bleak reading, yet remarkably there is some humour in the film. Matthews recalls attending soldiers' funerals where people would be telling jokes.

"In this country, there's a strong cultural tradition of remembering people with humour. But underneath the humour there is an incredible sense of pain."

Three hours' worth of footage, depicting the lives of those left behind by war, will be a valuable resource to future historians. But what made the experience invaluable for Matthews was the ability, "in some small way", to reconnect the public with the "significance and magnitude and legacy" of those losses for the families concerned.

"When I hear news, as I did this morning, of two people who have died, I think of them as people. And I think about the families behind them."

The Fallen is broadcast on BBC Two at 2105 GMT on Saturday 15 November