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Category: Memorials

BBC Online
Photo journal: A British Widow's Story

To see it all (10 pictures) start here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/ uk_a_widow0s_story/html/1.stm

Donna Mahoney's husband Peter joined the Territorial Army - the UK's part-time reserve defence force - in 1996.
He served in Bosnia in 1998, and then, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, he was called up again. He spent six months there before coming home in July 2003.
Donna says Bosnia had been a wonderful deployment for him – "He was telling everybody about his experiences, like he was a superhero" – but he found Iraq much more disturbing

Peter came home to Carlisle, in the north of England, on 10 July 2003 - his daughter Vicky's fifth birthday.
Donna was thrilled to have him back. "He looked fantastic. He was fit, he was brown, he was muscly, he was gorgeous," she says.
But it soon became clear that Peter had changed when he was in Iraq - and so had Donna.
"I had become independent. I could change a plug or a lightbulb. He felt like a spare part," she says.

Peter told Donna he had seen terrible things in Iraq - a girl hanged as a collaborator for taking a bar of chocolate from soldiers, a child smashing another in the face with a brick to take his food.
The soldiers were told to stop giving food to children because adults would take it from them, Peter said.
"Whether this is true or not, I don't know. But this is what he told me," Donna says.

Donna and Peter had been together 22 years when he came home after Iraq.
Five weeks before his return, Donna had a one-night stand with a soldier. Peter sensed it when he came home.
"Two hours. I wish I'd never done it. I had never been unfaithful before," she says. "He said he forgave me but it didn't lie there."
Donna and Peter began to argue - and a year after he came home, he hit her.

Donna says Peter had always been a devoted father to their four children - Matthew, Ashley, Ben and Vicky.
Vicky, the youngest, was always "Daddy's little girl", Donna says.
But when she turned six a year after Peter came home, he did not even come down from his room for her birthday party until Donna asked him to.
"He came down, said 'Happy birthday', and went back upstairs again," she says.

No more football [soccer]
Peter and his sons Ashley and Ben were all fans of Arsenal football club, and before the war, Peter often took Ashley to London to see matches.
When he came home, though, he did not seem to enjoy his old pastimes, Donna says.
He watched football only by himself, and although he had loved Bonfire Night before the war, he couldn't stand it afterwards, with its fireworks and crowds.
"It freaked him out," Donna says.

On 3 August 2004 - 13 months after coming home - Peter phoned work to say his mother was ill and that he would not be coming in.
He shaved and put on his uniform, then filled his car with paperwork from Iraq, letters from Donna, photos from their wedding and more recent pictures, and cuddly toys the children had played with.
He taped up the car's exhaust pipe and started the engine. Donna found him dead at 3pm.
He was 45 years old.

The car was so full, Donna says, that Peter's suicide note was not found until four weeks later.
In it, he apologised for hurting her, listed things he wanted the children to have, said he was sorry and told them he loved them.
"You think of a widow as someone in her 60s," Donna says. "You don't expect to be a widow at 41."

Donna had Peter's body cremated, saying she could not deal with visiting a grave.
"He was very much a loner in the end. He would go off on his motorbike and we wouldn't see him for three or four hours.
"You would be on eggshells around him. You wouldn't know if he would be in a good mood or a bad mood.
"He couldn't tell me what was going on in his head. He wasn't the same man at the end."

Peter had joined the TA because he wanted to give something back to the country, Donna says.
But one of his last acts before killing himself was to take out his England earring, she says.
His eyes were wide open when she found him in the car.
"Everything was so perfect, like he was going back to Iraq," Donna says.
"By putting on his uniform and taking all his Iraq papers, he was making a statement."

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