They spend their lives waiting – for their husbands to leave for Iraq and to come back again, or for the dreaded call that will tell them that their husbands have been killed or injured.

“If the phone goes late at night, or if someone knocks on the door, that’s the first thing you think of,” said Sharon Jenkins, 32.

Maria Rees, 40, agrees. “You play it out every minute of the day, even in your dreams,” she said. “What would happen? What would you do?”

Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday, the day on which Britain honours the sacrifices of its soldiers. But for the spouses of the 500 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh, now nearing the end of their third six-month tour of duty in Iraq, it will be a bittersweet occasion.

The battalion has had three men killed this tour and more than 20 seriously injured. Moreover there was unanimous agreement among the ten wives attending a coffee morning at the battalion’s welfare office in Tidworth, on the edge of Salisbury Plain, yesterday that the public has little understanding or appreciation of what their husbands are doing.

These women are no whingers, but they also believe that the troops are overstretched and poorly recompensed, and several doubt that the war is worth it. Surprisingly, though, they had no complaints about the equipment their husbands are issued with, the care they receive when they are injured, the support given to their families, or the quality of their housing – all hot issues in the raging debate about whether the Government has broken its covenant with the military.

It was the public’s lack of appreciation that upset them most. “It’s as though they dont want to be bothered,” said Sarah Vaughan, 38.

Amanda Davies, 35, said: “People are bored of it. They don’t want to be reminded of it all the time.”

Homecoming parades would be nice, Mrs Jenkins said, but “I think communities are more concerned about the business they lose when the troops are away than ‘let’s get together and show our thanks with some party or other’.”

It may be an unpopular war, these wives say, but that is not the soldiers’ fault. “They are forgotten heroes and deserve far more coverage on the news,” Mrs Jenkins said. “If a soldier dies it’s tagged on the end of a news bulletin. But for us, when we have a death in the regiment, it hits us hard.”

The wives find this indifference from the public doubly difficult because of the hardships they are suffering – the constant worry, the disruption of family life, the coping alone for months on end as children fall ill, play up at school, celebrate birthdays without their fathers.

Mrs Jenkins said: “You get family members calling you and saying ‘I know what you’re going through. My husband has been on nights all week’. You want to reach down the phone and give them a shake.”

The women all remember the July night when the BBC breached protocol by announcing that a battalion member had been killed before his relatives had been told. For two days the welfare office was inundated with calls from frantic families.

Nor, after the initial elation, are homecomings always easy. Often husbands are tired, moody, changed. “You treat them like absolute kings for two days, and then reality sets in. You have grown so independent and do things your own way in your own time,” said Mrs Davies, the wife of the regimental sergeant major.

Julie Davies, 35, added with a laugh: “It’s a nasty thing to say but you get in a routine and they come home and spoil it – and he spends my bloody money.”

Several have suffered marital problems. Lynne Sadler, 35, who temporarily separated from her husband, said that she began to understand what he had been through – “the sights, the dead people” – only when she heard him talking to a fellow soldier.

The wives relied heavily on each other, Amanda Davies said. “If we didn’t have each other we’d fall apart.”

They say that they get great support from the regiment. They live in brand new quarters. Victoria Edwards, 28, whose husband is being treated for a shrapnel wound in the much-criticised Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, said that the place was now “brilliant – I can’t fault anything.”

But they have other complaints, such as the mere £6 extra a day that the soldiers get for serving in Iraq – Mrs Rees said: “That’s not going to compensate for his life.” Or the 30 minutes of free phone calls home each week, the amount that a British prison inmate gets. Or the fact they have to take out private insurance because the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme is inadequate. They are outraged by reports of an RAF typist who received £484,000 for repetitive strain to her thumb, whereas a soldier who lost his legs received £152,000.

As for overstretch, that was “more than evident”, said Mrs Davies, whose husband has been away for three and a half of the past ten years. The 2nd Battalion had breaks of 12 and 18 months between its three tours, but much of that time was taken up with courses and preparation.

Mrs Davies insisted, however, that the war was worthwhile. “I don’t want to feel my husband spent 18 months doing something that doesn’t count for anything.” Others disagree. “It’s not our war,” Mrs Edwards said. And Ann Roach, 50, the wife of the battalion’s padre, said: “I don’t think we should have gone in the first place, but now we have we should see it though.”

Although the wives appreciate the public’s generous response to the new Help for Heroes campaign, Remembrance Day will be far more poignant for them because they have learnt the meaning of sacrifice.

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