Two summers ago, the tiny lane that leads down to Wetheral’s picturesque parish church was filled with laughter as friends and family assembled for Sarah Bryant’s wedding to Carl, a fellow soldier in the Intelligence Corps. Tomorrow, many of them will be back to say goodbye. The first British woman soldier to die in Afghanistan is to be buried with full military honours, and hundreds of people are expected to pay tribute, from people who remember her as a child, riding her horse through the Cumbrian village, to the military top brass.

It will be a day of almost unimaginable sorrow for her 54-year-old mother, Maureen Feely: the fresh-faced young soldier, whose radiant smile adorned so many front pages after her death last month, was her only child. But Feely is drawing on the same reserve of quiet steeliness that served her daughter so well on missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tomorrow, she says firmly, “will be a day of farewells, of pride and dignity. My daughter was a proud and professional military woman – a brave and honourable soldier to her very last moment. We will miss her, but we will always be proud of her”.

Corporal Bryant, 26, had been in the army for six years. She had served two tours in Iraq and was so good at intelligence gathering that MI6 had tried to poach her. She was killed on a secret mission to meet an Afghan contact when the vehicle she was travelling in was hit by a roadside bomb. Three Territorial Army special forces soldiers, Corporal Sean Reeve, 28; Lance-Corporal Richard Lar-kin, 39; and Paul Stout, 31, died with her.

“She took the full impact of the blast, but really that’s a comfort to me,” says Feely. “I know exactly what she was like. On that day, she will have been laughing and joking with those men, keeping everybody’s spirits up. She handled every situation with laughter, has done since she was a little girl. And mercifully, she will have died instantly, with that lovely Sarah smile on her face.”

The resemblance between mother and daughter is striking, both fine-featured and feminine, yet determined and quietly steely. Those shared qualities made Bryant perfect for army intelligence. She was charming and personable but also exceptionally skilled. Most recently, she had learnt Pashtu, one of the Afghan languages, in order to track Taliban communications.

She was driven, ambitious and confident, but she still called her mother excitedly when she’d been praised by senior officers. “She wanted only to be the very finest in her field, to excel,” says Feely. “She was regarded highly by all the men with whom she served, as a soldier who knew her job; she communicated and briefed exceptionally. She was proud of that record.”

On the sofa sits a teddy bear wearing an Intelligence Corps uniform. He holds a long-stemmed silk red rose in his paws and carries a card with a message from daughter to mother, telling her she’s missed.

“We’ve always been close,” says Feely. “She always told me everything – or at least I thought so until one day, out of the blue, she called and said somebody had asked her to marry him. “I asked if ‘somebody’ had a name and how she had answered. She told me his name was Carl, they’d met in training and her answer had been ‘yes’. In fact they’d bought the ring a fortnight previously. ‘Then I suppose I should meet somebody,’ I said. I’ve never seen two young people more happy. Carl and Sarah were perfect for each other, absolutely perfect.”

Though the army tried, wherever possible, to arrange for the young married couple to spend leave time together and to be posted within travelling distance of each other when circumstances allowed, in two years of marriage they were together for only about 10 months. “But they accepted that. They both loved the work they did. It was their lives . . . their shared life. Neither complained. Carl and Sarah were like one person. They were very much in love.” Maureen last spoke to Sarah on June 15, two days before she died. She told her mother that, as her colleagues were topping up their tans outside, she was growing whiter and whiter in the shade, as she avoided searing sun and 55C heat.

“She was as chirpy and chatty, as always. Laughing about another day at the office, really. We spoke for about 20 minutes. Her calls tended to be limited because she would use her phone card to call Carl, her dad and me, sharing out time as best she could. She was due home next month. But now, of course . . . “Maybe I did have a sense of there being something different about this tour. Just a feeling. Afghanistan seems somehowdifferent to Iraq, where she also served. It seems more deeply dangerous, more brutal, particularly for Afghan women and their children.

Like something from the Middle Ages. My guess is we’ll have to be there for years.

“Sarah’s skills were particularly valuable in relating to women, but she spoke little of what her work involved, never once giving me reason to fear for her; never ever giving me cause to think this was no job for a woman . . . no job for my little girl.”

Though she is clearly devastated by her loss, Feely, who is divorced from Bryant’s father, says she wouldn’t change a moment of her daughter’s life. “Sarah died the way she knew she might,” she said. “Her life was full. It was special. She lived it exactly as she had wanted it. She has earned her place in history. Her work meant everything to her.”

And though progress in Afghanistan seems painfully slow, she is adamant that Bryant did not die in vain. “Sarah’s wasn’t a wasted life. Teenagers who drink themselves stupid and kill each other in stabbings on the streets of British cities – they waste lives. My daughter’s life was everything she’d wanted it to be. She filled it with courage, purpose, belief and dignity.”

As Bryant is buried tomorrow, there will be a volley of shots. A lone bugler will play the Last Post. Feely will struggle to stay composed. “Of course I’m not always dry-eyed. It’s very hard,” she says. “But were I to fall apart publicly and wail ‘Why me?’ I know I’d be letting her down. I owe it to Sarah not to do that.”

More than anything, her mother would like her daughter’s life and career to be an inspiration to other young women. “I want her to be remembered as a selfless, professional soldier who paid the ultimate price to make a difference to our lives,” she says. “She was my only child, my one and only, the little girl I brought up, a girl who grew to be a very special woman, a brave and wonderful soldier, committed right to the end.”

A version of this article first appeared in The Cumberland News

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