Welsh Guardsman Bleddyn Craze is frightened but focused. Tomorrow, barely a week after turning 18, he will fly to Afghanistan to join the rest of his battalion.

His mother, Lisa Richards, is also worried. Her husband, Andrew, 25, another guardsman, is already in Helmand province but her son had to wait until his birthday before he was old enough to deploy.

The death of nine soldiers in as many days has heightened the sense of tension in their semi-detached house on an estate in Merthyr Tydfil.

The punishing toll is also prompting an increasing number of people across South Wales, the heartland of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, to question the point of the eight-year campaign and call for soldiers to come back.

“I try not to cry in front of him but it is just devastating that he is going,” said Mrs Richards, 39. “I don’t think we should be out there at all. It’s just not our fight . . . I would like to see them come home now, this minute.” Guardsman Craze said the rising casualties were a concern. “It gets to you. You think, is it going to happen to you or not,” he told The Times, adding that he would feel better once he met up with his fellow guardsmen. “I just want to get on with my job.”

Tucked in between hills and surrounded by woodland, Merthyr Tydfil is a quiet town where a lack of jobs prompts a lot of young men and women to look to the military. As a result, many families have a relative, a friend, or a friend of a friend who has served in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Lydia Bevan, 45, whose daughter hopes to join the Royal Air Force, was unsettled by the losses in Afghanistan. “It made me think for the first time, what’s the point in being there? We’re the ones losing our young lads.”

The death and injury of so many soldiers is affecting everyone — 12 Welshmen have died since the start of the campaign in 2001, the vast majority this year, and many more have been wounded, some seriously.

The wives and parents of the Welsh Guards comfort each other, sending text messages and speaking on the phone. Most of the relatives live in Aldershot, where the battalion is based, but their roots are scattered across Wales, where the sense of family and community is strong.

Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, thinks that fatalities will increase calls for British troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“There is a growing sense of resentment, and there will be more after this week, as to what the hell we are doing there,” said Mr Flynn, who likened the campaign to the failed US war in Vietnam. “I believe that seeing the coffins coming home will prompt people to ask the question: Are we paying an unreasonably high blood price.” The bodies of five more servicemen were flown back to Britain yesterday.

With images of soldiers firing machineguns or jumping at the thud of an incoming rocket broadcast on television, the war in Afghanistan is on people’s minds, particularly given the Welsh effort. The Queen’s Dragoon Guards returned from a six-month deployment in May, the Welsh Guards are there now and 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh will leave in the autumn.

A number of people want troops to withdraw, believing the campaign to be futile, while others agree with Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, that the mission will help to keep terrorism off British streets.

“There is a war on and they have to protect the rights and freedoms of you and I,” said Mike Cummins, another former guardsman who runs a website called Welsh Guards Reunited, which has attracted a large following, with traffic rising by a third since the battalion deployed to Afghanistan in April.

Whether people accept or shun the politics behind the war, support for the soldiers is unwavering. Families across Wales are packing shoe boxes with treats such as boiled sweets, Pot Noodles and battery-powered mini fans. The Royal Mail sends such parcels free of charge to Helmand, provided they weigh less than 2kg. The Welsh Guards have also launched a campaign to sell green and white bracelets inscribed with “Support the Welsh Guards in Afghanistan”. About 25,000 have already been sold for a minimum of £1 each, with all proceeds going to help the injured or the families of the dead.

Determined to be strong for her husband and son, Mrs Richards is taking part in a sponsored skydive in September to raise money for Help for Heroes. “I just had this urge that I needed to do something for them,” she said.

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