Sir – Your article (October 4) featuring the return home of Royal Logistic Corps soldiers from their recent tour in Afghanistan stirred some deep emotions in me.

The soldiers and their families all highlighted in their quotations the trials and tribulations and the joys and sadnesses of deployments like this.
But the photograph which most affected me was that showing the faces of a father seeing and holding his young son for the first time and his five-month-old son being held by this stranger whom he did not yet know.


Fifty-one years ago this month I was in exactly the same position on my return from an emergency deployment to Africa.


The emotions felt by the baby boy and his father, and those like them, are very deep seated. I have never forgotten them.
David Bond, Witney