Service families get opportunity of a holiday after loss

The Families Activity Breaks project aims to send up to 100 groups away to destinations across the country.

Volunteers from the three services and defence civilians will help run the initiative, piloted last year, by lending a hand or simply providing a sympathetic ear for the grieving wives, sons and daughters.

Veterans Minister Kevan Jones, who launched the initiative with the Duchess of Gloucester at the Ministry of Defence in London, said: "I spent a day with families at one of last year's activity breaks and it was a very moving experience."

He added: "Having experienced the enormous power of these breaks I am a very great supporter, and thank the Youth Hostel Association for their magnificent support."

The breaks were piloted last summer when 24 families went to Whitby in North Yorkshire and Coverack in Cornwall.

Lucy Aldridge, whose 18-year-old son Rifleman Will Aldridge became the youngest British soldier to be killed in the Afghan conflict, was one of the first mothers to take part in the trials.

Her son, of 2nd Battalion The Rifles, died along with four colleagues when their foot patrol was hit by two separate blasts near the town of Sangin last July.

Rifleman Aldridge, from Herefordshire, was trying to rescue colleagues when he was killed by the second bomb.

His mother said her two younger children "benefited hugely" from spending time with children who had suffered a similar loss.