British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologised to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan after she accused him of disrespect in a sloppily-written letter of condolence, his office said Monday. Jacqui Janes, whose son Jamie, 20, of the 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards, was killed by an explosion in Afghanistan in October, received a hand-written note from Brown, which began: "Dear Mrs James".
"He couldn't even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry," Janes told The Sun newspaper. "Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie's name. "The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right. The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It's just disrespectful." Reacting to the row, Brown's official spokesman said the premier was "mortified."
"As soon as the prime minister was told about this he personally contacted the mother to make absolutely clear that he never meant any offence," said the spokesman. Brown also underlined "his deepest sympathy for her, his complete admiration and thanks for the bravery and sacrifice of her son and he said he would do whatever he could to help her at this most difficult of times." "He was deeply mortified to think he would have offended" Janes, Brown's official spokesman said.
The spokesman added: "The prime minister's handwriting is somewhat unique" and "can be capable of being misinterpreted". The report comes amid mounting public concern over the war in Afghanistan against Taliban insurgents as British troop casualties rise. Brown and military chiefs insisted Sunday the war was worth fighting, as the deaths of two more British soldiers brought a grim poignancy to Remembrance commemorations for the war dead.
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