How many times do we ‘kill’ our casualties in Afghanistan? Last Friday, the 100th British soldier this year from the Helmand theatre of war was buried with full military honours at St Mary’s Lowe House Church in St Helens, Merseyside.
Christopher Davies was a 22-year-old Irish Guardsman killed in a Taliban ambush in Helmand Province on 17 November.
He’s now a poignant statistic in the increasingly unpopular Western war against the Taliban insurgency. Yet his death – and that of fellow soldiers – may be reported up to five separate times each, leading to public perceptions of the casualty list being bigger than the reality thanks to the ‘media multiplication effect’. Writes John Mair…
