'Tony Blair is a liar', says dead soldier's fiancee

Rebecca Barnes, also a serving soldier in Iraq who recently shook hands with the Prime Minister on a visit to British troops, broke ranks to speak out about Tony Blair's deceit after her fiancee, Sergeant Graham Hesketh died in a roadside bomb.

Just two days earlier, the sergeant had been looking forward to the couple's forthcoming wedding, when he scribbled a love letter to Miss Barnes in the back of his armoured vehicle with the simple heartfelt words: "I want us to be together 'til the day I die".

Last night his devastated fiancee sobbed as she said that Mr Blair was to blame.

"Tony Blair has taken everything. I just want to die", she said.

"I shook his hand. I wish to God I hadn't. "It's a disgrace. He's lying about what is going on out there.

"I can't believe he's sunning it up at that Bee Gees' home in Miami.It makes me sick.

"It was Graham who set the camp up for him- the podium he was standing on."

The 25-year-old army technician defied army bosses to speak out after her husband-to-be became the 127th British soldier to die in Iraq just three days after Christmas.

Sergeant Hesketh, 35, from the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment was killed when he was hit by a roadside bomb after leaving in a hurry to go on patrol without being able to say goodbye to his fiancee.

Ironically, that day Miss Barnes had stayed behind on base to fix Sergeant Hesketh's tank after it was hit in a previous attack days earlier, when he escaped uninjured.

Wearing his clothes as a sign of her love, she told the Daily Mirror: "It just doesn't seem fair, I feel cheated. Why him?

"He used to say 'I'm the happiest man in the world', we were going to get married this time next year.

"I just can't believe he's gone. He was everything to me.

"I just wish he'd taken me with him. I've nothing to live for any more."

Clutching his last letter, Miss Barnes wept as she re-read her fiancee's note to his "soulmate".

He wrote: "I'm just sat in the back of a Warrior waiting to come back to see you.

"I really love you and am missing you like mad and it's you babe, I never want to be away from you again.

"I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I so want us to be together until the day I die."

Miss Barnes, who served in the same regiment, last saw her fiancee on Boxing Day.

The couple, who had been in Iraq for eight weeks, had been planning a late homecoming Christmas party when they were due to return to the UK in March.

Last night her mother Ruby, 52, told the Mail: "She is absolutely distraught. She has not eaten, she has not slept. We are all exhausted with crying. He was like a son to me. I loved him.

"She stayed behind to fix Graham's tank and on the day he died he bought her a cup as a gift for her because he didn't get to say goodbye.

"I also got a letter from Graham the day he died. He told me to put the tree up and get some bubbly in for the homecoming. Then I had Rebecca on the phone screaming 'Graham's dead, they've killed my Graham'."

Now Miss Barnes, who was sent home to Fairburn, West Yorkshire on compassionate leave on Saturday, is preparing to travel to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where his body will be flown back on Wednesday.

The couple met in Catterick where both were stationed and got engaged shortly before being sent to Iraq a few months ago.

The sergeant, who has children, Georgia, seven, and Ben, three, from a previous relationship, had planned to buy a house with Miss Barnes before their wedding.

The latest casualty comes after a bloody December in Iraq which also saw the US death toll climb to 3,001.

On his fifth visit to British troops on December 17, Tony Blair told them: "Sometimes maybe you don't realise how much people appreciate what you do."

But yesterday Miss Barnes remained critical of conditions for soldiers: "The conditions there are terrible.

They never have a day off, not even at Christmas. They don't have any sleep. I just want our boys home."