Shalou and other ladies, the only reassurance I can really give you is that Defence holds onto this sort of information very tightly, the family always hears first, and friends & coworkers etc tend to find out pretty quickly from that point on...well before the media gets wind of it. And it's in days like this that you just have to remind yourself how well trained and well equipped our forces are. They are a lot more clever in the way they go about things - so our people are much safer in that regard than many of the other country's forces who are serving the same country. You just have to take a deep breath and remind yourself of that and don't dwell on the what-ifs.

I can't agree more with MD. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. If you compare the numbers (broken down as a percentage), Australia suffers far less casualties than any other country. This has to be attributed to the training that our men and women endure.

Ali - my DH was serving with the bushfires and I worried about him all the time - even though it wasn't a combat situation, the threats were very real and very dangerous - just a different kind of dangerous...