UK soldier wrote home 'every day'

Christopher Reed and Heather Crosby planned to marry in September

The fiancee of a Devon soldier killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on New Year's Day said they wrote letters to each other every day.

Sjt Christopher Reed, 25, a reservist with the 6th Battalion The Rifles, based in Exeter, was killed on routine patrol in Helmand province.

He and student Heather Crosby got engaged on the day before he left the UK and were due to marry in September.

Ms Crosby, 21, said they met three years ago through the Territorial Army.

We had our whole life mapped out, and the memories we shared together will live forever in my heart Heather Crosby

Ms Crosby, who said her fiance was a "true hero", said: "Christopher and I wrote letters to one another every day, we always knew what each other were up to and what we were both thinking.

"One letter in particular stood out from the rest - the letter I received which he had written in the local dialects of Pashtu and Dari.

"This letter just proves that he believed in his job, and showed all the effort he went to when it came to the locals.

"The local dialects translated meant 'Heather is beautiful', Chris was always full of loving surprises.

"We had our whole life mapped out, and the memories we shared together will live forever in my heart.

"He will always be a part of me."

Sjt Reed wrote to Heather in local Afghan dialects

Ms Crosby, a final year student in merchant shipping at the University of Plymouth, was working on a ship in the Falkland islands when she heard the news of her fiance's death.

The couple got engaged last September: "He proposed to me down on Plymouth Hoe," said Ms Crosby.

"It was a beautiful sunny day, it was gorgeous."

Sjt Reed, from Plymouth, had been due to return to the UK on leave later this month, when they hoped to finalise the arrangements for their wedding.

Ms Crosby said: "Pretty much everything was booked, the venue, the church, the dress was bought, along with the veil and the tiara.

"There wasn't really anything left to do apart from buy the wedding rings and book the honeymoon."

She said she had been feeling very "up and down" since she returned to the UK, but had been receiving "lots of support" from her friends and family.

Sjt Reed is the 138th member of British forces to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001.