"They shouldn't be over there on the front line at that age. It's bad enough for hardened soldiers, but Aaron was just a bairn. He never had enough training in the first place, not to kill people."
Mrs Karen Lincoln, mother of killed teenage soldier

Britain allows the lowest recruitment and deployment age in Europe, critics say

The day of her 17-year-old son Aaron's passing out parade in Catterick last summer is a bitter-sweet memory for Karen Lincoln. As he marched past with his regiment, 2nd Battalion The Rifles, looking every inch the professional soldier, she cheered and wept, overcome with maternal pride. But it was also then she learned her youngest son was about to be sent to Iraq.

On April 2 - eight months after the passing out parade and just five months after his 18th birthday - he became one of the youngest soldiers to die in a conflict that has claimed 148 British lives. Of those, 14 have been teenagers.

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