CT: Because that's quite a strain isn't it?

PE: It is and even from my own experience - I've been blessed with a very strong marriage - but it is difficult when you come back from operations and you've been away for several months and you come in and disrupt everything, you disrupt the routine.

And if you're not careful you can think there's something wrong with your marriage when it's not that, it's just that you've been away for a long time, you've seen some pretty awful things, and your wife has been struggling with the children. Of course, sometimes it's the other way around, the wife has been deployed and it's the husband that has been left behind.

And also it's important to pray for the children of those in the Forces, because children are not stupid, they know what's going on. Although they sometimes pick up the wrong end of the stick. When I was deployed in Bosnia, the mail system wasn't working very well and when another day went by without a bluey from me popping through the door, my son looked up at my wife and said 'Daddy's dead'. I'm really glad that for once in his life he was wrong!

But there is an impact on kids and from a certain age they know what's going on and it affects them.

CT: What would you like society to be mindful of as we mark Remembrance Day?

PE: I think for me in the past Remembrance Day has been about the tremendous sacrifice that people have given in the past, but now it is also the sacrifice that is being given today. And I think it's really important that the nation understands that there are ordinary men and women out there on the frontline. And regardless of the politics of it all, they are there effectively to defend our nation and are undergoing tremendous pressure and stress and some of them are paying with their lives or serious injuries and it is really important to pray for people to remember that it is going on today.

One of the things I think our people really value is a sense that the nation is behind them. It's not good when soldiers come home and people jeer at them in the streets or spit on them. Because then they think "Why am I doing this?"

I wonder if, for people coming back with war trauma, that sense that the nation is behind them is part of the healing process, that whatever they've been through they feel that it was worth it because people value what they've done?

It would also be good if people could pray for people to have a better understanding of what the Forces do on the ground. It would be really good if people had a better idea of what they were up to and what life was about. We sometimes miss the brilliant work that people are doing on the medical side, the logistics side, the communications side.

So it's important that the nation shows it is behind them. The Forces Prayerline is a part of the nation saying we are behind you, we are praying for you. But there are other ways to show that solidarity. One padre organised for the church in his area to send a card on Remembrance Day to the soldiers in his unit and apparently that was a real morale lifter.

CT: I can imagine the troops feel a bit forgotten sometimes with the financial crisis dominating the headlines.

PE: Something that dispirits our soldiers is that it is not only about fighting. A lot of our soldiers are doing really good work in the sense that they are helping to rebuild Iraq, rebuild Afghanistan. They are building schools, they are helping to build water systems and to deliver supplies to people. But very often the news doesn't report that, it focuses on the fighting because that's what people want to read about. But in all of that we miss all the really valuable things being done on the ground in support of the local population. And that's ultimately why we are there. To try and rebuild countries and make them stronger, to help rebuild communities, so they can support themselves, to be secure and have the sort of benefits that we enjoy in the West.