The Times
Jerome Starkey, in Kabul

Lieutenant-General Sir Nick Parker was on holiday when Harry, 26, was blown up in Afghanistan. The British Army’s third-most senior officer raced to Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, where his son had been evacuated from Helmand, last July.

By the time he arrived, Harry had lost his left leg. Less than two months later, when the General left for a 12-month stint in Kabul, the right leg had been amputated below the knee.

Today, the General is in command of 142,000 soldiers. As General Stanley McChrystal’s Nato deputy, General Parker, 54, routinely stood in when his commander was away. A “solid, focused” man with a dry wit, he was in charge while General McChrystal sipped one too many Bud Light Limes with a Rolling Stone journalist.

General Parker is in charge now amid the bloodiest month of the nine-year war, until General David Petreaus is approved by Congress, something which is expected to be accomplished with minimum delay.

An infantry officer by trade, General Parker was commissioned in 1973 and commanded the Royal Green Jackets from 1994-1995. He was the coalition forces’ Deputy Commanding General in Iraq from 2005 to February 2006.

He has remained guarded with journalists who have interviewed him here. Erudite, but uncomfortable with the high profile his rank sometimes requires, he was more than happy to be eclipsed by McChrystal.

He rarely talks about his son’s injuries but admits that the ordeal has coloured his perspective.

“For those intimately connected with these heartbreaking events, there can be little consolation, and at a personal level, I very much doubt that the sacrifice of their loved ones can ever be ‘worth it’,” he wrote in The Times as Britain grieved for her 300th fatality earlier this week.