As viewers become increasingly blasé about TV reports of casualties in Iraq, soldiers from the Cheshires remind SELENA O'DONNELL why we shouldn't turn over the channel.

HOW would you describe being shot at for three hours, shoulder to shoulder with your best friends, before retreating home - only to be showered through the night with deadly mortar bombs?

According to Private Gary Roberts, of the 1st Battalion the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment, who faced just that on August 14, 2004, that was 'a really bad day'.

Pte Roberts, 21, of Handbridge, said: 'It was just after 8pm. We were lined up in a firefight for about three hours, non-stop.

'There was about 19 of us, spread out in a line about 60 metres long, and we were firing and moving up to target and then got told to withdraw.

'About five minutes later we started to get mortared.

The regiment, currently based at Abercorn Barracks in Northern Ireland, returned from a six-month tour of the war-ravaged country in November 2004.

For Pte Roberts, a Cheshires soldier for three-and-a-half years, scenes of that day in August remain burned into his memory.

'There were a couple of close ones where mortars landed by me but I never got shot, and I don't know why,' he said.

'Some of the people did get shot and had to go home. When that happens you just pray they are OK.'

Miraculously, despite being involved in some of the heaviest fighting of any UK regiment, the Cheshires did not suffer any fatalities.

It was during the last three months of their tour that the soldiers encountered almost daily attacks from Iraqi insurgents.

It's an experience Corporal Gary Stratton, 24, of Great Sutton, admits has left a profound impression on him.

'The only thing that's changed me is Iraq,' he said.

'I think that things happen for a reason now, and that if things didn't happen for a reason then I wouldn't be sitting here now.'

Taking the brunt of insurgents' attacks and coming under increasing threat from car and roadside bombs took its toll.

Cpl Stratton said: 'It's one of the reasons you join the Army, to fight. But when you are actually fighting you just want to go home.

'And that's the truth. I don't care how long you've been in or how hard you are, you just want to stay alive and go home.'

The Cheshires worked closely throughout the six months with the Royal Engineers to help rebuild the infrastructure of the war-torn country and improve community policing.

Despite these achievements, and perhaps due to the continued controversy surrounding Iraq, many of the soldiers were left disillusioned on their return home.

'We were just trying to improve the situation as much as possible in the short time that we were there,' said Lieutenant Jonno Byrne, 25, of Malpas.

'I think when you are putting yourself in harm's way, when you are doing a very dangerous job that you consider to be for your country, for the people back home, and that isn't popular, it's always going to have an effect on morale.

'Public opinion didn't reflect what the guys felt like they had achieved.'

Corp Stratton agrees, and said: 'My opinion is that when you see a British soldier being killed appearing third or fourth down in the news , then it does make you think why the hell are we doing this? Why the hell are we out there?

'If a British soldier dies and David Beckham is on the front page, you think what is the point?

'We don't glamorise death, but it would be nice to recognise it when a British soldier died doing something for his country.'