Falklands veteran Simon Weston believes that the only similarity between the battle he was involved in 28 years ago and the one raging in Afghanistan today is the number of those who have now died in each.

Weston, who was left badly scarred by burns when the ship he was serving on was bombed by Argentine forces in 1982, said he and his comrades had at least faced a conventional enemy fighting the same way that they were.

By contrast, he said, those serving in Afghanistan deal with a war of attrition which sees an unseen enemy who is not afraid to die play a game of cat and mouse using deadly roadside bombs.

Asked last year about the differences between flying in Afghanistan and the Falklands, he said the intensity was more than he remembered from the conflict with Argentina.