The e-mail, classified ¡°Nato Secret¡± was published in the Daily Mail after being leaked to a Conservative MP by an MoD official.

A report by another senior officer in freshwater pearl Afghanistan, written on July 10, was also leaked. It reads: ¡°Aviation has been erratic throughout this week. This has forced us to conduct more road moves than I would like. I understand the strains in the fly programme but any improvement would greatly assist.¡±

The officer says he had received only the helicopters he had asked for that week, and complained that Viking armoured vehicles were being overused because of helicopter shortages.

Adam Holloway, the former Grenadier Guards officer who received the e-mails, told the newspaper: ¡°What a heart-wrenching irony it is that Colonel Thorneloe wrote those words.

¡°It must have been terrible for him as the commander of wholesale pearl earrings 800 men to know that their lives were being put in danger because the Government, in whose name he had taken them to war, would not spend the money to make it safer for them to move across country.¡±

He added that defence chiefs ¡°should be ashamed ¡ª hopefully now they will at last do the right thing and get our troops off the roads and into the air where they are safer.¡±

Colonel Thorneloe, who had two young daughters with his wife Sally, said in an interview with The Times days before his death: ¡°The mission itself is one that people do believe in.¡±

Soon after Colonel Thorneloe¡¯s death, on July 22, Gordon Brown said at his monthly press conference: ¡°In the operations we are having at the moment it is completely wrong to say that the loss of lives has been caused by the absence of helicopters.¡±

Yesterday Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said: ¡°My thoughts remain with the family and friends of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, who was a courageous soldier and a fine man. Our brave forces deserve the very best equipment and we pearl jewelry sets remain determined to provide it.

¡°We know the value of helicopters on operations, and that commanders could do more with more. That is why we have increased the numbers and types, improved engines and almost doubled flying hours. To counter the roadside bomb threat we have also been improving unmanned air surveillance.¡±

The British commanding officer who was killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb in July had only weeks previously warned that troops would die because helicopter shortages were forcing them to travel by road, it was reported last night.

In an e-mail sent to military commanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe said that helicopter operations in Afghanistan were ¡°not fit for gemstone jewelry purpose¡±.

Colonel Thorneloe, 39, Commander of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, died with Trooper Joshua Hammond on July 1 when their convoy was blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED) during a patrol north of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province.

The colonel was the most senior officer to have been killed in the Afghanistan campaign.
Related Links

On June 5, in his ¡°Battle Group Weekly Update¡± to the Ministry of freshwater loose pearl Defence, he wrote: ¡°I have tried to avoid griping about helicopters ¡ª we all know we don¡¯t have enough.

¡°We cannot not move people, so this month we have conducted a great deal of administrative movement by road. This increases the IED threat and our exposure to it.¡±

Colonel Thorneloe wrote that he had ¡°virtually no¡± helicopters of the type needed to move troops by air rather than road. He wrote: ¡°The current level of SH [support helicopter] support is therefore unsustainable.¡±

In an assessment of Nato operations in Afghanistan, he concluded that the system for managing helicopter movements in the country ¡°is very clearly not fit for freshwater pearl earrings purpose¡±. He added that helicopter operations in Iraq ¡°were managed in a more flexible, efficient manner¡±.

There is little prospect that fishermen will show any restraint. They know if they do not catch the anchovies, someone in the freshwater pearl strand next boat will.

That person may be well Mr Wright. He said: ¡°We are looking for lots of small silver fish to put in one of our tanks and this may be the perfect opportunity.¡±

Anchovies are a cousin of the sardines and pilchards that once provided the mainstay of the West Country fishing industry

Millions were caught, pressed and preserved in salt fo r twisted pearl necklace export around the world until overfishing drove them to the brink of extinction as a commercial species in the early 20th century

Numbers have never recovered and neither has the fishing industry in Devon and Cornwall

Although pizza chefs have given anchovies a reputation for being tiny, adults can grow up to 40cm

They are found in all oceans, but are most common in temperate waters. Anchovies dislike very cold or very warm seas

Their body shape changes depending on where you find them The shell pearl jewelry further north, the more slender

Strong flavour makes them a popular choice for sauces, most famously, Worcestershire sauce

The fishermen have been spending 12 hours a day at sea searching for more anchovies using their sonar. The tiny silver fish are worth about ¡ê2,000 a tonne. Because they are not normaly found in commercial quantities in British waters there is no wish pearl jewelry British quota restricting catches.

Mr Bartlett added: ¡°We are worried about the French and Spanish coming over, as it could become a free-for-all.¡±

Jim Portis, chief executive officer of the South Western Fish Producers Organisation, said a shortage of anchovies elsewhere meant the fish were attracting big prices at market. He first got wind of the shoal as it moved into the Channel. ¡°Some of my colleagues said the anchovies were on the way about a month ago,¡± he said.¡°It was predicted they would arrive off the pearl beads South Devon area. I passed that information on to the sprat fisherman.

¡°The French were following them and I have heard that a lot of the Cornish pilchard fishermen are going to be heading to South Devon.¡±

Anchovies are not the only unusual visitors to English waters, according to Jim Wright, a senior biologist at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. He said: ¡°Several almaco jacks were caught in the Bristol Channel last week and they are not often seen in British waters. We have also had a few loggerhead turtle much farther north than usual.

¡°This is likely to be because of variations in the freshwater pearl pendant  Gulf Stream which has been running further northwards this year.¡±

A vast shoal of anchovies tempted north by unseasonably warm sea temperatures is providing an unexpected bonanza for West Country fishermen whose traditional livelihood has all but disappeared.

Rumours of unprecedented catches began spreading round the Devon fishing port of Brixham earlier this week. The crews of two sprat boats managed to pearl jewelry haul in 36 tonnes of anchovies in only two days, worth an estimated ¡ê72,000.

Fisheries experts had been tracking the giant shoal, which would normally be in the Bay of Biscay at this time of year, for the past four weeks. French fishermen reported large catches of anchovies off Brest as the shoal headed round the coast of Brittany and up the Channel.

Brixham¡¯s deputy harbour master Dave Bartlett said the fishermen had been reluctant to talk about their haul for fear of attracting competition from across the freshwater pearl necklace Channel but could not hide the huge smiles on their faces.

The first boat back was The Constant Friend, which caught 18 tonnes of anchovies on Wednesday. Another vessel, The Girl Rhona, hauled in 14 tonnes and the two boats caught a further four tonnes between them on Thursday.

Mr Bartlett said: ¡°We heard what they¡¯d caught over the pearl beads radio way before they came back in. There were a lot of happy faces.¡±