Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, 39, was a tall and commanding figure but seemed one of a breed of gentler, more thoughtful warriors that the British Army produces.

I spent three days in his company last week and interviewed him six days before he was killed. I found him sitting next to his camp bed in the spartan surroundings of his headquarters in Forward Operating Base Argyll last Thursday evening.

Like the rest of his men, his only cover from the elements was a poncho sheet stretched overhead. He was reading a yachting magazine by the light of a red-tinted head torch, with his feet stretched out in front of him.

Yachting was a passion of his, he said, smiling and putting the magazine aside, but since his marriage, the costs of a young family had caused him to sell his boat.

He was informal and friendly, keen to help me to get to where things would be interesting, and determinedly committed to the war — one he believed to be just and winnable. “The mission itself is one that people do believe in,” he said.

He gave me a detailed brief of the operational situation facing the British in Nad-e-Ali. The enemy were light and quick on their feet, he acknowledged, but they were having trouble with their logistics and that would make life progressively harder for them. Ultimately, the Taleban’s only option was to outlast their opponents, he reasoned. “Their campaign is a delaying operation. Their military professionalism is a myth. They make mistakes.”

It was clear that he was an optimist, who believed that the Afghan people were latent supporters of a sound Afghan Government and of the British presence in their midst. He was appalled by the cruelty he saw in the Taleban. “I had an eight-year-old girl tell one of my soldiers that her father, a teacher, was hanged, drawn and quartered while the family were forced to watch.” He found no difficulty in fighting against an organisation capable of such cruelty.

Like many soldiers, he seemed to relish the challenge of the Afghan war. “After 9/11 this war has real resonance and it is the top end of soldiering, a real test.” He added: “We are conscious in the Welsh Guards that we are writing regimental history here.”

At evening conference calls he held with the officers under his command in far-flung checkposts — sometimes with the sound of munitions landing in the distance — he was quietly authoritative and polite, and usually finished by congratulating them on some piece of excellence he believed the battalion to have performed that day.

He dismissed suggestions that the British were underresourced. “The training and kit are outstanding,” he said. However, at the mention of the human cost of the war, he was subdued.

Three of his men had been killed, he said. Lance-Sergeant Tobie Fasfous died in April; Lieutenant Mark Evison was killed in May; on June 16 Colonel Thorneloe lost one of his company commanders, Major Sean Birchall.

He spoke sadly of the last occasion he saw Major Birchall: a night operation when they had both sat and marvelled at the clarity of the stars in Afghanistan. “I went to sleep listening to Pachabel’s Canon on my iPod, looking at those stars. It is a special memory,” he said.

“We are a one-battalion regiment. Everyone knows everyone. It is a big hit to lose someone, but there is an absolute understanding that the mission is vital, and that those we’ve lost wouldn’t have wanted to be elsewhere — and they would want us to see it through.”

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