A Gulf war widow today blinked back tears as she told a US congressional committee sitting in Westminster of her husband's slow death after returning from the conflict.
Samantha Thompson joined war veterans at the unprecedented hearing to tell her story, as part of a congressional investigation into Gulf war-related illnesses.
It is the first time a US congressional committee has held a meeting in Westminster and campaigners hope it will pressurise the government to open a public inquiry into the illnesses.
Mrs Thompson's husband, Nigel, died from motor neurone disease in January this year, aged 44.
He always blamed his condition on the pre-treatment of troops in the Gulf against a possible chemical or biological attack by the Iraqis.
The couple's seven-year-old daughter, Hannah, sat behind Mrs Thompson in the committee room in Portcullis House as she accused the Ministry of Defence of "washing its hands" of servicemen who contracted Gulf war syndrome, which the government claims does not exist.
The committee chairman, congressman Christopher Shays, told her: "Your husband is a hero ma'am." He then said to Hannah: "Your dad was a hero."
Mrs Thompson told three congressmen and former US presidential candidate Ross Perot: "It seemed to Nigel that the day you handed in your ID card, the Ministry of Defence washed their hands of you and it was the Royal British Legion who were thankfully there to pick up the pieces."
Flanked by former RAF officer John Nicol, whose plane was shot down over Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and Shaun Rusling, chairman of the National Gulf Veterans' and Families' Association, she said: "Life has been incredibly difficult since Nigel died almost five months ago. Our lives have literally been turned upside down."
Mr Shays told Mrs Thompson that in the US her husband's condition would have been acknowledged as being caused by participating in the Gulf war.
Mr Shays, describing it as "an honour and a privilege to be here", said the committee was on a fact-finding mission "in the hope that we can ease the pain and improve the prognosis of UK and US veterans".
The one-day hearing listened to testimony from medical experts who claim a direct link between troops exposed to organophosphates and depleted uranium in the conflict and illnesses they subsequently suffered from.
Mr Rusling, of the veterans' association, told the committee: "We have been abandoned by our country and successive governments since the Gulf war have adopted a policy that is based on 'don't look, don't find and cannot see'."
He added: "The attitude of the MoD is one of 'go and seek charitable help and handouts'. This crass attitude to those of our armed forces' servicemen and women, - who in the 21st century have families to raise and mortgages to pay, and are unable to do so because they are ill because they fought for their country - will devastate our fighting ability in the future."
Mr Rusling, who recently won a pensions appeal tribunal, which found that his illness was attributable to his service in the war, rejected medical evidence put forward by the MoD as "psychobabble and government ploy".
He said tests paid for by the association found traces of depleted uranium in Gulf war veterans' urine "proving a significant exposure during the war".
Ross Perot, who has funded research into veterans' illnesses, said at the beginning of the hearing: "This is not stress. This is troops in combat wounded by chemical agents. Our enemies in the current war on terrorism have these agents."
He added: "We don't know how to vaccinate people now and we don't know how to treat them if they are exposed. Our two nations should be working 24 hours, seven days a week to protect every citizen in our nations."
