AS Staff Sergeant Allen, the head PT (Physical Training) instructor, barked orders and encouragement across Mons Barracks’ windswept parade ground, it could have been any early morning fitness drill for the Aldershot-based Coldstream Guards.

But last Friday’s session (July 16) was unique - the recruits were not young men and women who had signed up to serve their country, they were friends and relatives of Redhill-based Lance Corporal James Hill, who died in Afghanistan nine months ago.

L/Cpl Hill was leading the Mortar Platoon from the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards when he was killed near Camp Bastion in Helmand province. He was 23.

His parents Claire and Brian Hill, and fiancée Anastasia Newman, have since been trying to make sense of the tragedy by focusing their grief on raising funds for Help for Heroes and Coldstream Guards Charitable Funds.

At a recent charity auction, 10 mothers from Holmesdale School in Reigate, where Mrs Hill works, were successful in their bid to join L/Cpl Hill's regiment for a day’s training which included survival skills, weapons training and an assault course at Pirbright barracks.

"I was so pleased with how the day went," said Mr Hill, who also went along.

"Colour-Sergeant Burnett said it had been so much fun to organise the activities and how glad he was that everything went well on the day.

"The assault course was the hardest bit, it was particularly difficult for some of the ladies.

"But every one of them said they would happily do it again."

The Team Hill campaign has already raised more than £4,000 for Help for Heroes through various activities.

And Mr Hill said that meeting many of his son's former comrades and hearing what they had to say about him was a rewarding experience.

"It means so much to us that James was held in such high regard by his fellow soldiers," he added.

"So many of them came up to us on the day and it seems to be completely genuine.

"They all had little things that they remembered about him and if it wasn’t from the heart then I don’t think they would have done it."

L/Cpl Hill's death on October 8 last year to an outpouring of grief, with hundreds of people, many of whom had never met him, lining the street outside St Matthew's Church in Redhill to pay their respects at his funeral.

Major Wayne Hennessy-Barrett, his commanding officer, described him as "every inch the Coldstreamer".

He added: "He was a natural leader, fit, robust and an all-round excellent human being."

Anyone wishing to donate or support the ongoing fundraising campaign can do so at www.justgiving.com/team-james-hill.

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