When Emma Smith dreamed of her boyfriend Joe Long's proposal, she imagined she'd wear a glam dress, sip champagne and slink away with her new fiance for an early night. Well, one out of three isn't bad...
When Joe popped the question, Emma wore regulation combats and desert boots. They toasted their engagement with cans of pop. But they did have an early night - in separate beds yards away from each other.
The couple, both 29, are Army officers serving in Afghanistan's Helmand Province living under strict and, in their case, frustrating segregation rules in Lashkar Gah.
Emma, a Captain in the Royal Logistic Corps currently serving with 19 Light Brigade, says: "I'm thrilled to be engaged to Joe. Although it might not have been the proposal most girls dream of, I still think it was very romantic all the same. Alcohol is off limits out here so the bubbly will have to wait.
"There's also a no touch policy. So although Joe and I have been together for three years, the closest we are able to get to one another is a few yards away, sat on a bench to share a drink."
Joe, a Captain with the Royal Signals, explains: "Our jobs are polar opposites so we rarely chat during the day.
"Sometimes we meet briefly in the evenings for a can of Diet Coke before we go our separate ways." So have the besotted pair adhered to the no touch rules? Emma, of Royston, Herts, confesses: "Sometimes we've gone a bit crazy and given each other a high-five!"
The couple, who met at university in Newcastle upon Tyne, are working so intensely during the long, hot days of their six-month tour of duty they barely have time to even talk to each other.
But after their return to the UK in October, they will enjoy a well-earned break in Bath, Somerset.
Joe has promised to splash out on an engagement ring and a trip to a spa to make up for the far from luxurious setting of the proposal. He says: "We were sitting in a pergola in the surreal surroundings of a garden at Lashkar Gah and Emma was talking about her future with the Army, saying, 'I could do this, or I could do that'.
"Suddenly I said, 'Or maybe you could become my wife?' Emma looked stunned and said, 'Did you mean that? I'll give you one opportunity to take it back'.
"The proposal kind of popped out. But I assured her that I definitely meant it."
Jokingly Joe adds: "It was my first night here. So I was a bit jet-lagged and probably I was not able to think straight!"
At that quip, Emma is tempted to give Joe a sharp nudge in the ribs but holds back.
She smiles: "That blasted no-touch policy..."
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