For 12 years after Tom Keys was killed in Iraq, his father Reg wore his watch, one of the precious belongings returned alongside his body. That watch became a talisman, a tangible link with his son as Keys embarked on his own war, against Tony Blair. 

Tom was one of six “Redcaps”, military policemen killed by a 500-strong mob as they guarded a police station a month after the war was supposed to have ended, in June 2003. As the murky circumstances of the attack – and the Iraq conflict itself – became clear, Keys spoke out, enraged at having lost his 20 year-old son to a “pointless” war. 

Keys was a thorn in Blair’s side, even standing against the prime minister in his Sedgefield constituency in 2005. Then last summer – on June 24th, Tom’s birthday – his watch suddenly stopped. “It was the strangest thing,” he says. “Almost as if Tom was saying 'Enough now, Dad, time to move on.”

Four months later, Keys married his second wife, Jenny, in a “beautiful” ceremony near their home in Solihull and a new chapter began: “When I met her I didn’t think I could ever be happy again, life seemed totally empty, but she brought me out of the darkness and into the light,” he says.

He “put the Iraq war in a box”, but that box is about to be opened one last, painful time. Keys has just been given notice that the long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry report will be published early next month. Along with the other families of the dead, he has been summoned to London on the morning of publication and will have three hours to digest a 150-page summary before it is released to the press. 

Early indications suggest that Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, will be highly critical of Blair, Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, and Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 – in other words, it seems Chilcot will vindicate what Keys has been saying all along. Blair is already honing his response, admitting last week that he “profoundly underestimated” the risks of the Iraq war, though stopping short of an apology.

“Blair will never apologise,” says Keys. “When he finished giving evidence at the inquiry Sir John looked over at the families and said 'Have you anything to add?’ He said 'No’. That was his opportunity, not to apologise even, but just to say “I do regret the loss of life’. But he didn’t take it.”

When Tom, a Lance Corporal, was killed, Keys was initially devastated but accepted his son’s death as part of the price of war. It was only as months passed and no weapons of mass destruction were found, allegations about the “dodgy dossier’ began to emerge and Tom’s colleagues returned – and told him he the appalling truth, that the Redcaps had been sent lightly-armed and unprepared into an area known to be dangerous and left without proper communication or back-up - that his smouldering anger was set alight.

Even after seven years in the making, he is not convinced the Chilcot report will tell the full truth about what happened. Under the “Maxwellisation” process, those criticised have been allowed to see what the report says and in advance and permitted to respond.

“It is not for Chilcot to apportion blame but I hope he will point the finger of accountability,” says Keys. “It may just inflame the situation if it is felt he is letting people walk away: 179 servicemen dead, hundreds injured, 250,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children dead and nobody held to account, how can that happen in a modern world? 

“When I look at Iraq on my TV screen today, with the daily suicide bombings, I see meltdown. These people didn’t just 'underestimate’, they let a country implode. Jack Straw was foreign secretary and he was at a loss, sitting on his hands wondering what to do.

“It all started because Sir Richard Dearlove gave Blair mights and maybes that were turned into definites. Any man worth his salt would have stormed over to Downing Street, thumped the desk and said 'What are you doing, Tony? I didn’t say that’. But he allowed his intelligence reports to be grossly exaggerated. He should have stopped it and he didn’t.

“Geoff Hoon [then secretary of state for defence] said the army was ready to go but that was rubbish. A lot of the lads had no body armour, not even any desert boots.”

Keys’s pursuit of the truth has now been made into a drama, 'Reg', by Jimmy McGovern (creator of Cracker) and starring Tim Roth, which will be broadcast on Monday night on BBC1. It received a standing ovation at a screening Keys attended last week. “It was a special moment. To say I enjoyed it would be wrong because my son and his mates died, but it felt like a celebration, a recognition for all of them.”

The film contains some vivid memories, including the day Keys walked into the local funeral parlour armed with a screwdriver. He had been told by the authorities that his son was being sent home in a sealed coffin but he was determined to see the extent of his injuries himself. “His face was so badly beaten I put an A4 photograph of Tom over it before he was buried,” he says. “I wanted him to have his own, handsome face”.

Reg also depicts the sad disintegration of Key’s wife, Sally. Before their son’s death they had taken early retirement – he from his job as a paramedic with the West Midlands ambulance service, she a senior nursing sister on an orthopaedic ward – restored a derelict barn in north Wales and were 'living the dream’. Once the truth emerged, Sally could not get the image of her son being hacked to death out of her head. While Keys was racing around, standing for election and haranguing anyone who would listen, she quietly fell apart.

“The depression turned her from being a strong and capable woman to someone who wouldn’t leave the house, who couldn’t be bothered to eat or to brush her teeth or hair,” says Keys. “Sometimes I’d pull up in the drive and I could hear her crying before I’d got to the front door. She started to drink too much. It’s not secret but it’s still painful.”

In the last year of her life she was repeatedly hospitalised and died in 2011 of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, essentially self-neglect.

As they walked down the hospital corridor after she died, Keys’s remaining son, Richard, said: “Dad, don’t let this overwhelm us” but it almost did. A year later, on his 60th birthday, Keys stayed in alone. “People kept trying to get my spirits up but it was a bleak time. I felt I’d reached the end of the road,” he says.

He was eventually persuaded to join some friends who had taken up Ceroc dancing, a fusion of salsa and jive. He thought he would sit on the sidelines but was persuaded to dance with Jenny, just divorced after 28 years of marriage. Neither was looking to meet someone new. 

“We were just dance partners,” he says. “One week she limped off the dance floor and I thought I’d trod on her toe. She’d had a fall horseriding. She talked about how she had a tricky horse no farrier wanted to touch because it kicked: I’d had horses in Wales so I went round and trimmed its feet and as a thank you she bought me Sunday lunch. It all happened very slowly.”

At that stage, Jenny says she knew no more than that Keys was a widower and his son had been killed in Iraq. “One day when Tony Blair was on the radio Reg said 'You should know Mr Blair and I have history’ and started to explain. We have a lot of fun and a lovely life but even now, if he hears Blair’s voice his expression changes. It threw me at first but now I just leave him for a few minutes then say 'Let’s go for a walk’. I’m an optimistic person, always looking on the bright side, that’s why I’m good for him, I suppose.”

Thoughtful too: the night before they got married, Keys stayed in a local hotel and Jenny told him to look under the bed. In a little box was a wedding gift, a Tissot watch, just like the one that belonged to Tom. This one was new and working and made him smile: it was inscribed on the back with the words “I do”.