It has been my very great pleasure to meet Lin when she visited the motorway unit I worked on and on which her late husband Ian also worked.  It is so important that we support the families of our brothers and sisters who have given the ultimate sacrifice.

Lin Woodward’s husband Ian was a 33-year-old traffic officer when he was  shot and killed in Lancashire in 1987.

It took 20 years for the family to find the support they needed from Care of Police Survivors (Cops), a  charity which helps the families of  police officers killed in the line of  duty.

She and her husband met as teenagers at an Anglesey school,  and moved to the  North West  when Ian landed  a job with Lancashire Constabulary.

The couple were married in Llangefni in 1973, and in 1974 Ian started his career with Lancashire Constabulary.

He was off-duty and at home on the family’s smallholding in Chorley when he was killed after confronting a poacher.

Lin said: “There had been a lot of trouble with poaching and badger-baiting, and Ian had been doing stakeouts with the RSPCA.

“The local farmer had been having problems so Ian had said he would keep an eye out. He heard shots in the woods near our house and went to have a look. He must have challenged the poacher and he was shot.”

Lin, who was left a widow with two children aged 12 and nine, arrived  home from work to find police at her  home.

She said: “Life was a blur for days afterwards – I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t  think, I was in a daze.

“I went to work in the morning and when I came back he wasn’t there. It  was devastating.

“These days, they have family liaison officers and things like that, but there was nothing like that in those days.”

Lin, who is now a grandmother of four, returned to Wales in 1988 to be near to her family, but didn’t become aware of Cops until 2007. She is now heavily involved with the charity and regularly meets the relatives of other policemen.

She said: “It was the very first time I had been able to talk to people who had been through the same thing as I had.

“Other people thought they understood and would say things like, ‘I lost my  mum’.

“But this  was different  because the  way it happened was so traumatic.

“After all these years I still feel the  heartache, but we now have this  massive support network which is invaluable.

“We call ourselves survivors because  we’ve survived this trauma.

“We’re still so proud of Ian, who was  a police officer 24/7 and went out and  did what he thought was his duty.”