  We consider a singularly perturbed reaction diffusion problem as a first
order two-by-two system. Using piecewise discontinuous polynomials for the
first component and $H_{div}$-conforming elements for the second component we
provide a convergence analysis on layer adapted meshes and an optimal
convergence order in a balanced norm that is comparable with a balanced
$H^2$-norm for the second order formulation.
