Troops pay tribute to fallen Paras

[Batgirl]

You're home now. Rest in Peace Lance Corporal Bateman, Private Doherty, Private Cuthbertson, Private Gamble, Private Murray. Your sacrifices won't be forgotten.

A piper's lament and the fragile notes of The Last Post hung in the desert air as five British soldiers began their final journey home from Afghanistan.


The Union flag-draped coffins of five British soldiers during a service of repatriation at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan

All were members of 2nd Bn, The Parachute Regiment, who died in two separate attacks last week. They returned home aboard an RAF Hercules transport aircraft in coffins draped with the Union flag and bearing their maroon regimental berets.

At least 1,000 soldiers gathered by the runway at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, standing to attention in a horseshoe formation around the five coffins as the intense heat subsided and the sun sank into the desert haze.

They represented every nation with soldiers in this desolate part of Afghanistan: British, Irish, Czech, Australian, American, Danes, Swedes, and almost every man who could be spared from the essential work of running the base.

Low on the horizon, RAF Chinooks and American Blackhawk helicopters plied to and fro, but the only movement at the runway was the flapping of the regimental colours of the Parachute Regiment.

Pte Charles Murray, 19, Pte Daniel Gamble, 22, and Pte Nathan Cuthbertson, 19, died on June 8 while on foot patrol near the town of Sangin when a man detonated a bomb strapped to his body.

They took the number of British dead in Afghanistan past 100.

L/Cpl James Bateman, 29, and Pte Jeff Doherty, 20, were killed on Thursday when Taliban fighters ambushed their patrol. "All five of these brave men died doing their duty and doing their best," said Col Joe Sullivan, the commanding officer of 2 Para. "They knew the risks. They demonstrated the clear, cold courage that is the mark of their comrades and their regiment. As it says on the 2 Para memorial: 'There is no better place to be than in the midst of 2 Para when there is a battle on.' We salute them and return them home, to where their families and their regiment await them."

As the Last Post sounded, an RAF Hecules appeared silently out of the Western sky. After landing, it taxied and reversed so that its loading bay faced the five coffins.

As they were carried, one after another, into the darkness of the waiting aircraft, a piper from the Royal Irish Regiment played the lament and a flock of swallows, one of the most distinctive sights in Helmand, arced suddenly through the parade and disappeared into the desert.

The loading bay closed and with a roar of engines, the Hercules took off again. Then after several minutes, and with the parade still rigidly to attention, the aircraft returned. Thundering low overhead, the Hercules dropped five flares before dipping a wing in tribute.

Telegraph