Army loses highest-ranking officer since Falklands War
Roadside bomb kills soldier and his commanding officer in Afghanistan
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MoD
Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe was directing his troops, including Trooper against Taliban forces in Helmand province
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The highest ranking officer in the British Army to be killed in combat since the Falklands War is among the latest fatalities in Afghanistan. Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, died in a roadside blast in Helmand which also killed another soldier and injured six.
Lt-Col Thorneloe was killed while engaged in a mission to clear Taliban positions 8km north of Lashkar Gar, the capital of Helmand. The operation, codenamed Panchai Palang (Pashtu for panther's claw), was in preparation for the launch of the long-expected "surge" of 4,000 US Marines ahead of the elections in August.
Lt-Col Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond, of 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, died after a Viking armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Their deaths took the number of British service personnel killed in Afghanistan to 171, eight fewer than the total number of those killed in Iraq.
The last officer of equal seniority to die in action was Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert "H" Jones, who was killed at Goose Green in 1982. The commanding officer of 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry. He and his men had been ordered to attack dug-in positions and he was leading the charge from the front when he was shot. Until yesterday, only seven army commanding officers had died on operations in command of their units since 1948. A memorial at Sandhurst's Royal Memorial Chapel commemorates them.
Lt-Col Thorneloe was made an MBE during service in Iraq in 2006, when he held the rank of major. He had been deployed with the Welsh Guards around Lashkar Gar. The town, which had come under increasing attack from a resurgent Taliban, had experienced a number of suicide bombings. Nearby areas were being used to transport fighters, arms and opium to other parts of the province.
Lt-Col Thorneloe was directing his troops in an operation involving 500 British and Danish troops who were seeking to outflank Taliban positions around Babaji, beside the Helmand River, and Gereshk. The insurgents put up fierce resistance and American and Canadian helicopter gunships had to be called in to support the mission.
Lt Col Thorneloe's wife Sally said: "Rupert was my very best friend and his death is a devastating blow. Our daughters Hannah and Sophie will have to grow up without their beloved Daddy, although I will see a part of him in them every day."
Shortly before his death, Lt-Col Thorneloe said in an interview: "Our job is to give steady and visible assurance to the Afghan people. We are working alongside the ANA [Afghan National Army] and of course the main aim is to let the Afghans take full control of their affairs as soon as possible and without the threat of insurgent violence."
General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, said last night: "The deaths of Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe MBE and Tpr Joshua Hammond during Operation Panchai Palang in Helmand Province is a devastating blow to the Welsh Guards Battle Group and to the Army as a whole. Lt-Col Thorneloe was an outstanding commanding officer and a born leader, who I knew well.
"His courageous, thoughtful stewardship of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards since October last year has seen them superbly prepared for the demands of Afghanistan, both in terms of their professional capability and their unbreakable spirit as a team.
"At the leading edge of his generation, his loss will be felt deeply not only by his family but also by his soldiers and others, who like me, had the privilege to serve with him.
"Tpr Hammond was a first class tank crewman who epitomised the spirited and determined approach to operations expected of Royal Armoured Corps soldiers."
In a statement released by the MoD, his family, from Plymouth, said: "Joshua was a tremendous son. He was proud to be a soldier and died doing a job he loved."
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Comments
Our troops shouldn't even be in Afghanistan. The Taliban never attacked anyone. Not the Twin Towers, not London, not Madrid and not Bali!
Equating the Taliban with Al-Qaeda is a ludicrous smokescreen for another agenda.
I do not know how to solve the problems in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are ruthless killers and life under their rule is horrific.
But there is no easy solution and intervention may have just caused more problems.
Perhaps it would have been better to have left the Communists to cope with it.
But Western leaders wanted to impose democracy so we are left with a legacy of war and terrorism and loss of lives.
Leave the muslim countries alone. Do not even pretend that you are here to help us, we can very well see your motives in this era of neo-colonialism.
There seems no trust on any side of this highly dangerous conflict which involves different factions and power struggles. Somehow we have to try to get a dialogue with those among the Taliban who want peaceful lives.
We mourn the death of British soldiers but we want to stop the killing of civilians and the sad deaths of young men who joined the Taleban because that seemed their only option in life. There may not be trust, but perhaps there can be some useful debate.
The MoD can only work within the political limits given to it, both budgetery and tactically. I suspect the level of logistics, planning, command &c. is way above that of your Local Authority and, indeed, most other cabinet offices.
Though, that all does not detract from the incredible loss to the British Army of the death of Lieutenant Colonel Thorneloe. It has taken seventeen years to create a leader of his calibre and stature, that will not be easily replaced.
My thoughts and prayers are with his family and with his men.
Cymru am Byth, Sir. Rest in peace.
At the end of the day this guy joined the army to go out and kill people. He's now dead and hopefully that means that fewer Afghanis will die.
What is going on these days when Obama talk to Russia about the cold wars? Said Obama: "I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated. ... Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."
If you're American when you go into the bathroom and American when you come out, what are you when you're in the bathroom?
European!
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
Because the Taliban attacked the U.S.? They didn't.
Because the Tailban will be here, slaughtering us, if we were not over there slaughtering them? Bullshit!
The crusaders are on a hiding to nothing and apart from the death of another crusader, how many Afghans have we killed so far, how many are we going to kill and for what?
To paraphrase Chairman Mao - it ain't over till the guerrillas have won.
The Americans have a lot to learn about fighting an insurgent guerilla force, the US coalition is slow to move, slow to react against highly mobile and easily dispersible guerilla forces that allows them to fade into the shadows always leaving the US groping in the mud.
And what a way to go, when they should be winning hearts and minds, up pops CIA controlled drone after drone, devastating whole communities and recruiting huge swathes of brand new and highly motivated recruits, if the US had worked a "softly softly" approach they may have had a chance, corrupting the government and butchering anything and everything that moved not wearing a yank uniform blew it out of the water...
Just a thought.
He died for NOTHING...not for anything except the adventure of going abroad, killing people for
sport, in the name of "defending democracy", playing soldier boy...where else would our soldiers get
the exercise?
Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else in the world...the UK has NO BUSINESS being in any of these countries.
What is super-disgusting is the way one death, of a toff ex-public school boy come soldier, gets headline news, while the deaths of scores of Afghany civilians, indiscriminantly killed, gets not even a mention.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Whilst everyone has the right to an opinion on the rights and wrongs of a particular war, a degree of respect for the brave individuals who sadly lost of lives would be more likely to support reasoned debate on the issue.
Your attacks on individuals who are not able to defend themselves and their background set you out as a jealous, dissatisfied individual who cannot develop argument, but can only insult.
Would you, Shahrik, be brave enough to give your life in service to your country?
To which I would add - this is done in our name and WE are responsible. Have any opponents here written to their members of parliament voicing their concerns?
I have in Australia. The stock answer here is: "Since 1948 it has been the policy of every Australian government to supports UN resolutions unconditionally".
My response to that is, "this misadventure in Afghanistan is [as with all resolutions] from the UN Security Council. An anachronistic and unrepresentative body which does not necessarily reflect world opinion".
To commentators elsewhere: Soldiers obey orders, those orders come from govenments. The military is not a democracy where a vote is taken. Don't pick on the troops unless you believe we are better off without them leaving you totally unprepared and defenceless. We went there in 1939/40. Please remember that, it was a very close run thing.
No point just getting hyped about "princes" William and Harry avoiding duty when the legions of hangers-on in the armed forces are also avoiding their duty. Cowards we used to call them and cowards they are. Not one British soldier or airman should be out there why don't we try a new tack and send the legions of officers for a change, officers like the "princes" and they could take some of the dozens of admirals with them as they have more admirals than ships. Time for a clearout of the armed forces and it should start at the top.
And again shahrik is correct the Afghan civilians count for nothing to these people except as a means to beat the Taliban. Why else would their own TV adverts for the Army show them planting a bomb on the side of a house they haven't checked and which could have a completely innocent family inside. If that is what they do in a TV advert what do they do in reality?
Sheepcrofter must realise that soldiers who are drafted are worthy of respect but those who choose that career have no right to expect anything from any of us but a pay check each month, these are not world war 1 or 2 or Korean veterans these are people who CHOOSE to be in the forces and the government has nothing to do with that. They don't die for their country bcause if they did we wouldn't have to pay them to do it and they would demand shahrik's right to say anything he wants be respected and not have him told to "grow up". The argument that we must respect the dead, however wrong headed they were, has been the battle cry of sychophants and the right wing the world over for years. I don't pay taxes to kill foreigners who don't have not the slightest possibility of harming me or mine. All the 7/7 bombers were in Britain by right and what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq directly led to those murders on trains and buses I had used only months before, THAT affects me and avoiding THAT means getting the troops out of there and keeping them out and massively cutting the armed forces that are nothing more than a badly organised job creation scheme for no-hopers at both ends of the "social scale".
I am afraid this is useless piece of news as the ones who sent him know not, of him, and his family. They will read your article, fold it to kill the fly and play the crossword . You think they care. Try to die? They dont know you or him. THAT IS IT.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
Again and again during the MPs's expenses scandal, members of the public made the point that there seems to be "one law for them and another for us". This seems to me indicative of a thread that runs right across our national life in our time no less than it did back in the Imperial heyday of the mid-nineteenth century. MPs "make errors for which they sincerely apologize" while the rest of us commit crimes that must be punished. The trained police dog handler who leaves two dogs to bake to death in a police vehicle is immediately shielded by a smooth police PR exercise emphasizing that the incident will be investigated, lessons learned, and affirming the value that the force in question places on its dogs, whereas an ordinary citizen doing the same things would be promptly charged, with no-holds-barred statements of condemnation from police and RSPCA. And the death of a well-connected officer draws perceptibly more "hushed awe" than that of an ordinary bloke in " the poor bloody infantry".
The sad thing is that, as bankers resume their whacking salaries and bonuses in the very institutions that have triggered the present recession, more ordinary men and women will be forced by the economic meltdown to join the Forces to earn a living because the businesses that might otherwise have employed them have contracted or gone under because the financiers ballsed up the economy. While, without in any way demeaning the death of Col Thorneloe and the loss his family must be feeling, the prosperous and well-connected on the whole continue to live the good life of privilege, comfort and safety.
And to think that, back in the 60s when I was young and a brave new world seemed to beckon, I thought all those old divisions and inequities were passing. But no, still "one law for them and another for us ... " And people seriously suggest that all we need to put things right is a new Conservative government ...! Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.