Town falls silent as body of 'special soldier' comes home
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Christina Schmid, the widow of bomb disposal expert Olaf Schmid, in Wootton Bassett yesterday for the repatriation of her husband's body
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In life, he was a Tigger-like extrovert, but his return home yesterday passed in respectful silence. Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid was the 224th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, killed by a roadside bomb he was trying to dismantle.
He was a bomb disposal specialist with the Royal Logistic Corps, who had defused 64 devices and was present at the discoveries of 11 bomb factories during five months in Afghanistan. When he died on Saturday, he was a week away from returning home on leave.
Yesterday, the High Street of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire came to a silent standstill as his coffin, draped in a Union Jack, was paraded slowly past, on its way to Oxford's Radcliffe hospital, for a post-mortem examination. Hundreds lined the streets. Friends and family tossed red and white roses on to the vehicle's roof.
Fellow soldiers have paid tribute to the 30-year-old sergeant as a "legend"
who "stared death in the face on a daily basis". His wife
Christine said: "He was a unique and special man."
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Comments
"the news from Afghanistan of three more British deaths is profoundly saddening and worrying. I recall President Bush (the idiot who can't even pronounce the word 'nuclear' properly) declaring, after what the Americans call "9/11," that he/they/we were 'gonna smoke him [Osama bin Laden] out.' I supported the intention of doing that but bin Laden hasn't been found, let alone been 'smoked out,' after nearly seven years. It appears to me that the time has come for us to draw a line under a disaster and to tell Mr Bush that one hundred British lives lost is enough. The British Empire (which I still hanker for) failed to tame the Afghans, the Soviet Empire admitted defeat at their hands and still we think that we can succeed where others failed and fell. If I thought that there was still a possibility of 'smoking out' Mr bin Laden, I would support as stoutly as anyone the continuing sacrifices of ourselves and the Americans. But I can't help thinking that 'special forces' might have more success than our armies and that the latter should be withdrawn forthwith."
Now we have 230 British dead and unnumbered wounded and what has been achieved since?
Bring our boys home now. President Obama should order likewise for the American people.
What's the post mortem all about?
What was in the coffin?
Was it just a teensy-weeny bomb that hardly caused a dent?
What a pity we don't get to see a picture to satisfy our understandable curiosity.
So much for being a "specialist." He would have been better off working in a carwash.
On the brighter side, it does provide an opportunity for promotion for one of his team.
As for hippydroog I can barely waste my energy in replying to your disrespectful, dull and ignorant comment. Cleary to insult is your intention. If this country can produce the likes of SSgt Schmid, and you, in the same galaxy, frankly its a miracle, so far apart are your characters. I wish you had the honour to have met him. A bit of his decency and courage might have rubbed off on you and the world would have been a better place. Good grief.
Crawl back down your hole.
The Armed forces was once an honorable trade, he died in service and tragic as it is, he was carrying out his duty and should without question be respected for that.
This is a typical article building up to remembrance Sunday when we should remember what our ancestors did in the name of our nations sovereignty.
This so called 'war of necessity' should be critiqued, but let the man rest in peace with respect from his fellow countrymen.