Fallen soldiers return home

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Fallen Brits are back home



Sad task ... comrades of dead soldiers carry one of the coffins draped in Union Jack as bodies of
soldiers (l-r) Private Dlugosz, Lieutenant Dyer, Kingsman Smith and Corporal O'Neill are flown home




By LUCY WATERLOW
April 12, 2007

THE bodies of four brave British soldiers killed by an Iraqi roadside bomb arrived back in the UK today.

They were flown to RAF Lyneham following a solemn ceremony in Basra yesterday.

Their coffins, draped in the Union Jack, were carried onto the plane by friends and colleagues.

Second Lieutenant Joanna Dyer, Corporal Kris O’Neill, Private Eleanor Dlugosz and Kingsman Adam Smith died when their armoured vehicle struck a bomb close to the city last Thursday.

A Kuwaiti interpreter was also killed.

Prince William’s pal 2nd Lt Dyer, 24, of Yeovil in Somerset, was serving with the 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment along with Kingsman Smith, 19, of Liverpool.

Cpl O’Neill, 27, of Catterick, North Yorkshire, and Pt Dlugosz, 19, of Southampton, Hampshire were in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Second Lieutenant Dyer, from Yeovil, Somerset, was at Sandhurst Military Academy with Prince William, who had described her as a “close friend” and expressed his deep sadness at her death.

They were both commissioned as officers on the same day in December at a parade at the academy attended by the Queen.

She had been serving with 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment when she was killed.

Fellow victim Kingsman Smith, from Liverpool, was in the same regiment, while Cpl O’Neill, from Catterick, and Private Dlugosz, from Southampton, were both in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Their deaths last Thursday brought the number of UK service personnel killed in Iraq to 140, of whom 109 have died in action.

A spokesman for RAF Lyneham said the four dead soldiers’ coffins, each draped in a Union flag, were taken off a C-17 aircraft by pallbearers.

They were marched slowly past the watching families to hearses waiting to transfer the bodies into the care of the Wiltshire coroner.

thesun.co.uk