Soldier awarded Victoria Cross unlawfully killed in action

Lance corporal James Ashworth was killed by grenade explosion while trying to save comrades in Afghanistan, inquest hears

A soldier who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross after he died trying to rescue his comrades was unlawfully killed, a coroner has ruled.

Lance Corporal James Ashworth, 23, of 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was fatally injured by his own grenade after he was hit by a Taliban bullet just as he went to throw the explosive device into an compound in June last year.

At Ashworth’s inquest on Thursday Anne Pember, the Northamptonshire coroner, said a postmortem had revealed cause of death as blast injuries caused by an explosion and recorded a verdict of unlawful killing while he was serving on operations in Afghanistan.

L/Cpl Ashworth was peppered with bullets as he crawled to throw his last grenade at a sniper who had his team pinned down.

Speaking after the inquest in Kettering, his mother Kerry said her son, only the second soldier to be awarded a VC for bravery in Afghanistan, had died doing the job he loved.

She said: “His smile can light up any room he goes into and we all love and miss him so. James passed away doing a job he loved. At times it was a hard job, but he did get to experience new countries, learn new skills and make some wonderful friends.

“James will be forever be in our hearts, thoughts and prayers and we will never get over his passing. But we will stay strong together as a family and along with his friends we will remain positive and celebrate his life at every opportunity as I know that is what he would want us to do.”

His commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel James Bowder said he was “the bravest of soldiers, the best of men”.

As well as the Ashworth has had a square named after him in his home town of Corby.

The coroner heard sometimes emotional testimony from comrades fighting alongside Ashworth on the day he died.

His platoon commander Captain Michael Dobbin described how an operation had been ordered to “kill or capture” a skilled Taliban sniper team, which had shot and wounded three British soldiers in the preceding days.

After four days of planning, the insurgents were spotted near a village in the Nahr-e-Saraj area of Helmand province, and the strike team, including Ashworth, swooped on the area in two helicopters.

Captain Owen Davis, a Royal Marine attached to the platoon, said that after landing under fire, aerial intelligence revealed a single insurgent had fled to a compound in the village.

He told the coroner that as he and an Afghan policeman moved out around the corner of that compound to begin a search, the police officer “took a long burst of AK47 fire to his body”, which killed him instantly.

The rifle fire was followed by a Taliban grenade, forcing Davis to jump into an irrigation ditch for cover, just as it went off.

With the platoon’s men now in two other gun battles raging around the village with the Taliban …read more