A fearless soldier who was awarded the Military Cross has told how he braved gunfire and narrowly escaped being blown up as he recovered the body of a decorated bomb disposal hero.

But despite the pride felt when he received the military honour on Friday, Company Sergeant Major (CSM) Ben Kelly said the medal, which recognised his selfless actions in Afghanistan, will always remind him of the death of Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Gary O'Donnell.

CSM Kelly, from Richmond, was tasked with protecting a specialist bomb disposal team on September 10, last year, when WO2 O'Donnell was killed by an explosion in the Musa Qal’eh area of Helmand province - the fallen soldier succeeded in helping defuse two bombs before the blast hit.

CSM Kelly told the Richmond and Twickenham Times: “We had been fighting all morning and the majority of the afternoon when we had a bit of a lull in the battle.

“The guys had pushed the Taliban further back.

“I was sat in my vehicle and was about 200m back from [WO2 O'Donnell].

“All I could see from where I was, was a huge plume of smoke.

“My instinctive reaction was to get the vehicle over to that area.

“I saw two of his guys looking shocked and not completely with it.”

The 36-year-old, who described his role as being a “big daddy” to other soldiers, immediately gave first aid to injured members under a hail of bullets and evacuated them back to the company’s headquarters.

The former Shene School pupil then volunteered to go back to the hostile area and recover the body of WO2 O'Donnell. He prevented further casualties by ordering his crew to remain in their vehicle while he took a mine detector and spent the next 30 minutes, alone, clearing a route to WO2 O'Donnell - again under fire.

“You switch off, you become like a machine,” he explained.

“I’ve done about 18 and a half years in the army and before you go out on tours you go through quite an intense training period - so you click into training mode.

“You ask yourself a couple of questions and weigh up the odds.

“You know what you have to do.

“At one stage or another the guys have all been scared and those guys that say they haven’t are just being foolhardy in front of the boys.

“It’s purely about focusing on the job, the fear is always with you but you control it.

“We did not know until afterwards there was another three [bombs] we had walked over - thankfully they had not gone off.”


CSM Kelly awarded Military Cross

After being awarded his medal, CSM Kelly, said: “You don’t get into these things for this, it’s the furthest thing from your mind.

“I was shocked and humbled - there were a whole range of emotions.

“It’s quite sad really because if I did not have this medal that probably would’ve meant Gary would have been alive.”

CSM Kelly's mother, Penny Llewellyn, said she was "immensely proud" of him and his brother Adam, who serves in the same unit as CSM Kelly.

The award citation paid tribute to his “selfless actions and exceptional bravery” having carried out the rescue “under intense pressure and in the most traumatic circumstances, and in an area known to contain a significant improvised explosive device threat”.

CSM Kelly, who joined the Army in 1990, has previously been awarded a Mention in Dispatches for an earlier tour of Iraq.

WO2 O'Donnell was awarded his second George Medal posthumously in the last Operations Honours and Awards list, published in March this year.

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