K. Mickey
Electronic Telegraph ISSUE 1489Wednesday 23 June 1999
The brave men who gave their lives for others By Tim Butcher in Pristina THE two Gurkhas who died when unexploded Nato cluster bombs blew up as the soldiers were preparing to destroy them in a Kosovo village were named yesterday as a British engineer officer and a long-serving Nepalese sergeant.
<Picture> Flags fly at half mast outside the headquarters of the Queen's Gurkha Engineers in Maidstone, Kent As flags flew at half-mast at British units in Kosovo and a Board of Inquiry was opened into the deaths, Army colleagues described Lt Gareth Evans, 25, from Bristol, and Sgt Bala Ram Rai, 35, from Bhojpur in eastern Nepal, as two high-fliers prepared to risk their lives for others.
The cluster bombs had been dropped during the Nato air campaign against Serbian troops and police units in the disputed region. Hours after the deaths, President Clinton telephoned Tony Blair to express his condolences, paying tribute to the work of all Nato combat engineers clearing the unexploded bombs and mines in Kosovo.
Lt-Col Nick Clissitt, spokesman for British Forces in Kosovo, said yesterday that Lt Evans and Sgt Rai were "two brave men who were well aware of the dangers of dealing with explosives but were prepared to risk their lives to make life safer for others. He said: "The heartfelt sympathy of all members of KFOR goes out to their families."
Colleagues at their base in Maidstone, Kent, also paid tribute to the dead soldiers. Gurkha Major Damar Ghale, of the Queen's Gurkha Engineers, said that he knew Sgt Rai well. He said: "He was a fine soldier, one of the high-fliers, and he will be sadly missed. This setback will not hinder our mission in any way. As Gurkhas, we are very proud of serving."
Major Andy Edington, of the 36th Engineer Regiment, said that Lt Evans, one of the few British officers serving with the Gurkhas, was "an excellent officer and a super bloke who loved working with his Gurkhas". He said: "Everybody here is terribly shocked and saddened by the news."
The Board of Inquiry will focus on the exact circumstances of the incident and the procedures followed by the troops from 69 Gurkha Field Squadron before the explosion. British troops had been called to a disused primary school in Orlate by villagers worried about the lethal devices littering the school grounds. Villagers had gathered the weapons into a pile by the schoolhouse.
Arriving in the village, British soldiers had planned originally to destroy the devices in a controlled blast, without moving them from where they had been stored. But Lt Evans agreed to move the cluster bombs because the locals said that a controlled explosion would cause extensive damage to the building.
He selected a ditch on the edge of the school grounds as a safe place for the demolition and the cluster bombs were moved there and placed in three piles. Somehow, the devices exploded prematurely.
Military experts have estimated that almost 10 per cent of the thousands of bombs dropped by Nato aircraft during the air strikes on Serbia and Kosovo have failed to explode. Army preparations to bring the men's bodies back to Britain were in hand last night and they are expected to be repatriated by tomorrow.