‘…………these two soldiers died in the service of Her Majesty in Afghanistan many miles from home and their loved ones, and it serves to show the tremendous pressure our troops are under when they are deployed overseas’ Today we remember and honour Sergeant Jonathan ‘Koops’ Kups, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and Captain James ‘JT’ Townley, 28 Engineer Regiment attached to 21 Engineer Regiment, who gave their all on the 21st September 2012 in separate incidents in Afghanistan. Sergeant Kups was stationed at Camp Bastion. During the day his work colleagues had noticed that Sgt Kups did not appear himself acting as if he had something on his mind. That evening he left his tent with some cigarettes, a bottle of water and his SA80 rifle slung over his shoulder. When he failed to turn up for work the next morning a search was initiated and sadly, his body was found in a storage hangar. An inquest into his death recorded a verdict that he died as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Captain Townley was serving at Forward Operating Base Shawqat, a remote British base. Since he had arrived he had immersed himself in operations that directly supported the transition to Afghan-led security, providing specialist advice on engineer tasks and capabilities. However, on the 21st September he was discovered in a toilet block with gunshot wounds. He was evacuated to Camp Bastion where, sadly, he died. An inquest into his death ruled that “the circumstances of how the gun came to be fired and Captain Townley’s intentions at that time remain undetermined.” Sergeant Jonathan Kups, who had served in Northern Ireland, was 38 years old and married with three children. Captain James Townley, who was on his third tour of Afghanistan, was 29 years old and left behind a girlfriend. PLEASE SIGN & SHARE epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/60004
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 05:02:44 +0000
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