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View Full Version : U.K.Conspicuous Gallantry Cross Jonathan Hollingsworth (SAS)



bobdina
07-18-2009, 06:09 PM
The first SAS soldier to be killed in action during the Iraq war received Britain's second highest gallantry award.

The news of the posthumous award of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross to Sgt Jonathan Hollingsworth was suppressed by a defence ministry because of secrecy and ongoing operations.

Sgt Jonathan Hollingsworth was hit in the chest as his unit freed a group of Western security guards held hostage in a Basra apartment block.
He had been leading three teams on the operation in which he was killed in November 2006
He was 35 years old.

Defence Secretary Des Browne said: "He was killed on a successful operation to detain those who attacked civilian and military personnel. He did not die in vain." The Conspicuous Gallantry Cross is second only to the Victoria Cross.
Sources suggest he had been recommended for a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross after single-handedly killing six insurgents during a separate raid in the southern Iraq capital only weeks earlier.
Two weeks earlier Sgt Hollingsworth, a former member of the 3rd Battalion of The Parachute Regiment, was shot in the neck in another attack on insurgents.
The bullet just missed his carotid artery.

He could have been evacuated. But he carried on fighting with blood pouring from his wound until the job was done.

In 2003 the Sgt Hollingsworth, one of the SAS's most experienced soldiers was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for what are believed to be secret operations in Ulster.

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nastyleg
07-19-2009, 12:16 PM
Damn shot in the neck and still carried out the mission. Ballsy. RIP