Darryl: 'A true hero'

Corporal Darryl Gardiner was injured when his armoured vehicle reversed over a land mine thought to have been laid by Russian soldiers during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s.

He was the first soldier to die in the conflict last year and the 87th since operations began in 2001.

The 25-year-old had driven off a safe track to quickly get the casualties on to a waiting helicopter, which would have been a prime target for Taliban snipers, an inquest in Cannock heard yesterday.

He was part of a second wave of troops involved in an operation in January last year near the town of Musa Quala in Helmund Province. The armoured cars that had gone before them carried mine detection equipment and had cleared the area for explosives.

When a blast was heard, Cpl Gardiner had driven in the tracks of the earlier vehicles to reach the injured, said Warrant Officer Paul Hodgson, of the Royal Artillery, who was with him on the day he died.

He had taken a risk by driving off the track – a distance of less than 10 yards – to reach the rescue aircraft but had safely delivered the casualties and was reversing to return when he hit the mine. "It could have been centimetres off the original track he'd just driven," said Mr Hodgson.

Corporal Gardiner, of Mahogany Drive, Doxey, Stafford, was airlifted to the field hospital at Camp Bastion but died from his wounds.

The inquest heard he was on the edge of a marked mine area but the military had no way of knowing how many or what type of mines were there.

The locals were herding their animals on the land and there had been no signs of ground disturbance, indicating recent mine-laying activity by the Taliban.

The device that killed him was likely to have been a "legacy mine", among hundreds of thousands that still litter the area from the time of the Soviet conflict.

Wing Commander David Williams, investigating the incident for the Ministry of Defence, reported that the Pinzgauer vehicle that Corporal Gardiner was driving is being withdrawn and replaced by a series of more heavily armoured trucks offering a higher degree of protection.

South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh recorded that Corporal Gardiner was killed by a mine while on active service.

He added: "He died trying to save the lives of others and can truly be described as a hero."

Corporal Gardiner was born in Germany and was raised in Salisbury, Wiltshire. He was a leading parachutist and competed for the Army skydiving team.

His father Mark and partner of three years Lucy Smith attended yesterday's hearing.