Bomb hero's George Cross

A heroic soldier from Shropshire has received the George Cross for defusing three bombs whilst trying to save the lives of five injured colleagues in Afghanistan.

Kim Hughes's citation says he was responsible for the "single most outstanding act of explosive ordnance disposal ever recorded in Afghanistan".

Staff Sergeant Hughes, of Telford, put himself in extreme personal danger when he manually neutralised three IEDs whilst trying to save the seriously wounded soldiers in the south west of Sangin last August.

Four of the soldiers had been injured by a detonated victim operated improvised explosive device whilst going to the aid of the fifth soldier who had been very seriously wounded by an earlier VOIED.

Two soldiers from the stretcher party were killed outright.

Watched by the enemy, Staff Sergeant Hughes, who was serving with the Royal Logistic Corps, carefully began to clear a path in what was effectively a minefield of IEDs to the stranded and wounded soldiers without wearing specialist protection in order to save time so that more lives were not lost.

However, on reaching the first badly injured soldier he discovered the first of seven further VOIEDs within one metre of the casualty.

Staff Sergeant Hughes, 30, who has family in Ironbridge, made the critical decision to manually neutralise the device, even without knowing the location of the power source, to ensure the casualties could receive rapid medical attention.

Manual neutralisation is rare as any error proves instantly fatal. It is only done in extreme circumstances where the emphasis is on saving other peoples' lives even, if necessary, at the expense of the IEDD operator.

The citation reads that the neutralisation was "an extraordinary act" and with "shots keeping the enemy at bay, Hughes coolly turned his attention back to reaching the remaining casualties and retrieving the dead."

However, "clearing a path forward he discovered two further VOIEDs and, twice more, carried out manual neutralisation. His utterly selfless action enabled all the casualties to be extracted and the bodies recovered."

His citation also notes that Hughes then detected a further four VOIEDS.

By Lisa Rowley