Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1988, Sergeant Michael Bryan Matthews, 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, died from injuries received the previous day in a bomb blast near Cullyhanna, South Armagh, in Northern Ireland.

He had been leading a twelve-man joint army and police patrol towards the village when the 100lb bomb was detonated. Two police officers and two soldiers were injured but not seriously hurt. Sergeant Matthews was taken to the military wing of Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast with grievous head and leg wounds, but he could not be saved and died the following day.

Sergeant Matthews had joined the Parachute Regiment eighteen years earlier and was on his fourth tour of Northern Ireland. He had been a small arms instructor, and had also served in the Falklands.

Michael, from Weymouth in Dorset, was 37 years old and had been married for less than a year.