Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 2009, Staff Sergeant Olaf Sean George Schmid GC, the Royal Logistic Corps, was killed as he attempted to defuse an IED in Sangin, Afghanistan, a day before he was due to fly home.

Staff Sergeant Schmid had joined the army in 1996, enlisting in the Royal Logistic Corps and going on to train as a bomb disposal specialist. He served in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Yugoslavia. Colleagues copiously praised him, referring to his boyish grin, effervescent presence, infectious enthusiasm, vibrant personality and wicked sense of humour, along with his professionalism and courage. He made safe seventy devices during his deployment, and was posthumously awarded the George Cross.

Major Tim Gould QGM RLC said: “SSgt Oz Schmid was a man of extreme courage who revelled in this the most challenging and dangerous of environments. To see him out here in Afghanistan was to view a man very much in his element; he simply loved what he did, in fact, you would swear that he was born for it. An enigma when I met him; a pleasure to have known him; an honour to have served with him; a travesty to lose him. A superlative individual, a soldier of the very highest calibre, who will be deeply missed. In all my time in the Army, I have never met, nor am I ever likely to meet a man like SSgt Schmid again; he truly was a once in a generation phenomenon.”

Olaf, born in Truro, Cornwall, was 30 years old and married.