Soldier watches his twin die in Iraq on their 24th birthday

Alan Hamilton
They were twins and, by coincidence, corporals in the same battalion. On Friday they should have been celebrating their 24th birthday. But it was not to be; Will Rigby sat at the bedside of his brother, John, in an Iraq field hospital and watched him die.
Corporal John Rigby had been fatally wounded by a roadside bomb near Basra Palace in southern Iraq that morning, and was named by the Ministry of Defence yesterday as the 153rd British serviceman whose life had been claimed by the conflict.
Will, described by friends as his brother’s lifetime companion and soulmate, will accompany the body back to the family home in Rye, East Sussex, where their parents, sisters and John’s girlfriend, to whom he was expected to propose, are grieving at their loss.
Corporal Rigby was on patrol with the eight men of his section, providing top cover from the hatch of his armoured vehicle, when the bomb exploded. He was the third member of the 4th Battalion The Rifles to die in Iraq in little more than a month.
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