ARMY bosses have awarded a second George Medal to a top bomb disposal expert killed in Afghanistan last year.
Warrant Officer Gary O’Donnell, from Whitnash, has joined an elite band of soldiers to receive the honour.
It is the first award of a Bar to the George Medal in 26 years.
Warrant Officer O’Donnell, who defused more than 50 improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan last year, was killed in September while trying to defuse a Taliban explosive in Helmand Province.
The 40-year-old, known as “Gaz”, was killed just nine weeks after the birth of his fourth child last September.
Considered one of the two most skilled bomb experts in the country, he won his first George Medal for extreme bravery while making safe explosives in southern Iraq in 2006.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said Warrant Officer O’Donnell had been awarded a second, posthumous George Medal for “repeated and sustained acts of immense bravery.”
Army officials said he had been approaching a booby-trapped bomb to clear a path for fellow soldiers when it detonated and killed him.
He had been commanding a team of specialist bomb disposal engineers and was nearing the end of his six-month tour of duty.
Following his death, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Wilson, Commander of the Joint Force Engineer Group, said Warrant Officer O’Donnell was an “amazing man. The danger to his own life rarely seemed to affect him,” he said.
“Men of this calibre are extremely rare.”
Warrant Officer O’Donnell’s widow, Toni, 40, said: “You cannot describe the feelings I have. I am so proud of him.
“He was a larger-than-life character. He just got on with it. He loved his job. He did what had to be done.
“He would be chuffed about this.”
Warrant Officer O’Donnell, of the Royal Logistic Corps, left four children - Cayleigh, 16, Dylan, 14, Aidan, eight, and Ben, eight months.
Coventry News 
