Sister's moving tribute to dead soldier one year on

She’s talking about the moment last March when she learned her army reservist sister, L/Cpl Brodie Gillon, had died in a rocket attack in Iraq. The moment is still raw, yet there’s no falter or crack in her voice.

Instead, Fern and her family have decided that tears are not what 26-year-old Brodie, the first British female soldier to be killed as part of the ongoing operation in Iraq, would have wanted.

“She was so positive,” says Fern. “She wouldn’t want us to be crushed by it.

“She would want us to be positive in her memory and be like her. We tell ourselves, to ‘be more Brodie’.”

Nevertheless, the 12 months since a deadly rocket attack by Iranian militia claimed the lives of Brodie, a reservist with the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry, along with two US soldiers, have been hard – and made more challenging by the impact of the pandemic.

There would be no opportunity to honour her with a full military funeral: lockdown restrictions kicked in hours before, so just 12 mourners were allowed to gather at her graveside for her final journey.

Hopes of a memorial service that would enable family, friends and colleagues to celebrate her life, have been put on hold.

Even a memorial bench dedicated to her, paid for by her army colleagues’ fundraising and which will feature silhouette figures of female soldiers, has been delayed, while the anniversary gathering by her graveside on Wednesday, was in strict accordance with lockdown restrictions.

The fear, says Fern, 29, is that amid the gloom of the pandemic, her sister’s sacrifice has almost slipped by; funereal rituals and formal recognitions of her death in service which may have brought comfort have been pushed further down the road.

“There is that feeling that Brodie went out of people’s minds quite quickly because of what else was happening at the time,” she says. “We feel we’ve missed out, that there’d be a chance to meet people, say what you need to say and hear people talk about Brodie. “That’s not going to happen until we come out of lockdown, which makes it harder to deal with.”

There have been moments – such the solemn ceremony around her repatriation to RAF Brize Norton, the touching respect paid by crowds who lined the streets as her hearse passed, and the chance for Fern and her mother Linda to pay tribute to Brodie as part of The Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance from London’s Albert Hall in November.

There was particular comfort when people across the country – even internationally – answered the call to light a candle in Brodie’s memory. But it’s still not quite the same as it might have been had the country not been in the grip of a pandemic.

“We felt she maybe didn’t get the recognition that she might have done, but that’s understandable, it was a pandemic,” says Fern.

A sport therapist with her own thriving business, Brodie joined the army reserves in 2015 hoping to gain extra skills to achieve her hopes of becoming a paramedic.

She served in Kenya and at Balmoral with the Balmoral Balaclava Company, where she met the Queen in the stables and chatted about the horses.

She was attached to the Irish Guards Battle Group and deployed to Camp Taji base nine miles north of Baghdad in December last year, as part of Operation Shader, a non-combat mission aimed at training troops in a range of skills, among them saving lives.

She left for Iraq on her 26th birthday. She was just two days away from returning home on 11 March last year when more than a dozen rockets rained down on the base.

Brodie and two US colleagues died, 14 other coalition troops and contractors were injured, five of them critically.

Looking back, says Fern, there are conversations she wishes she’d had.

“We’re all asking ourselves what we could have said to her. Were we really naïve and stupid to let her go out there?

“Brodie was very driven, she wanted to be a paramedic, she wanted to get the training and skills that would set her apart for a paramedic application.

“She wanted to be the best and to help people. The opportunity to go to Iraq came up and she thought that would give her so much more experience, and a different experience.

“When she went out, there was no threat or level of threat. There was nothing to suggest there might be anything to worry about.

“People were joking that she was going there for a suntan,” she adds.

Soon after she arrived, US President Donald Trump gave the nod from his Mar-a-Lago resort for a drone strike that would “terminate” Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

He claimed the fatal strike on a Baghdad airport – made as Soleimani made his way to a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister - was in response to the threat of an “imminent and sinister” attack on Americans.

In a letter to the United Nations, Iran called it state terrorism and an unlawful criminal act.

The risk level was raised, and with coronavirus sending Camp Taji into lockdown, the militia spotted a relatively easy target.

The camp had already been hit before the fatal strike on 11 March.

“That’s how quickly things change,” says Fern. “There was one attack, we couldn’t get through to Brodie. She texted, and I asked if everything okay. She just said ‘I’m starving’. When the attack happened there was a ‘no fly’ zone and they were not getting food in canteen.

“Maybe she was trying to protect us, maybe she was scared but she didn’t portray that. All she said was it will be crap food for two weeks because no flights were coming in.

“And she was a medic,” she adds. “It’s not like she was in the line of fire. She thought she would be there to help people and train Iraqi soldiers.”

Brodie had been planning her return home, with pamper parties scheduled and time away with her mum, Linda. “That’s what we were all focused on,” adds Fern.

A year on, there is no bitterness or desire for revenge, she adds.

“It’s the opposite. There was a story about how the SAS had carried out a revenge attack. But that’s not what she would have wanted; she was a healer, she wanted to help people not hurt people.

“She would not want more violence in her name, or hatred and negativity. She’d want people to be more caring towards each other.

“We’re not looking for vengeance,” she continues, “that’s not going to serve any purpose.”

Instead, she is focussing on other things, like ensuring the impact her sister – with her brilliant broad smile and caring nature - had on those around her, is not forgotten.

“Brodie would never leave anyone to struggle or be on their own, she was inherently a social creature,” she adds. “A lot of people say it didn’t matter what rank or who they were, she would speak to everyone the same and with the same personable attitude.

“She was a great character, very determined. Things didn’t always come naturally to her, but she worked really hard to get them.

“If that can inspire one person, one young girl to go out and do what she wants to do, that would be what Brodie was all about.”