PRIVATE JASON LEE RAWSTRON
From: Michael Yon
PRIVATE JASON LEE RAWSTRON
2ND BATTALION, THE PARACHUTE REGIMENT
12TH SEPTEMBER 2008
Lieutenant Colonel Joe O’Sullivan, Commanding Officer 2 PARA paid tribute to Private Jason Rawstron on the night of his death:
Early this morning C (Bruneval) Company were conducting a patrol from their base at Forward Operating Base GIBRALTAR when they were engaged by the Taliban, and in the exchange of fire Private Jason Rawstron was killed. Jason Rawstron began his service with C (Bruneval) Company 2 PARA, and although he later moved to the Assault Engineer Platoon, it was to Bruneval Company that he returned for the Battalion’s tour in Afghanistan. Bruneval is the Parachute Regiment’s first Battle Honour, and Jason Rawstron, like all of his friends in today’s Bruneval Company and across the Battalion, was every bit the Paratrooper of that first Bruneval Company 66 years ago; tough, resourceful, fearless under the fire that he had experienced so often and never knowing defeat. He joins eleven other members of 2 PARA Battlegroup who have given their lives for their friends and what they have been asked to do in this part of Helmand. Bruneval Company and all of us in 2 PARA Battlegroup will mourn Jason Rawstron and our hearts go out to his family and friends at home. We hope that what he was, and what he and friends and his battalion stand for and have achieved in this most demanding of summers will in some small way bring them comfort at this most painful time.
Utrinque Paratus