7:00am Friday 11th September 2009
By Stephen Bailey
MARK Hale’s family were not surprised when they found out how he died.
The 42-year-old from Bournemouth was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan while helping an injured comrade to safety on August 13.
As a logistics captain, he did not need to be in the front line. But as a former private who worked his way up the ranks, he did not expect other people to do things he would not.
The Army was his passion but relatives also remember a modest and easygoing man who was a rock within the family.
He was born in April 1967 while his family lived in Salisbury.
His mother, Diana, of Wallisdown, said: “He would watch the soldiers doing their attacks on the ranges at Bulford as a young kid. If we missed him, we knew we would always find him along the hedges watching what they were doing.”
When Mark was about eight the family moved to Winton.
“He is remembered as a very keen sportsman and for that reason he was a good team player,” said Winton Boys School head James Simms. “He was a hard-working student, well liked by his peers.”
Mark joined Wallisdown Army Cadets and won a place on the young Army leaders course in Shorncliff, Kent.
He joined the Devon and Dorsets and, in his wife Brenda’s words, the regiment was soon “in his blood”. His first posting was to Northern Ireland.
“The first thing Mark experienced was the bombing of Newry police station,” said Diana.
“He was seventeen and a half. I can’t speak for Mark but I think experiences like that meant his faith came to the fore.”
Mark came from a Christian family but his religious convictions became stronger after meeting his wife and through his experiences in the Army.
His career took him on to many more postings.
While at Twickenham he played several times in rugby matches featuring the Harlequins second team.
He was in one of the last units to guard Rudolph Hess in Spandau prison.
In Ireland he spent days hiding in hedges with the reconnaissance platoon, and the Echo interviewed him in 2000 as his men monitored “bandit country” in South Armagh.
It was in Northern Ireland where he raised his family after meeting his beloved wife Brenda.
He came to love the country, and devoted himself to daughters Tori, 16, and Alix, eight. All three rowed for Belfast Boat Club.
Diana said: “He absolutely adored his wife and absolutely adored his daughters.”
His career took him to the Falklands and Germany and he bought a family home in Poole’s Canford Heath when he was based at Bulford.
His calm confidence meant senior officers regularly sought his advice, especially when he went to Afghanistan this year.
Colleagues described him as a father figure to the unit.
Lt Col Rupert Jones said: “Mark was a giant of a man in every sense of the word. Frankly, he terrified junior officers in his younger days by his presence – God only knows what young privates made of him!”
His intellect was equally impressive – he read philosophy and wrote poetry.
Major Darren Denning said: “He was better read, better informed, more articulate and more astute than any of us.”
He completed a masters degree in psychology and looked to that as a possible career after the Army.
“Mentally, he was stronger than most other people,” said Diana.
“When they came back from Bosnia he was the one that would talk to people and help them get things off their chest.”
He was buried in Northern Ireland this month and Brenda described herself as still “reeling with shock’ after the loss of her “soulmate”.
But The Rifles welfare association and a servicemen’s group, Semper Fidelis, had been “phenomenal”.
“We very much thank them for all their support during a very difficult time,” she said.
To pay tribute to Mark’s life and qualities, his family this week set up The Undentable Trust. It was a term comrades from The Rifles coined to describe his cool under pressure.
Lt Col Rob Thomson said: “However demanding the situation, his ability to absorb work, pressure and other people’s worries was legendary.”
The money will go to Help For Heroes, The Rifles Benevolent Fund and to fund holidays for children of current and ex-servicemen in hard times.
Mark was phenomenally fit and completed dozens of charity challenges, including a bike ride around the perimeter of his base in Iraq.
In 1986 he was one of three men who completed an 850-mile relay run back home from Berlin. And he once cycled from end of Ireland to the other.
His sister Joanne said: “The way the family see it, Mark lit the torch and we are carrying it on.”
* For more information on the trust visit theundentabletrust.co.uk.
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