City miss out on final place

COMRADES will bid an emotional farewell to fallen soldier and city police community support officer Mark Marshall at his funeral.

Up to 500 mourners will pack Belmont Chapel, in Western Way, Exeter, for the service on Friday.

And scores of people are expected to line the city’s streets to pay their respects to the popular PCSO as the hearse carrying his body is driven through Exeter.

The 29-year-old Territorial Army soldier, of 6th Battalion The Rifles based at Wyvern Barracks in Exeter, was killed in an explosion while on a routine foot patrol near Forward Operating Base Inkerman in Helmand province last month.

Police officers who worked alongside Rifleman Marshall in the city will join the soldier’s family at the private service on Friday morning, along with the force’s Chief Constable Stephen Otter.

Devon and Cornwall police have asked members of the public to stay away from Belmont Chapel but are inviting people to pay their respects to the soldier as the hearse drives past police headquarters at Middlemoor and through the city.

The exact route to be taken by the funeral procession is expected to be revealed tomorrow.

Rifleman Marshall joined the police in 2006 and worked initially in Exeter’s Priory ward before joining policing teams in Countess Wear and Topsham.

Last month, the Echo reported how the Prime Minister paid tribute to the serviceman and described him as a “hero” who had shown “incredible bravery”.

In recent days two other Devon-based soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. Just two weeks after Rifleman Marshall died, a former Exeter hotel worker was shot dead while on foot patrol in the war-torn country.

Rifleman Carlo Apolis, 28, from A Company 4 Rifles, was fatally wounded during small arms fire near a patrol base north east of Sangin. Originally from South Africa, he came to Exeter in 2004 where he worked in a hotel before joining the Army three years later.

And on Sunday, Cpl Stephen Thompson from Bovey Tracey was killed by a roadside bomb.