THE youngest soldier to have died in the Afghanistan conflict will be remembered in his home town this month when a plaque is unveiled in his honour.

At 2.30pm on Saturday, October 29, a service will be held at St Peter’s Church in Bromyard before a memorial plaque is unveiled in memory of Rifleman William Aldridge.

It will be held in honour of the 18-year-old who was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2009.

Following the service, the Rifles regiment will march through Bromyard town centre with bugles sounding and bands playing, having been granted the Freedom of Bromyard and Winslow by the town council.

The poignant event will start with troops assembling in Market Square at 3.30pm where they will be inspected by the Mayor of Bromyard and Winslow, Councillor Fred Clark, and the senior Rifles officer, Major General Nick Welch.

The Mayor will then present a freedom scroll and General Welch will reply on behalf of the Rifles.

At 4pm the marching troops – around 120 people including the band and buglers, regular and reserve soldiers, army cadets and veterans – will parade on Broad Street before marching past and saluting the Mayor, General Welch and HM Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire, the Countess of Darnley, opposite the Falcon Hotel.

The parade will continue along High Street before turning right into Cruxwell Street and left into Church Lane where it will finish.

The Rifles is the largest infantry regiment in the British Army, with five regular and two reserve battalions, and its link with Bromyard goes back to 1860. In that year Captain Hopton raised the Bromyard company of the Herefordshire Volunteer Rifle Corps, and for more than 100 years the men of that corps and of its successors, the Herefordshire Regiment and the Herefordshire Light Infantry, were based in the town.