The soldiers of the King's Own Scottish Borderers found the main road to their base at Amarah blocked by vehicles driven across the carriageway by Iraqis determined to release the captives. The convoy diverted through the village of Ali al-Sharqi, but again the Iraqis anticipated their arrival. Near the village they encountered an angry crowd.Fusilier Beeston was ordered to dismount from his Land Rover. He was part of a group instructed to walk the convoy through the crowd by acting as armed escorts. It must have been instantly apparent that the tactic would fail. As soon as the riflemen left their vehicles a second group of Iraqis emerged to seal the road behind them. With hostile men to their front and rear, Russell Beeston and his colleagues fired two volleys into the air.
The show of force was intended as a warning, but Iraqi fighters responded with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades Fusilier Beeston was hit in the chest by rifle bullets. He was treated at the scene but died from his injuries while his unit was still under fire.Russell Beeston received his call-up papers at the end of June. Days later he reported for duty at the Army's dedicated Reserve Training and Call-Up Centre at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire. There he underwent a fortnight of intensive training in weapons use and protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He passed a combat fitness test which requires soldiers to run a four-mile course in less than an hour carrying a 55lb pack and an SA80 assault rifle. Training completed, he was flown from RAF Brize Norton to Basra.Among the 160 Territorial soldiers from his regiment who were summoned to serve in the Gulf, there were some who had already demonstrated a taste for frontline service.
Several had completed six-month deployments alongside regular soldiers in Bosnia or Kosovo Russell Beeston did not volunteer to go to the Balkans. His experience as a rifleman was based on the combat infantryman's course which he completed at Catterick, North Yorkshire.In Iraq, Beeston and his TA comrades were spread out to serve alongside regulars from the King's Own Scottish Borderers. They were filling gaps in full-time regiments stretched to the limit by overdue leave and cumulative fatigue. An Army spokeswoman describes him as "a rifleman in an infantry battalion".Whether Beeston enjoyed the challenge is not clear.
