A SOLDIER from Chelmsford is being remembered this week as British troops leave Afghanistan after a war which spanned 13 years.

The conflict saw 453 British troops lose their lives, including Chelmsford’s Lance Corporal Scott Hardy.

L/Cpl Hardy 26, of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment, died in March 2010 after an explosion in Helmand province, just a week before he was due to return home.

Since then, his memory has lived on with a hornbeam tree being planted in the grounds of Chelmsford Cathedral, where L/Cpl Hardy’s funeral took place.