The immigrant who died for Britain

Donal Meade, then just 10 years old, watched as the RAF C-130 transport planes turned up with supplies, and British troops arrived to help deal with the chaos.

Months later, the schoolboy was among thousands of refugees forced to flee what was left of the island. Coaxed on to the plane by his mother, Jacinta, he arrived in Britain with his big sister, Keisha-Ann, and younger brother, Joseph.

He settled in London with remarkable ease and fulfilled his dream when he signed up to join the British forces at the age of 17.

Yesterday, his 54-year-old mother sat in his bedroom in their tiny flat on an unremarkable redbrick estate in Plumstead, inconsolable at the news her son had been killed serving his adopted land. On Monday morning, Fusilier Donal Meade, 20, and his friend Fusilier Stephen Manning, 22, from nearby Erith, died when their armoured Land Rover was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq.

It was a devastating blow to a family which had overcome such difficulty to build a successful and happy life in London.

Like thousands of immigrants, the Meades had arrived in Britain with nothing but were to contribute much to the community they had made their own. This positive side of immigration was graphically demonstrated yesterday by a report that revealed the increasing diversity of "rainbow Britain".

Researchers from the Institute of Public Policy Research and Sheffield University showed that Britain is attracting immigrants from more parts of the world than ever before.

In a powerful riposte to the anti-immigration lobby, ministers said the report demonstrated how many of these families - like the Meades - are a valuable part of British society.

The family last heard from Fusilier Meade on Friday, when he called to ask whether they had sent extra memory for his laptop and they asked whether their parcel of DVDs, Doritos and Wotsits had arrived at his base at Basra Palace.

His sister Keisha Ann, 22, said: "He told Mum he would be back on 4 November. She asked him to be alert, to be careful and he just said 'Mum. I am a soldier and soldiers die. He was one in a million. He was quiet but a practical joker. He just made me laugh. I can't go back to crying because, if my brother was alive he would be angry with me. He would say 'Oh sis, shut up'."

A stream of Fusilier Meade's extended family - among the thousands who fled the British territory and were offered a home in England - arrived to offer comforting hugs and bouquets of flowers. The neat living room was peppered with smiling photographs of the young man, from proud uniformed schoolboy to proud uniformed soldier - a Star Wars light sabre, propped up in the corner, evidence of how recently he had been the former.

As a cricket-mad youngster he had grown up in a very different world in Montserrat, pumping the base pedals for his mother as she played the organ in St Patrick's Catholic church, and making model aeroplanes in his spare time. But, his sister insisted, he never looked back once he arrived in Britain - a country he had only visited once before as a toddler. "The first day at school he made friends immediately. Easygoing isn't the word to describe him."

He had only ever wanted to join the British forces, Ms Meade, who recently graduated with a degree in philosophy and sociology, said. "Mum was worried but she knew that was what he wanted to do. I said 'Why the Army? Go to college.' But he wanted to be a frontline man.

"He did not get the grades for the RAF and so he joined the Army, hoping he might later transfer over to become a pilot and then maybe later a commercial pilot. He was obsessed with planes."

On 20 January 2002, Fusilier Meade's sister accompanied him on the first leg of his journey to his training camp. A year later he joined the battalion in Northern Ireland. "He was proud of that uniform. Mum made him wear it so she could see it when he came home. He was going to give me away in that uniform."

Bored with the monotony of barracks life in Northern Ireland, he volunteered to go to Iraq. "I came out of the cinema with Joseph [now aged 12] and got a text saying 'I'm going to Iraq'," explained his sister. "I phoned him and said 'What do you mean you are going to Iraq?' and he said 'Oh sis, stop whingeing and crying. It's my job'."

After a few tough weeks, he settled in. He complained that the Army's new enhanced body armour was too heavy and constrictive and the country was too hot. But he also boasted jokingly that they were living in Saddam's palace. As part of the Coldstream Guards battle group in Basra, the Fusiliers helped to secure Basra Palace, escort the United Nations mission and support the Iraqi police during certain duties.

His sister said: "As far as he was concerned he was peacekeeping. That was what he was trained to do in Belfast. This was what he had volunteered to do.

"He was with his closest friends in the Army and he died doing the job he loved.

"I remember he once said to mum, he thought it was unfair that Iraqis were being killed all the time and yet there was such a hullaballoo when a British or American soldier died."