Captain Philip Guy died in the deserts of the Gulf serving his country. Yesterday, in the North Yorkshire sunshine, thousands of people stood in silence to honour his ultimate sacrifice.

As the hearse bearing his body slid through the streets of Skipton towards Holy Trinity Church, his fellow Royal Marines on the roadside bowed their heads.

It was the third time inside 30 months that the Guy family, from Wensleydale, had gathered at the church.

In 2000, they came to celebrate the wedding of Philip and Helen; and in 2002, they came to commemorate the christening of their first child, Henry, now 20 months old.

The third time was for Philip's full military funeral, his coffin carried into the church by six marines, its arrival announced by a volley of gunfire and a bugler's lament.

Later this year, there will be a fourth visit when little Emily is christened.

She was born on April 2. Her father had been killed on March 21 when his helicopter crashed near the Iraqi border during the first 24 hours of the war. He was returning from what would probably have been his last mission before flying back to Britain to be at his wife's bedside for the birth. He was 29.

Yesterday's 40-minute service was relayed to the 3,000 outside the church by loudspeakers. They heard a moving eulogy from his friend, Captain Daniel Hughes, who said: "Phil's legacy is all around - in his wife and children, in his family and friends, the people who he worked with.

"They say you cannot control the length of life, only the breadth, width and depth of it; Phil managed to push all these things to the limit and still had time for all of us on the way."

12/04/2003