A SOLDIER was crushed between two four ton army lorries at the end of a battlefield exercise.

Corporal Christopher Baker was checking that the tailboard of his DAF truck was secure when it rolled back into the lorry parked in convoy behind it, trapping him.

Horrified eyewitness, 256 Signals driver Lance Gwilliam told an inquest jury: "I looked up to see Corporal Baker at the rear of his vehicle. He was checking the tailboard was up and secure; just walking around the back and giving it a shake.

"It all happened in a split second. As I looked I could see the vehicle roll back. He had his arms out as if he was pushing it.''

The Middlesbrough inquest heard that days earlier in the exercise on North Yorkshire moorland - the same lorry lurched backwards after 32-year-old Corporal Baker threw his field webbing into the cab.

Private Gwilliam said: "I assumed the webbing may have caught the hand brake and released it.

He had been in the back of Cpl Baker's lorry on that first occasion and estimated the vehicle rolled back six feet. Lance Corporal Sarah Cattell (COR) had been sitting in the front passenger seat.

She said she assumed it stopped on that occasion because Cpl Baker applied the hand brake.

On the day of the tragedy, Cpl Baker's lorry pinned him against a truck driven by Lance Corporal Mandir Kumar Rai, who, the inquest heard may have put his lorry into reverse, only for Cpl Baker's truck to roll back on him a second time.

The Lance Corporal's front seat passenger, Sergeant Raj Gurung said when he saw the lorry start to roll back towards Cpl Baker: "I started to bang on the windscreen and shouting to Cpl Baker to get out of the way. He did not react.''

The accident happened on a moorland army training area called 'Green Hut' between Richmond and Bardon Moor.

Cpl Baker, who was from Wolverhampton, but based with the Signals near Nuneaton, was air lifted to the James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, but died later the same day, February 6, last year.

Home Office pathologist Dr James Sunter said Cpl Baker suffered severe head and abdominal injuries "consistent with crushing.'' The inquest is expected to continue until Thursday.