MIKE Wilson, 44-year-old ex-soldier and now a civilian bomb disposal and demining expert, is a brave man.

He has chosen to risk danger so that he can help to save Iraqi citizens from being blown up by Saddam Hussein's own armaments during and after the coalition-led war which is about to break out.

Nobody will be surprised that the dictator, who has little if any regard for his own people, has already resorted to laying land mines, a form of weaponry which has maimed and killed thousands of civilians in other countries and is now almost universally condemned.

We salute Mr Wilson, the Canadian International Demining Agency and the people who will be working alongside him during and after the conflict. We hope for everybody's sake that its end will come soon, but even then the danger facing him and his colleagues will not be over.

Our thoughts, and those of every right-minded man and woman in Swindon should go with him as he takes off for Kuwait. And also with his wife Helen and their children Faye and Simon.