OTTAWA – Private Lane Watkins was killed on 4 July, 2007 along with 5 other CF members and one Afghan interpreter, when the vehicle they were traveling in struck an improvised explosive device, approximately 20km south-west of Kandahar City. Pte Watkins was a member of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, 3 PPCLI, based out of Edmonton.

Tamara King Canadian press WINNIPEG – He will never get to meet the little girl who will carry on his name. Pte. Lane Watkins was remembered Thursday as a proud uncle to three-month-old Chloe Colleen Lane Cairns, born several months after he was deployed to Afghanistan last December. Watkins, 20, was in an armoured vehicle when a powerful roadside bomb detonated Wednesday, July 4, killing six soldiers and one Afghan interpreter. Watkins had been scheduled to come home in a few weeks and was looking forward to meeting Chloe, the daughter of his older brother, Andrew Watkins. "(Lane) was very proud of her and he couldn't stop talking about how much he wanted to see her and hold her and all that stuff," Chloe's mother, Candice Cairns, wrote in an email to The Canadian Press. Cairns said she and her partner Andrew Watkins included Lane in the baby's name because they were so proud of his work overseas. "I know he will be looking over her for the rest of her life .... He is her angel now,"

Cairns wrote on a webpage created in Lane Watkins' honour. The soldier grew up in Clearwater, Man., and attended high school in nearby Pilot Mound. Lynn Galbraith, one of his former teachers, said the sometimes-shy young man had always shown an interest in a career with the military. "He was well-liked by all his classmates. He was a big strapping lad. He was a good-sized kid. He could be shy at times, but he was outgoing with his friends," Galbraith said. "I find it very hard to look at his picture on the news and think of him as gone, being so young." Wade Watson, the principal at Pilot Mound Collegiate, said he would respect the family's wish for privacy. "I think I'm going to honour that, other than to tell you that he was a very good kid and he was doing what he wanted to do." Though she graduated from high school a few years before him, Amy Henderson of Pilot Mound wrote on a webpage in the 20-year-old soldier's honour that all the communities around his hometown are filled with sadness and disbelief. "Lane was a very brave and courageous young man who put his country before his own needs and wants and served all of us with honour," she said. "My thoughts and prayers are with the Watkins family and all of Lane's friends, and also my condolences to families and friends of other Canadian soldiers who lost their lives on July 4th." More than 200 people were listed as members of the site, created Wednesday just hours after the news of the deaths. Tributes poured in from close friends and family as well as people who didn't know the young man. "He died doing a job that a lot of people could never do. His time on this planet made a difference to people that we will never meet," one tribute read.