The bravest of the brave
“I knew my leg was gone straightaway,” says Chris Herbert, recalling the moment in February when the four-man armoured car he was travelling in south of Basra was blown up by a roadside bomb. “But there were people screaming, so you get on with it. We were doing our own first aid and trying to help each other.”
How did he know his leg was gone? “I wanted to get my friend out of the vehicle, and as I leant forward I tried to put my weight down. I had my head about a foot off my knee and the two bones, fib and tib, came straight up and touched my cheek. I pretty much guessed.” He laughs.
How this good-natured, articulate 19-year-old from Barnsley manages to laugh about the incident that cost him his right leg is hard to know. He admits he has good days and bad days, that he is still in pain, that only now is his family coming to terms with the tragedy. But there is no self-pity.
He wasn’t even a regular soldier; he was a reservist. He had joined the TA to earn some money to pay his way through college, and was attached to the 1st Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment. His father, a former soldier, hadn’t wanted him to go to Iraq, but Herbert says he has no regrets. “I thoroughly enjoyed being out there. The guys I was working with were phenomenal.” His only sadness is that he wasn’t able to save the life of his friend, Luke Simpson, who was driving the armoured car when it was blown up.
Herbert and five other injured servicemen are giving impromptu interviews on the lawn at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court, near Leatherhead, Surrey. The sun is shining, the air is still, and another group of patients are playing croquet nearby. Headley Court used to belong to a governor of the Bank of England, and the manor house that now serves as the officers’ mess still smells of polished oak.
This is a rare chance, occasioned by the opening of a new 30-bed annex, to see inside Headley Court and to talk to patients. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a marked increase in the number of seriously injured military personnel who need long-term rehab, and the new annex has ben rapidly constructed at a cost of £1.7m to cater for current and projected needs.
Opening the doors of Headley Court is part of a PR fightback by the MoD, which has been on the defensive since a series of damaging stories earlier this year about Selly Oak hospital, where service personnel receive emergency care before being transferred to rehabilitation units. Selly Oak is an NHS hospital and complaints about treatment there were splashed across papers, notably the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, campaigning for separate treatment for military personnel.
The government argues that there is insufficient demand to fill a separate military hospital, and that only by working at an NHS hospital can military doctors gain a sufficiently wide range of experience. But it intends to appease its critics – including a faction within the armed forces which has been briefing against Selly Oak – by building a separate military ward at the hospital.
Defence minister Derek Twigg, in opening the new annex at Headley Court, spoke of the “courage and sacrifice” of British troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Herbert and his colleagues posed for photographs on the manicured lawns, that courage and sacrifice are all too plain to see.
“It’s humbling coming to this place,” says Herbert. “I was in hospital, and it felt like the end of the world had just happened. Then you turn up here, and you to see all these people getting on with it. It helps you because you know if they’re working hard, you can too.”
Herbert is likely to be at Headley Court until November; then he plans to go back to college – and back into the TA. “I don’t know where my limits are yet,” he says. “When I know my limits, then I’ll set my goals. I’d like to see operations again, but I don’t think I can really. It would be difficult for people in a frontline role to work with someone with one leg. If I went on operational tour it would be in a second- or third-line role.”
He had an artificial leg fitted within five weeks of the explosion, and it is being constantly remoulded as the swelling below his thigh is reduced. Headley Court combines a prosthetics workshop with a gym and pool – all being proudly shown off today.
Getting the artificial leg quickly was crucial to his recovery. “You don’t want your family to see you weak and laying in a bed, and I can’t stand wheelchairs,” he says. “Within a very short time I was back up and about, going out with friends. Simple things like being able to stand at the bar with my dad meant a lot.” It is not Herbert who should feel humbled.
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