A British paratrooper who lost his leg to a landmine has become the first amputee to return to military service in Afghanistan, in the war zone where he was disabled.
Corporal Stuart Hale arrived with the 3rd Batallion, The Parachute Regiment last month for a joint operation against the Taleban with Canadian forces in Kandahar province.
It is a fight that he was forced to leave on a stretcher nearly two years ago when he and four comrades were cut down in a minefield and left waiting for five hours in a botched helicopter rescue.
In an exclusive interview with The Times at Kandahar airbase, the 26-year-old soldier spoke about losing his leg, his anger over mistakes made during the rescue and his arduous journey back to the front.
Sitting in the shade outside his regiment’s headquarters where he now works as an intelligence officer, Corporal Hale wore a camouflage-coloured prosthesis on what remains of his right leg. His left leg is intact but swollen red from an infection that put him in hospital over the weekend. The little finger on his right hand is gone.
“Other people try to find different ways, but I just want to get back to the way I was. That’s why I’m out here,” he said.
It was September 6, 2006, and Corporal Hale was nearing the end of a six-month tour in Helmand province. What was meant to be a peacekeeping mission had become a relentless battle with the Taleban.
From the remote hilltop outpost where he was stationed, Corporal Hale, a sniper, spotted an enemy checkpoint just out of his rifle range. “We saw these two Taleban, but we also saw kids running around. I didn’t want that on my conscience so I decided to take two guys closer to the checkpoint and take the Taleban out with my sniper rifle,” he recalled.
He led his patrol down the mountain and hopped across a riverbed. Buried beneath the dirt was a Soviet-made landmine.
“It felt like I’d slipped and I dropped my rifle. When I went to pick it up that’s when I saw my finger was hanging off and I realised something bad had happened. Then I looked down and it dawned on me.”
His right foot had been blown off just above the top of his boot. The mine had sliced through his thigh bone and left the rest of the leg dangling in a bloody mess. As comrades rushed to his rescue they triggered a chain of secondary explosions, resulting in four soldiers injured and one dead.
“It sounded like every other minute there was another explosion and another guy went down. And all I remember thinking was, ‘All this just because of me’.”
A Chinook helicopter was called in to get them out but could not land without risking setting off more explosions. It was not equipped with a winch, and so could not lift the soldiers to safety. “That was a big mistake, but it all comes down to, I guess, funding and money and people trying to cut corners,” Corporal Hale said. “It’s just a shame that it takes lives to get people to pay attention to this.” Eventually the soldiers were lifted out by US Blackhawk helicopters.
The soldiers were subsequently recognised for their bravery. Corporal Mark Wright, who died trying to save the wounded, was posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Some of the wounded soldiers were rehabilitated and took up civilian jobs, but Corporal Hale — who has two young children and is engaged to be married — knew immediately that he wanted to return. Six months after losing his leg he returned to active duty. When the call came to return to Afghanistan, he didn’t hesitate. Half of his battle group returned with him.
The prosthetic leg presents problems, but he has not ruled out a return to the front line. “If I could be deployed in the same capacity I’d be back out there on those hilltops.”
At Kandahar airbase, the hub of the fight in the south of the country, he gets a mixed reaction. “Some guys have spoken to me and said I’m a real credit to my country. Others look at me with suspicion because they think, ‘That could happen to me’,” he said.
“But I wanted to come back out here and for people to think, ‘If the worst should happen to me, at least I know I can be back out here and still have a life in the military’.”
Fighting spirits
— Nelson put a telescope to his blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen, then said he could not see a signal to withdraw by the commander of the British fleet. He then destroyed many Danish and Norwegian ships. Nelson lost his arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, shot by a sniper after pacing the deck in full regalia
— Injured first in the Boer War then in Somaliland, where he lost an eye, Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, received eight wounds in the First World War, including the loss of his left hand. He is thought to have been the inspiration for Brigadier Ben Ritchie Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy
— Douglas Bader rejoined the RAF at the outbreak of the Second World War, despite having lost both legs in a flying accident in 1931. He became a fighter ace, was shot down in 1941 and incarcerated for the rest of the war
— Mark Ormrod, of 40 Commando, lost both legs and his right arm after stepping on a landmine in Helmand province on Christmas Eve 2007. His first words to the doctor were: “No s**t, I think my dancing days are over.”
Sources: Times database, Who’s Who in Twentieth Century Warfare, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Douglas Bader Foundation
