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Corporal Stuart Hale ... returns to active service
Amputee Brit back in action
A FEARLESS paratrooper who lost a leg in Afghanistan has become the first British soldier to return to action there as an amputee.
Corporal Stuart Hale is back in southern Afghanistan less than two years after he suffered horrific injuries in a mine blast in Helmand Province.
The 26-year-old from the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, was one of several soldiers injured after being caught in an unmarked minefield near the Kajaki Dam on September 6, 2006.
His colleague Corporal Mark Wright, who was killed in the incident, posthumously received the George Cross for his actions that day.
An army investigation later highlighted that the injured troops had been forced to wait for several hours for rescue after a Chinook helicopter was unable to land and had no winch to lift the men to safety.
Cpl Hale had his right leg amputated because of the injuries he suffered and had to learn how to walk again at the specialist military rehabilitation centre Headley Court in Surrey.
Speaking in November 2006 he described the learning experience as like being a one-year-old again and expressed hopes that he could return to theatre.
Credit to country
He has now returned to active service, working in intelligence at Kandahar Airfield, the main Nato hub in southern Afghanistan.
He explained: “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.”
Describing the reaction he has received since his arrival in theatre, he said: “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’.
“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’.”
He admitted his prosthetic leg - camouflaged of course - did have some limitations but added: “If I could be deployed in the same capacity I’d be back out there on those hilltops.”
One of Cpl Hale’s battalion comrades, Sergeant Stuart Pearson, who also lost a leg in the same incident, has also returned to duty and hopes to go back to Afghanistan one day.