Photojournalist Jason P. Howe was embedded with the Army in Afghanistan last
year when a soldier with whom he was on patrol stepped on an improvised
explosive device, losing both legs.
There are words that no soldier ever wants to say, but he began to shout into
his radio. “Contact IED! One times casualty T1. Wait out!”
I was embedded with 1 Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and was just yards
from the 25-year-old when he stepped on a landmine that blew off both his
legs.
Through the remarkable bravery and skill of his comrades, his life was saved,
but only now, after Pte Bainbridge granted approval for my pictures to be
published, can the full story of his rescue and road to recovery be told.
Three hours earlier that morning, Lt Weir’s squad from 3 Scots (The Black
Watch) had been dropped into open farm land near Loya Manda, Nad-e-Ali, in
Helmand Province along with soldiers from 1PWRR.
They were taking part in an ongoing series of operations called Tora Pishaw
that has successfully disrupted insurgent activity in the area.
“When I got off the chopper I had an eerie feeling about the surroundings,” Lt
Weir later recalled. “There was something spooky about them, it made the
hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“The first contact came within minutes of landing, just a short burst from a
PKM belt fed machine gun, and I thought ‘this is not a good sign’.”
The mission that day was to clear a series of compounds, but as they entered
one of them, almost to a man they instinctively felt something was wrong.
Pte John Cameron, 21, was called forward to use his mine detector to sweep a
doorway found hidden behind a blanket, which led to an adjacent compound.
After deciding it was safe, he pushed on and swept the area beyond, followed
by several others, including me, who also came to no harm.
Then Pte Bainbridge, who had been providing rear protection, stepped through
the doorway.
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| Pte Bainbridge is attended to by medics after stepping on an IED (Jason
P. Howe) |
“As he did so I was hit by a wave of sound and debris,” said Lt Weir. “It
seemed to be moving in slow motion; I got launched a few metres and landed
on my back. Initially I thought it was me that had stood on the device.
“I gave myself a quick limb check and realized I was not in any pain apart
from my face. For an instant I thought maybe no-one was injured but then
thought that was silly because these things don’t just go off.”
Before he was even back on his feet, Lt Weir sent the initial contact report
back to HQ.
“Contact IED. Wait out.”
Lt Weir got up and: “I saw Bainbridge lying just inside the doorway. One of
his legs was missing, his hand was very swollen and he was missing the tip
of one of his fingers, I saw the other leg was definitely damaged but it was
still there at that point. I called for a medic and then started giving my
initial first aid.”
Unable to see through a cloud of dust spread by the explosion, other soldiers
shouted “Any casualties? Any casualties?”
A weak voice replied: “Me, me, Bainbridge, I’m a casualty.”
The squad’s medic, Cpl John Goode, aged just 21, had never dealt with a
battlefield casualty until then, but ran forward without hesitation to take
control.
Knowing that a man with his legs blown off can bleed to death in minutes or
even seconds, he ordered Lt Weir to apply pressure to the arteries in Pte
Bainbridge’s legs while he tied tourniquets around them.
Morphine was injected into his one uninjured limb, and a large capital M
written on his face in pen, with the time it was administered, as a message
to doctors who would treat him later. Meanwhile another soldier filled in a
casualty report, giving the medics who would meet him on a helicopter
scrambled from Camp Bastion the details they needed.
“When I got up to Bainbridge I had never seen anything like it in my life,”
said Lt Weir. “Part of me thought ‘Good Lord, what am I going to do here?’
But Goode didn’t appear to show any shock, he just treated it like an
exercise. He saved his life.”
Pte Chris Watson, 21, cradled Pte Bainbridge’s head and tried to keep him
conscious and talking.
“At one point Bainbridge tried to sit up and look at his legs,” he said. “I
held him down and told him he was going to be OK.”
Others joined in, telling him: “Hang on Bainbridge, the heli is on its way.”
Before he could be airlifted out though, the men would need to find a safe
route out, meaning another painstaking sweep for hidden IEDs.
As the men dug deep and pushed back out of the compound they could see the
other squad had secured an emergency landing site for the helicopter.
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| photo by Jason P. Howe |
Another doctor, attached to the second group, started getting fluids into Pte
Bainbridge to counter his blood loss before the MEDEVAC Chinook settled on
the ground in a maelstrom of thudding rotors and swirling dust.
But the Taliban were not quite done yet. The crack of bullets split the air as
a sniper tried to put the Chinook out of action. The stretcher-bearers
dashing for the helicopter heard nothing above the noise of the turbines,
but further back their comrades were returning fire.
Suddenly the ground only 50 yards in front of the soldiers erupted in smoke
and flying dirt as an Apache attack helicopter escorting the Chinook strafed
the area with 30mm cannon to force the insurgents back.
Amid the deafening storm of gunfire, shouted orders and the scream of the
helicopter’s rotors as it lifted off, Pte Bainbridge was on his way.
Incredibly, he would be in hospital just 36 minutes after the explosion
happened.
Pte Bainbridge, from Kirkcaldy, is a quiet man who keeps himself to himself,
an avid reader who hated PT during his training. He is also a soldier who is
good at his job, whose kit was always squared away and who never moaned
about anything, accepting and completing whatever task he was set.
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| photo by Jason P. Howe |
Doctors at the Headley Court military hospital in Surrey have noticed the same
qualities in him as his rehabilitation continues.
“He’s a very determined man,” says his physiotherapist, Claire Painter, one of
the team teaching him to walk on prosthetic limbs.
Recalling the day he stepped on the mine, Pte Bainbridge says: “I was blown
into the air, I felt the heat blast. As I was coming back down it didn’t
feel like I was falling, more like floating.” He laughs as he adds: “That
was until I hit the ground.”
Pte Bainbridge regained consciousness in hospital on Nov 20, but said: “Before
I woke up I pretty much knew the legs were gone. I suppose I was conscious
of the doctors talking. It still hit me when I woke up but not as badly as
if I believed I was still all there. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
Yet he has no regrets about his decision to join the Army.
“I wouldn’t change anything, he says. “I chose the job, I chose to be with 3
Scots. There was no second choice, it was always going to be them.”
By Jason P. Howe
telegraph.co.uk
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