Lieutenant
Will Dixon
The day I was injured, 15th December, was a long day. In the morning, we had a crew of journalists with us from the Daily Mirror. They were doing a Christmas piece, so I was in a Christmas hat, doing lots of funny bits and pieces for the press. But further on in Sangin, there was a large Operation going on. We were the Quick Reaction Force for it, so although we were wearing Christmas hats, we were also on ten minutes’ notice to move if anything happened. We got a call mid-morning to say that one of our vehicles had been hit by an IED. We were sent out to bring the disabled vehicle back and deal with any casualties. But, in Afghanistan, things change very quickly.
As soon as we were out on the ground, we engaged in a significant firefight with the Taliban and the local insurgents, and that carried on throughout the day. Another one of my vehicles got hit by an IED, so we had to pull the crew out of that vehicle. Luckily no one was injured. We then had that crew in our vehicle as well, and we were still racing up and down the main road, resupplying our forces. It was a long day; we had some of the most intense firefights I’d seen in the entire tour.
It was just as night was beginning to fall, around six o’clock in the evening, that my vehicle was hit by an IED. I remember the incident really clearly. We were going over a rough bit of ground that we had been over several times already that day. We’d had people keeping eyes on it, we thought it had been cleared and I was fairly comfortable moving across it. The first thing I remember was the vehicle being lifted off the ground. I think you feel the impact before you hear it, but it all happens so quickly. This forty-tonne vehicle was hit very hard. It was like a car crash, like getting hit by another car. The vehicle came back down, it was probably only the front two wheels that got lifted up, but the sheer feeling of that crashing down again was pretty severe. I can still remember the strong smell of the explosion, it’s the ammonium nitrate that they use in the bombs, the homemade explosives.
When you look back, it feels like it all happens fairly slowly but all that happened in less than a tenth of a second. It’s pretty instantaneous. I was on the front-right seat of the vehicle and I turned to my left, where the driver was. I remember asking if he was all right. His helmet was half hanging off and his glasses were kind of halfway round his face. He looked like something from a comedy skit and he was very dazed, but he said, “Yes, Boss, I’m fine.” We had about four or five people in the rear of the vehicle. I turned around to check if everyone was OK in the back and voices came back saying, “Yep, yep”, at which point, I said, “I’m not, I’ve been injured.” All I could feel was a lot of pain but I couldn’t feel any movement in my left foot, and my right foot was beginning to ache as well. At this point, the crew pretty much took over. I remember sensing a real urgency in their voices as they said, “Right, boys, Boss is injured.” The pain was really growing and I probably let out a few howls to try and deal with it. I remember not really wanting to look at my leg because I knew it was pretty bad.
Essentially what happened, and I know this now from seeing photos of it, was that my left leg was shattered. I had two severe breaks which were bleeding and my foot bone was completely shattered; it was in a complete mess, and that was also seeping blood as well. I had no movement in the leg. I had a jab of morphine in my arse, but there was no significant feeling of the pain getting any better. The boys were absolutely phenomenal. They had to pull me out of my seat and that is up there as one of the most painful moments of my life. But they got me into the back of the vehicle and they began to give me some first aid. Within five to ten minutes a medic arrived. She was called Gaby, she was phenomenal. She began to treat me properly, putting field dressings on. The boys were very reassuring, saying, “Boss, you’re OK, we’ve got it from here, just concentrate on yourself now.” I had some really experienced people around me so I didn’t need to worry about any ensuing firefights or anything like that. The next half-hour or so was just really painful, just dealing with this horrific pain and being pretty concerned—in the back of my mind, I kind of knew my leg was a goner.
I think after about 45 minutes, two American Black Hawks came to take us back to Bastion. The guys put me onto a stretcher, and walked me to the choppers. It’s a really dangerous time when the helicopters are landing because that draws everybody in: every insurgent knows there’s been a casualty and, when the helicopter is on the ground, it is an incredibly vulnerable time. So a lot of the period before that was organising its safe arrival. Before long, I was safely in the arms of the American Paramedics and in the air. They gave me some painkillers that really did work—I can remember they tasted like sambuca. They were giving me a lot of chat saying, “You’re a war hero now, the girls are going to love it!” I remember chuckling and going, “Yeah, just give me more of those painkillers. ” Then I was taken off the helicopter and onto an ambulance, which took me the short stretch to the Emergency Department at Bastion Hospital. Just as I was getting wheeled out of the ambulance, someone smashed my leg on the side of it. My last clear memory is using every bit of Infantry language that I could think of to assassinate the guy I thought was responsible. I think I was put under at that point.
I then woke up with the doctors over me saying, “We’re about to take your leg.” I’d fractured my right heel as well, but the left leg was in such a mess from below the knee that the foot was just un-saveable. When I woke up from the operation, I felt a genuine sense of relief. You come round from any operation and you’re groggy and you’re a little bit disorientated but I think I got my bearings pretty quickly. I remember thanking the doctor, I was in a very polite mood when I woke up. I wanted to apologise to the person I swore at who banged my leg against the ambulance. As I said, there was a genuine sense of relief. I knew that it could have been a lot worse. Actually I was lucky on two counts: the explosion could have been a lot worse for me, and fortunately, no one else in the vehicle had been injured. I certainly had an immediate sense of perspective, which has held me in good stead ever since.
My major concern was speaking to my parents to let them know what had happened. I remember asking the doctors if anyone had spoken to them yet and they told me that a family officer was on their way to see them. I asked if I could phone them, and they let me. It was horrible, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity to do that. The alternative would have been someone turning up at the front door and breaking the news. If there’d been someone there in uniform, it would have sent Mum and Dad into a spin. So I think I broke the news really well. My mum was expecting a phone call as I’d usually call every three days but I hadn’t phoned her for four days as we’d been so busy. She goes, “How are you?” I say, “I’ve picked up a bit of an injury, I’ve fractured my right heel.” To which she said, “Oh God”. Then I said, “I’ve also lost my left leg, I’ve had to have my left leg amputated below the knee.” I could hear the horrific realisation from the other end. She was on speakerphone, and then Dad picked up the phone and said, “Will, I’m with your mum, we’re fine, get yourself back here, just concentrate on yourself and I’ll look after Mum.” I was very keen to try and put them in the same mindset that I was in, saying, “Look, it’s really not that bad, I’m being really well looked after, I’ll be back very soon”, but that was impossible. I put the phone down and I had a bit of a sob at the end of that. I held it together for most of the phone call, but then you put the phone down and you know you’ve just turned their world upside down. I could picture it all, I knew where they were, and I was a little bit emotional at the end of that.
Within 24 hours, I was on the Hercules back to Selly Oak Hospital. My parents were brought up to see me, with my brother and sister. That was pretty emotional. It was very good to see them. No matter how old you get, when times are hard, you immediately want to be with your family. That was certainly one of those occasions. The family stayed up for Christmas and brought the dogs with them, which again led me to another big sob. Everyone was trying to put a brave face on. That time was horrid but amazing too. Whether you’re religious or not, you always want to be around your family at Christmas.
I’ve never had a bad day since my injury. I’ve never had a day when I’ve been depressed or when the bad outweighed the good. I was incredibly positive, to the extent that my family members were concerned I was bottling things up. But I really wasn’t and—touch wood—that has continued to this day. I was really pleased to be alive. I knew the injury I had was not a show stopper in terms of quality of life. I’d be walking soon, I’d be very active and I had my whole life ahead of me. At that point, it wasn’t on my mind that my military career was going to come to a halt. I just wanted to get fit and redeploy to Afghanistan if I could—that mentality is common to a lot of injured soldiers. Your focus is getting back to mobility again and cracking on. There were times when the pain was pretty excruciating, but there’s always someone worse off than you in a hospital bed next to you, and you certainly can’t start feeling sorry for yourself. To my mind, I had so much fortune compared to others. We’d lost a lot of incredible guys on tour, and I’d lost a very good friend the year before I went out. I was under no illusions that what I was going to do was dangerous, and the injury I came out of it with was not so bad. The most negative feeling I had during that time was a sense of guilt that my soldiers were still out in Afghanistan without me, and a feeling of real impotence and uselessness at not being able to help them. It was an incredibly dangerous tour we were on, with a huge casualty rate. I knew some of my soldiers would not be coming back. That was incredibly hard. Suddenly I went from knowing everything that was going on to being in the role that my parents had been in beforehand, scanning the BBC News, dreading seeing 3 Rifle soldiers killed. It did happen and those were my darkest days. Those are the only days that I really broke down and bawled my eyes out.
I spent three weeks in hospital and then went back home to our place in the country. Mum and Dad were incredible; they had spent a huge amount of money doing up a downstairs toilet and putting a shower in there that I could use. They put ramps in all the right places, as I was in a wheelchair, and they turned the dining room into a bedroom because I couldn’t use the stairs. Mum became my nurse for the next month, which, as a fully grown adult, was potentially awkward. She had to help me with things like going to the toilet. I could wipe my own backside thankfully, but there were some pretty menial tasks that she had to do for me. She was brilliant, so efficient and incredibly supportive.
I think things like getting the bathroom sorted helped my parents feel like they were contributing towards my recovery. I fully understand that feeling of helplessness and wanting to support someone. So that was good, it was a chance for my mum especially to begin to come to terms with my injury. But I think that’s a process that is ongoing and will probably never be complete. Parents always have an image of their children which is always in their minds, and it’s difficult for them to get their head around a disfiguring injury. It’s something I know that my parents will probably never fully comprehend, as proud as they are and, as happy as they are that I’m going on and achieving things, it’s not easy for them.
The focus is always getting to Headley Court because that’s where the magic happens. It almost holds this mystical status for injured guys and I was so excited about going there. Within the first week, I was getting fitted for a prosthesis, then the week after that, I was wearing it and I was up walking. I videoed myself on the first day and sent it to all of my family. It was an incredible feeling just being up and on crutches. I’d been so active before, and you have all this pent-up energy which you just want to let loose and you can do that at Headley, which was great. You’re around soldiers again and you’ve got that camaraderie and that brutal, black humour that comes with it. It’s a great environment for pushing yourself; it was incredible and a real turning point for me.
The row across the ocean was another huge turning point in my life. As part of Row2Recovery, we aimed to row across the Atlantic, from the Canary Islands to Barbados. Channelling myself into something so positive was probably the single most important part of my rehabilitation. There was a real sense of unfinished business in my mind, because I didn’t complete the tour with the rest of my soldiers. I felt that my career in the Army wasn’t a success, through no real fault of my own, but had a sense that I wanted to go out and achieve something. I saw rowing across the ocean as a huge challenge. I knew it was going to be physically demanding and I knew the risks that would come with it. I thought of it as an incredibly tough but incredibly rewarding thing to do, and I knew you could significantly mitigate the risks. My mum didn’t see it in the same way; she certainly was aware of the risks. I felt hugely guilty because, although Mum was never unsupportive with the row, she was upset that I was putting myself in harm’s way again. The comparisons and the similarities with me going on tour to Afghanistan were stark. Some of the discussions I had with her were very similar: the whole promising you’ll come back safe thing. Obviously the first time, that didn’t work so well; it’s a very hollow promise. In some ways, it was a selfish thing to do, but I had to do it for myself. That’s the reason I signed up, but then we ended up doing it for a much bigger cause. As I began to meet the other guys involved, our own ambitions became a tiny part of what we were doing. A bigger picture emerged—we wanted to raise money, and we also wanted to do something the whole world was going to see, and send a positive message. I don’t think, when we hit dry land, that I fully grasped the effect it would have on me longer term. Looking back a year on, I can significantly see how that experience boosted my esteem, my confidence and my general well-being. When I saw my parents and I arrived on land in Barbados, that moment meant the world to me and they could see that it meant the world to me. The whole arrival is a vivid memory, I can remember it like it was yesterday. The hug with my mum on arrival was huge and incredible. All my family were there and my girlfriend too, who had been with me throughout the whole injury as well. Those people got me through that process, they’re the reason I could be so positive, because I knew I had such rock-solid foundations. It was a huge occasion, and it was certainly much bigger than just being about me. It was about all of them too, and I think they realised that. My life has moved on. I’m now working full time at Barclays, I’ve got an incredible job that I’m really happy with. I’m Will Dixon, Associate Director at Barclays, rather than Will Dixon, injured ex-soldier. I was very lucky to get offered a secondment at Barclays soon after my injury. I began working on a project there that helped support and transition other injured servicemen into roles at the company. It was an amazing project for me because it gave me a chance to reflect on the bigger picture of what I was going to do for the rest of my life. If I’d gone straight back into a role in the Army, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity to step back. I think that’s what has been really good for me—I always wanted to be defined by something more than my injury. I’m incredibly proud of my time in the Army: that and my injury are the two biggest influences on my personality and my life. But I’m in a new part of my life now. It’s one that I’m very happy with and one that I’m enjoying. I’m very settled and very positive for the future.