Corporal
Rory Mackenzie
I deployed to Iraq in October 2006, as a Combat Medical Technician for C Company, 1 Staffords. We knew it was going to be busy. We were warned that there was a lot of activity from insurgents in Basra, the city where we would be based. We did a lot of riot training before we went out and we were fully expecting a good old fight. I felt a bit of anticipation, slight anxiety, a lot of excitement, a lot of nerves. It was my first tour and I didn’t know what to expect. I knew I had to keep cool, and try and survive.
I was quite a busy medic; whenever a patrol needed to go out, there had to be a medic within the patrol. We started upping the number of patrols, because the insurgents were quite accurately attacking us via indirect fire and we were sustaining casualties on a frequent basis. To try and counteract that, we would go on patrols to catch them in the act and stop them from doing it.
We were mounting one of these patrols at about 3.30am when I got blown up. I remember it clear as anything. I got to the back of the vehicle we were going out in and there was this young lad sleeping in the seat I liked to sit in. It was the one behind the gunner, and the gunner had a nice screen with a digital display so you could see what was going on outside. This lad was fast asleep in that seat. I remember this so clearly; it was a decision not to wake him up. I thought, “Good on you, you got here first and you’re asleep already”, so I sat opposite him. And about two hours later, he didn’t exist, he just disappeared, dead.
We went on patrol, we did what we needed to do and we were coming back into camp. It was at this time I’d always say a prayer: “Dear God, keep us safe and grant me the knowledge to do what I need to do if something happens.” Then, boom, an almighty explosion. It was so loud that ten miles away, in the Central Operating Base, the mortar alarm went off. The IED was so big and powerful that it lifted a 42- tonne tank sideways. It went up through the road wheels, through the armour, through the seat and my leg, and into this young soldier sitting opposite me. It transected him, which means it split him into a couple of pieces. His upper torso was flung forward, and I remember his face being right in front of my face, and then his helmet hitting me on my mouth. I remember so clearly that, in that moment, I had my lip between my teeth but my teeth were still clenched, as I’d bitten through my bottom lip. I was knocked unconscious from the helmet blow. It must have been for a few seconds. Then I sat up again and I had no vision because the dust had been kicked up from inside the back of the vehicle, and it was so thick that you couldn’t see past your nose. I had the dead soldier on me and I remember lifting his torso up and putting it to the side and thinking it was so light that there was no way he could still be alive—there’s nothing attached to it. I registered that and clicked into medic mode, but I hadn’t actually registered that I had lost my leg. I sat up in the back of the vehicle, grabbed the vehicle commander’s ankle and shouted, “Casualties, casualties, casualties.” And then I shouted, “My leg, my leg, my leg!” I could smell burning flesh, it was like a barbecue, just burning hair and blood. It was just so sore and then I collapsed sideways.
I wasn’t unconscious—physically I had no more life at all, but mentally I was still in the moment. Then I started to repeat to myself, “This is serious, stay awake, stay alive”, and I just continuously repeated that. I could feel movement after what seemed like a couple of minutes. I could feel my body moving, but I couldn’t understand what was happening, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move. I felt my arm being lifted and two fingers being pressed for the radial artery. Then I felt someone moving my head and feeling for the carotid artery. I heard this person say, “No, he’s dead.” I knew who that person was, because I recognised his voice—it was a guy called David. In my mind I was like, “No no no no no, I’m here, I’m very much here”, but I couldn’t do anything about it. David went around to the rest of the guys and started treating them. The guy sitting opposite me to the left had a shard of my shin bone penetrate his eye, which then went into his brain. After David had treated everyone else, he came back to me and felt again for a pulse. Then put my hand down and said, “No, two dead.” I consciously remember thinking, “This is it, if you don’t do something now, you are dead.” I put every ounce of energy that I had left in my body into coughing. It was just a little cough, but he heard it and he jumped straight in and he said, “He’s alive.” He laid me down on a seat, rolled me over and exposed my leg. I remember feeling this strap going on over my leg. And then it was pulled really, really tight, uncomfortably tight, far too uncomfortably tight, so much so that I had life come back into me and I screamed because he’d actually got my meat and two veg in the tourniquet. I just jumped and sat up, and then he loosened it off and readjusted it. And that’s what saved my life, putting that tourniquet on so high up and so effectively.
I began to come back into consciousness. I started to see a little bit as the bleeding began to stop. I remember David grabbing hold of my body armour all of a sudden, and I was yanked up, out of the vehicle. In that moment, I was standing outside of the vehicle looking at myself. I was standing there outside of my body. I knew it was me because I could see that I had my scissors, which I used to cut clothes off when I was treating someone. And then I went back into my body. It was the most surreal thing ever. I’ve since spoken to surgeons and they say that the blood being drained out of my head as I was yanked up might have caused a hallucination. But, as clear as day, I know that I was outside of my body and it was bizarre.
Then David literally threw me across to the roof of another vehicle. He jumped across, he got into the mortar hatch and he held me on the roof of the vehicle. The only thing that he did wrong, bless him, was that he put my exposed stump wound right by the exhaust of the Warrior. We were racing back, and I kept saying, “my leg, my leg”. I was willing him to talk to me because I knew I was so close to dying and I needed that stimulation to keep me alive. We got back to the Chat Al-Arab Hotel, where a Merlin had already landed. A medic came to retrieve me off the roof of the vehicle and he was so nervous that he didn’t know where to grab me. He ended up grabbing my stump, and the back of my neck and back, and lifting me off this vehicle by my amputated stump. Bless him. I was put onto a stretcher, and I had a couple of lines put into me and as soon as that fluid came back into me, I felt life re-entering my body. I could see again, I could speak again and I was slowly coming back. I was listening to the handover that the medics were giving to the air ambulance crew, and I heard the phrase “traumatic amputation”. That was the first moment I realised I’d lost my leg. I remember thinking, “Shit, that’s not something you can fix.”
I was carried onto the back of the helicopter, and this rather good-looking blonde nurse knelt down to me and said, “It’s going to be OK, it’s going to be OK.” I grabbed her hand and I don’t remember letting go. Hazel was her name. I must have slipped into unconsciousness because I then woke after the helicopter had landed and I was being wheeled out of the back of it. I knew I was in the field hospital because I recognised the roof and I was taken straight into surgery. The surgeon came up to me and said, “You’re doing very well, you’re being very brave, well done, you’re fighting hard, keep fighting.” She said, “I’m just going to roll you over and have a look”, and the last words I ever remember hearing while I was conscious and awake, were “Oh fuck.”
I woke up in Birmingham two days later, after seven operations. I woke up with my mother holding one hand and my brother holding the other. I looked at my mum, and said, “Mum, do you know I’ve lost my leg?” She said, “Yes, I do, my son, thank you so much for living.” I looked down and my leg was this one lump under nicely folded sheets. The reality hit me right there and then: that’s me, one-legged. I was in Birmingham for eight weeks. My mum and my brother were there for the duration and my girlfriend came over too. I went straight from Birmingham to Headley Court, and I’m still there. I’ve been in and out of Headley for five years. It’s a nice place; there’s some really, really good people there.
My overriding feeling of that time in Birmingham was frustration, particularly as I started to become more aware of what had happened and what it meant. The toilet was the biggest mission you could ever imagine. As the weeks went on, I started being wheeled up to physio to learn how to use crutches and to manage stairs. That was horrible; you don’t want to learn that at 25. I was angry: there was uncontrolled anger, there was controlled anger, there was frustration. It was just crap. And there was embarrassment. I was wheeled through the Birmingham Bull Ring Shopping Centre in a wheelchair, with this machine still strapped to my left calf, which had also had a huge chunk taken out of it. Being in a wheelchair and having everyone just gawk at you sunk deep. It took a while to get rid of the embarrassment of being one- legged.
Rehabilitation is always a process; there is no switch to flick. You’re always learning and growing, and redeveloping yourself. It was skiing that changed my outlook from a negative one to a positive. Colonel Fred Hargreaves started this scheme called “Battle Back”, and we were the first ones to go out skiing in Bavaria. He said, “Come on, you’re going skiing.” I was like, “I’m South African, we don’t ski. I don’t know how to ski on two legs, let alone one.” He said, “You’ve got no option, come on.” I’m glad he did that because being on those slopes completely changed my outlook. It made me realise that there are things I can still do in life, but they just need to be adapted. That realisation came on the slopes. As soon as I got the knack of it and thundered down a black run and loved it, I was thinking, “Hey, you can do stuff, you just need to do it adapted.” That was a big moment in my rehabilitation process: to accept my disability, my handicap and my way of life.
The military is very good at giving you limbs that work well but I don’t think that they are as good at mental rehabilitation. You need to fend for yourself on that front. I realised that while I was still at Headley Court, and I wanted cognitive behavioural therapy, as I wanted to learn to think in a positive way. They sent me to see a psychiatrist, which wasn’t right—a psychologist would have been better. The psychiatrist prescribed me some amazing pills and they changed my life but they didn’t change my mind frame. I became less anxious, I became less grumpy and there was a brighter light in life, but that wasn’t of my doing, which frustrated me. The psychiatrist used to say to me every session, “How are the pills doing?” and I remember that really grating on me because I didn’t give a stuff about the pills—it should be about how I’m doing. It really upset me and it’s the first time I’ve ever disrespected a rank (he was a Colonel). I said to him, “If you ever ask me how those pills are doing again, I’m going to get up and walk out of here.” I was in a wheelchair so my threat didn’t really have much gravitas! He sent me to the Priory. He asked me, “Do you know what the Priory is?” I said no, and he said, “Well, it’s where they send pop stars who’ve had a bit too much to drink but they also treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” I said, “Do you think I’ve got PTSD?” That was my biggest worry in life. He said, “No, but we want to rule that out.” I went to the Priory and it was great: nice room, great food, random people all over the show to play with, I loved it. I also had a one-to-one session with a psychologist who put me at ease that I didn’t have PTSD. The rest of my psychological recovery was my friends, my mother, my girlfriend, who I will forever be grateful to because, wow, she was a pillar of strength. Bless her, she bore the brunt of it.
In 2009, I faced a choice between having a career in the Army or training for the Paralympics. I decided foolishly that the Paralympics was a one-off and that the career was a more sensible option. I chose to do psychiatric nursing, as I wanted to end up counselling people like me who are battling the same things. I applied for funding, which I was granted, and I applied for a place at Birmingham University.
That was going well until my friend David Cameron came into power. Then all funding was scrapped and it was deemed cheaper to train a psychiatric nurse to become a soldier than it was to get a soldier to become a psychiatric nurse. That was a bit frustrating, to say the least. I hadn’t started the course but it fell flat straight away. My prospects were to carry on, to coast along as a Corporal, to teach. I taught for about two years in Keogh Barracks. But it didn’t feel right any more. I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I rowed across the Atlantic with the Row2Recovery guys and that changed my life again completely.
It was while I was at Headley Court at a prosthetics appointment that I noticed a little poster on the notice board, much smaller than the rest of the posters. It just said, “Have you got what it takes to row the Atlantic?” with a little picture of a rowing boat and a massive ocean, and that sparked something in me. I wanted to do it for a while but I didn’t commit to it – I was seventh reserve on the team. Then I got a phone call about two months before they set off saying, “We need you, are you still up for it?” I said, “Yes, absolutely.” That was it. I was on the team to row across the Atlantic.
That row put life into context, it put the world into context for me. You are rowing for thirteen hours a day and there’s only a certain amount of stuff you can talk about to the guys sitting in front of you, whose backs are facing you. So you start to think, assess and analyse your entire life. I did a lot of that. It changed my point of view permanently, for the positive. It made me realise we waste a lot of time fussing over nothing, when in actual fact you’ve just got to figure out what you want to do and do it. You don’t have much time on this planet. It also gave me the confidence to get out of the Army. Two of the guys on the team, Ed and Alex, had left the army seven years before and were doing quite well in the civilian world. I had this idea that I needed the Military uniform to be accepted as an amputee. I’d always wear a Military T-shirt if I was with civvies, or I’d always have to tell someone how I lost my leg. The row just annihilated that way of thinking, and made me realise that you need to get on with it. And so that’s what I’m doing.
Another huge thing that then happened for me was my involvement in the 2012 Paralympics. Kim Gavin was the artistic director for the closing ceremony and he approached Help for Heroes as he wanted wounded soldiers to take part. One of those places was for quite a prominent speaking position, and the people at Help for Heroes recommended me. My role was Master of Ceremonies. It was quite a responsibility. I didn’t actually realise how big a speaking part it was until I went to the very first rehearsal, and saw this almighty staircase, forty feet high, in the centre of the stadium and I asked quite naively, “Is that where I’m talking from?” It was huge. It would be arrogant to say I wasn’t nervous at all, but I had tactics to manage any nerves. The LED lights of the stadium were set up so that whenever I spoke they went yellow, and it looked like the backs of the seats. So I visually interpreted that as though the stadium was empty. I had earpieces in so I couldn’t hear, so I emptied the stadium psychologically, and did my bit until I got to the part where I said, “Here in London 2012”, and then this energy just punched me in my gut. This sound wave of cheering. Then I realised I had to carry on talking and it got more nerve-racking as I was doing it. But it was great fun.
The Army career has come to an end. I do corporate, motivational speaking now, the after-dinner speaking circuit. It’s great, it’s not nine to five, it beats a Corporal’s salary and you get to travel. I’m a mind-over-matter kind of person and that assisted my survival. When it comes to the process of rehabilitation, sometimes a strong mind is a disadvantage because with that strength can come stubbornness. You can push yourself too hard and you can fall. That fall could hurt you physically, emotionally, or hurt other people, and there have been a few of those on the way. The body heals a lot quicker than the mind. You learn to walk again a lot more quickly than your mind takes to heal and to adjust, and to accept what’s gone on. But when you do get to that point, you arm yourself with a very, very strong tool in life. You can row an ocean quite easily because you’ve been in a darker place and you’ve been through worse. I know that sounds dramatic but it’s true. Me and other guys who have been through these experiences have gained something that an able-bodied person may not have. We have been at the edge of life, and if you realise how sharp that edge is, wow—you’re going to succeed.