Corporal
Andrew Garthwaite
I went to Afghanistan in April 2010, and I was injured in September. I was deployed with The Queen’s Royal Lancers, with the Brigade Reconnaissance Force. We would go into areas of high enemy activity, and try and disrupt what was happening. It was my first deployment to Afghanistan. As I approached the tour, I was nervous as I had heard stories back at home about what it was like. I’d been in Iraq previously, but I had a feeling that Afghanistan was going to be a totally different kettle of fish. We were going to the thick of the action straight away, so I knew there would be a lot of fighting.
The day I was injured was 7th September 2010. We set off on foot patrol at about 2am, so we could move under the cover of darkness, get in position and surprise the enemy in the morning. But as the morning approached, the insurgents knew we had arrived in the village area, and within seconds of them realising that we were there, there was a firefight. Bullets were exchanged left, right and centre. The first rocket was fired way above our heads and we thought it was miles away. It sort of calmed down after that point. We started a period of overwatch. Every hour we had a changeover with a fresh set of eyes observing but within about twenty minutes a whole firefight started again. It was coming from multiple directions. I got up on a wall with the machine gun and started firing. I was firing over to the left-hand side, oblivious to what was going on to my right. Within a couple of seconds, I heard a big thud and then I was lying on the floor with my arm hanging from my shoulder, screaming for a medic.
At the time, I didn’t really feel pain. It was more shock. There was a burning sensation; I felt as though I still had my arm, because that’s what my nerves were telling me. To be honest, everything happened so quickly. My friends came round the corner, and started administering first aid to me. After the morphine had kicked in, I was quite calm and collected, and I was just focused on getting back to hospital. The helicopter took about ten minutes to arrive and evacuate me. Unfortunately, the comrade behind me had been killed in the blast. They tried to resuscitate him but they couldn’t bring him back to life. I was helivac’d to Camp Bastion, where I stayed for just over 24 hours. I was then flown back to England, and I remember a nurse called Sarah who looked after me the whole way. I woke up once but then went straight back to sleep; they want to keep you under as much as possible.
I remember arriving in Birmingham Airport, and the tail dropping down from the plane and the paramedics being there. I was put straight into the back of an ambulance with a police escort and taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. I was there for about ten days. They cleaned me up and made sure my stump was OK. After that, I had two weeks at home with my girlfriend—now my wife—and my family. Those two weeks were quite nice, in a way. I got to see everybody and reassure people that I was OK. I also had my first pint. And then I went to Headley Court, which was a very big eye opener. It’s quite humbling, and it’s great to realise that you’re not alone.
At first, I was absolutely gutted about losing my arm. I thought life was going to end. I was a really hands-on type of guy, and I thought that everything I did was going to stop. I found it depressing to be relying on other people to do little tasks for me. But then when you go to Headley Court and look at how other guys are coping with their injuries, you do learn a lot. You learn how to do things one-handed, even shoelace tying. Going from being right-handed to left-handed was an adjustment. The hardest thing was writing but I taught myself how to write again from those dot to dot books and I actually now write better with my left hand than I did with my right. When you’re around people who have the same or worse injuries than you, it does help you psychologically. It helps you realise that you’re not the only person out there.
I was quite unusual at Headley Court because my arm was amputated at such a high point: it had been taken off all the way up to the shoulder. I was the first person with a war injury to go into Headley Court with such a high amputation; generally, you’d have to have a tumour or cancer to have one so high. So they were quite interested to see how they were going to fit a prosthetic to me. Initially, they used a body- powered arm. You use your left arm to operate the arm on the right-hand side—there was a claw that used to open and shut, for example. I never used it, as it was uncomfortable and it wasn’t practical. So then I used a myoelectric prosthetic arm, which was operated by the pectoral and back muscles. I had to flex my pectoral muscle and flex my back muscle to perform three different options of hand movement. It sort of worked, but it was time-consuming. It took a long time to work out the different functions: to rotate the wrist, to open and close the hand. It got really frustrating at times.
Then, the opportunity came for me to have pioneering surgery in Vienna for a bionic arm. Some surgeons from Otto Bock, the company which designed the arm, visited Headley Court. They were keen to help British soldiers, and came in to look at the upper-arm amputees. For some reason, I was the one they wanted to operate on first; I was quite taken aback by that. I had eight hours of surgery over in Vienna.
They redirected the nerve endings in my right shoulder that previously controlled my arm and hand, and reattached them to my chest muscle. So now the chest muscle reacts to the way I think—my brain signals are picked up by electrodes which trigger motors in the arm. It was a really long process. I’ve been out of surgery now for about a year and three months. It’s quite amazing to talk about it. I’m still at the very start of the process, so I’m getting little twitches, but it could take up to two to three years for the nerve to grow fully into the muscle. I’m the first British soldier and indeed the first British citizen to actually go through this procedure. I’m due to go back to Vienna soon for my final review. They’re going to reassess the arm, and start moulding the fibreglass and see what’s going to be most comfortable with the muscles I’ve got to work with.
Once the arm is fully functional, I hope it will change my life. On a day-to-day basis, things like opening a can of Coke or a jar of coffee are very frustrating and I’ll often end up smashing something. It will be used as a secondary arm really, as my left hand is now my primary hand. So hopefully it will enable me to do simple tasks around the house without having to rely on my wife or family and friends to come over and help. It should definitely help me to be more independent.
I’m going to be discharged from the Army soon. I feel like my job has been done within the Forces. I’m still uncertain of what I want to do out in civilian street but I’m hoping to go on a couple of job trials to help me find out. I joined the Army in 2004, when I was sixteen, so that’s all I’ve ever known. It’s going to be a massive change adapting to life outside the Army, but they do wean you off. The Forces have been fantastic with me. They’ve helped with CV writing, and going on different courses to learn about life on civvie street, how to manage things like learning to budget. I’m ready to leave and the future is looking bright.
What happened to me was life-changing, but I’ve coped with it and it could have been a lot worse. I’m just glad and happy that I’m alive. My family have been so supportive, as well as my neighbours. It’s been great. My wife has been a total help in my recovery; she’s always been there for me. It’s now coming up to eight years that we’ve been together, and we’ve been married for the last year of it; we were married on 8th April 2012. I’m lost for words when I talk about my family and my wife. They’ve been great, and we’ll hopefully have a long happy life together. I’ll never work out why this happened to me, but you can’t turn back time, and it’s pointless sitting in a corner crying and worrying, because nothing is going to change it. You just have to live life to the max, and live it as much as you can.