Staff Sergeant
Steven Arnold
I was out in Afghanistan in 2011, working with the UK Counter-IED task force. I was a Royal Engineers Search Advisor, part of an IED search team. I was injured on 8th April 2011, in Southern Afghanistan. We’d been called up to a possible IED which had been found by a Paras patrol. We went to check it out, found that it was indeed an IED, and disabled it. There was about another twenty metres of area that we thought looked pretty suspicious, so we decided to search it. Unfortunately, we missed an IED on that bit, and I stood on it. I got flipped up and landed on my back. It just felt like my legs were on fire, it was just pain. I didn’t realise that I’d lost my legs—I tried to sit up and then I knew something was wrong, because I just couldn’t do it.
Once the smoke and dust had cleared, my first two searchers were already there treating me and they put my tourniquets on. Then the Paras got me onto a stretcher and got me to a quad. The guys kept saying don’t look, don’t look, and I pretty much knew then that I lost my legs. After I got the pain relief, I was more chilled out. I was more worried about whether any of my team had been injured, and what other injuries I had, because I could see that my upper arm was strapped up. Then the helicopter arrived. I remember the heat as I got on the back of it. They stick a massive needle in your sternum, put the drugs all in at once, and that is last thing I remember for eight hours.
From the moment I was blown up to the moment I got back to Camp Bastion was seventeen minutes. I was in Camp Bastion for 24 hours, and had my first operation there. They did the cleaning up, sorted my legs out as much as they could there, and I think that helped me because it stopped me getting infections. While I was there because I was so high on drugs, I didn’t really think much about what had happened. But it sort of hit me on the flight over to the UK, when I started coming round properly. I started thinking that my career was probably over and stuff like that, but I didn’t really get that downhearted. I think that it helped that I was awake for so much of what was going on. Some people get injured and wake up two months later and still think they’re in Afghanistan and don’t really know what’s going on, so I think me being conscious for a lot of it helped me recover and deal with it.
I was married when it happened, but I didn’t speak to my wife while I was in Bastion. We’d recently moved to Germany because that’s where I was based, so she was flying over to the UK pretty much the same time that I was. She was actually in Birmingham before I was, and she was waiting for me. The first time I can properly remember seeing her was when I was in Intensive Care after I came around from my first operation in Birmingham. I felt relieved, to be honest, just relieved that I was still alive. The doctors told me I’d make a decent recovery so that was a weight off my mind as well. I was relieved that I was still alive and still able to see my wife.
I was in Birmingham for three weeks and then had a week off at Norton House, near Headley Court. I started rehab at Headley around 5th May 2011, for about six weeks. From then I’ve had four weeks on and four weeks off. The difficult thing is learning to walk on your legs and arms again, struggling with the initial bit and getting your fitness up, getting the balance and strength to walk again and then progressing onto the next stage. You get used to the prosthetic legs you’ve been using, and then once you’re used to them, you get thrown another set of legs! You feel like you’re starting again because you built your strength up on the small legs, but then once you get your sea legs on the new pair, you’re off and running. After three months you’ll be, not hundred per cent what you were before, but about 75–80 per cent there.
The first goal that I set myself was that I wanted to be walking for my medals parade when the rest of the lads got back. I managed to do that. The guys that saved my life pushed me on to make that goal, the ones that were first there to treat me. I wanted to show them that I’m alive and I’m up. One of the first guys who treated me started to blame himself for what happened because he was the lead man. He was only eighteen years old. I just wanted to show him that it wasn’t his fault, it could happen to anyone and look at me now, I’m up and walking. I wanted to show the lads that life’s still good basically.
The second goal was my cycle race across America—I think I nearly killed myself trying to get into that team. I was part of Team “Battle Back”, which was made up of wounded soldiers. We cycled 3000 miles from coast to coast, and managed to complete it in seven days. My last goal is getting my C legs before Christmas, which are the newest prostheses available. I started on them this week, so I’m still a bit wobbly. A group of us are now aiming to get into hand biking, and hopefully trying and get some funding. At the Paralympics, there were only two hand-biking disciplines that Great Britain entered into out of a possible fourteen, so we’re going to try and push through more involvement and teams with respect to that. I might try a triathlon as well!