WAR HERO'S JOY​ ​​​​​​‘I'LL MARRY THE NURSE WHO SAVED ME'

DAVID LOST HIS LEGS IN AFGHANISTAN... BUT FROM HEARTACHE CAME HOPE

- Helen O’Brien

It all happened so fast. One moment soldier David Birrell was on a routine patrol in Afghanistan. The next he’d been blown up by a Taliban bomb. ‘After the explosion took my legs, I thought my life was over,’ David, 32, candidly tells New Idea.

‘I was catapulted into the air and landed hard on my stomach. Dust flew everywhere as the Taliban starting firing over my head.

‘Suddenly, a sharp pain shot down my spine and I realised how bad my injuries were.’

David’s boot had been blown clean off his left foot and both his legs were mangled.

The three-time Afghanistan veteran was rushed to the field hospital at Camp Bastion, where he woke up terrified at what he’d find.

‘I was heartbroken to see my left leg was gone from the knee down. Although I had my right leg at that point, I knew it would never be the same again.’

Two days later, he was transferred to a hospital in Birmingham in the UK, where medics took an artery out of his left arm, along with skin for a graft, and transplanted it into his right leg. But the brave dad was then plagued by infections.

‘I was worried about what my children would think. My oldest son burst into tears and the youngest wouldn’t come near me,’ David recalls.