I met Andy when I was in training at RAF Cosford, where he was an RAF copper. He then became a Search and Rescue winchman. He started training for this just after we met, so we were at different bases. We married in June 2000, while he was training at RAF Valley, in North Wales, where Prince William is now stationed.
A month after the wedding all our plans came to a standstill. I was on the motorway, driving back to camp on my motorbike after visiting my family in South Wales. Andy was following behind in the car. I was really happy; life was good. I was over-taking a Land Rover on a big open stretch of road, but the driver didn’t see me and pulled out early to overtake a lorry in the distance. He hit me and took me off the bike.
I don’t remember much after that, but Andy has told me about it. He saw me come off, my arms and legs flailing all over the place like a rag doll. All he could do was watch through his side window as he slowed down on the hard shoulder. When he stopped he was level with the bike, which was lying in the centre of the fast lane. He ran across and hauled the wreckage off the carriageway. He could see me further back on the central reservation, just lying there, and he was thinking: Oh God, I’ve lost her. He was very relieved when I started moving and trying to get up as he ran to me. He put his hand on me to stop me moving. Initially he felt relief that I was all right.
But when he looked closer he could see that my foot had detached and was by my knee. It was hanging on by some skin and nerve endings, but as he put it back on to my ankle he told me that it was just a bruise. I was complaining that my leg was hurting and that I was worried about my PTI career. He was very cool. He had just completed his paramedic training for his job as an SAR winchman and I was his first real patient. He saved my foot with his presence of mind.
I also had a puncture wound to my knee, which exposed the kneecap, a cut on my head and serious grazes on my arm. In hospital doctors warned Andy that they needed to amputate my leg, and as they started to draw the incision line Andy got a little wobbly on his feet. After a couple of minutes he had recovered and came back demanding a second opinion. Another consultant came in and carried out tests to see if there was any feeling in my foot. He asked me if I could move it.
I lay there willing my toes to move; it was like that scene with Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Thankfully, eventually, my big toe flinched.
After that I had 13 operations. Andy was my rock. He used to sit up at night while I tried to sleep, to ensure my pain medication remained constant. He didn’t tell me at the time, but while I went down for the operations the medical staff would talk to him about living with an amputee, and give him leaflets on it, because they still weren’t sure I’d keep my leg. Unfortunately part of my ankle bone, the talus, came out of my foot during the accident and is somewhere on the motorway. That has left one leg shorter than the other, so now I wear inserts in my shoe, and because I don’t have a proper ankle joint I can’t run. I had to learn how to walk again. After months of physio, my goal was to get back to fitness and to keep my career. In the end I was fit enough, but it was no good because of the running.
While I was recovering I went in to work. I wanted to prove I could still do my job and even took circuits from my wheelchair. I didn’t want to admit defeat. Andy was away at RAF Valley, so a kind neighbour drove me in and out, and one of my best mates practically lived with me.
After the accident I was told that I would always walk with a limp and one day, probably within two to five years, I would need more work on my foot, either to fuse the bones or to amputate my leg below the knee.
Until recently, 12 years on, I only limped when I had been sitting still for some time. I have more pain now, and I have already decided that when it comes to it I will have the leg amputated. From what I now know, for me it is the best option, and whenever it happens I will cope and just get on with life. There are a lot more people out there less fortunate than me, so what right do I have to complain?
During one of my stays at Headley Court an army physiotherapist said, ‘Have you thought about becoming a physio?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I am staying as a PTI.’
She did amazing work on my ankle and helped me to walk again, and what she said stuck with me. Losing the job I loved so much was devastating, when I finally had to accept a medical discharge from the RAF two years after the accident, but I remembered her words. So I started the long training to become a physio – my next goal. I took an access course at Basingstoke (during which I moved to Barnstaple – I had to drive up and back every Monday and Thursday evening to finish it), and then another access course in Bristol, because the first one didn’t have enough physics content. I got accepted to do three years at university in Bristol, living and working in the student halls as a warden, and also worked as a fitness instructor in the evenings to keep my fitness levels up. Now I’m a qualified paediatric physiotherapist, working mainly with children who have neurological problems, and I love my work.
Andy got on with his career and is now a flight sergeant winchman instructor and paramedic instructor for the Search and Rescue Squadron. He’s currently based in North Wales, where we ended up having our two boys, Ethan and Joseph. Ethan was walking by the time he was eight months old, probably because I practised all my physio skills on him. Joseph arrived 16 months after Ethan, because we wanted them to be close in age.
I missed Devon; every time I came here I had a feeling of coming home. So, as Andy moved about so much, we decided it didn’t matter where we lived as long as it was close to one of the bases where he worked. At first we lived on the patch at Chivenor, but now we have our own house nearby, and I work as a paediatric physio in Barnstaple.
Andy volunteered to go to Afghanistan in 2011, as part of a MERT.
He rang me up and said, ‘Is it all right if I volunteer for Afghanistan?’
‘I’m in work, hon. Can we talk about this later?’
‘I’ve already put my name down and I’m going.’
‘Cheers, babe!’
I know that even if we’d discussed it, he’d have gone. He feels he should lead from the front, and some of the winchmen he was training were going. He has his own mindset, and either you roll with it or you have a massive row and he does it anyway, one way or another. I do always support his choices and he has always supported mine. His job is one that involves danger, so I was used to that, but I had never experienced him being in a war zone before.
The worst bit before he went was listening to him reading bedtime stories on the last night before deployment. The boys are used to him being away during the week, so it wasn’t unusual that he wasn’t there the next morning. But it hit me, listening to him with them that night, that it could have been the last time they saw him. It was a very emotional moment. Suddenly it felt so real.
He recorded stories for the children for when he was away, but in the end I only played them occasionally, because hearing his voice was very hard for them. They were too young to fully get that this wasn’t a two-way thing: because they could hear his voice they thought they could talk to him, and that got them more distressed. They slept with pictures of Andy next to their pillows and before he went we had found a winchman Action Man figure, which we hung from the ceiling as if it was ‘on the wire’ between their beds. We told them Daddy was watching them, and they could wave goodnight to him. Andy had told Ethan that he was the man of the house and had to look after me. He had to give me a hug and tell me he loved me when I got upset. He was too young to have this responsibility, but he did exactly as his daddy had told him on a number of occasions.
Having SAR at Chivenor helped, as when the Sea King helicopter flew overhead I would tell them that Daddy was flying over to see them. They used to jump up and down, waving and calling out to him, and the rear crew were usually waving back. After Andy went, the evenings were the worst time for me: during the day I had my job and the children to keep me busy. I regularly stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m., finding things to keep me busy simply because I couldn’t face going upstairs to bed. Strange, because he’s away a lot normally, but this was different.
Two