Remembrance Sunday: Fusilier James salutes comrades and tells of his own ordeal

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Fusilier Thomas James injured in Afghanistan


Remembrance Sunday: Fusilier James salutes comrades and tells of his own ordeal
By David Harrison
Published: 10:15PM GMT 07 Nov 2009

Plastered with bandages, a patch over his eye and medical equipment on his lap, Fusilier James sat in a wheelchair outside Coventry Cathedral earlier this year, ignoring his own horrific injuries, to salute a friend killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

Just five weeks after being blown up by the Taliban, the brave 20-year-old soldier left his hospital bed to attend the funeral of Fusilier Shaun Bush, 24.

In his first interview, Fusilier James spoke with remarkable stoicism about his own ordeal which included 11 hospital operations after he was flown back to Britain.

He listed his injuries without a shred of self-pity or bitterness: he lost an arm, an eye and several fingers, broke his pelvis and a leg, and suffered burns all over his body in an explosion hours before the one that killed Fusilier Bush on August 15.

"I am lucky because I am alive," he told The Sunday Telegraph at his home in Coventry where he returned on Friday after a spell at Headley Court in Surrey, the Ministry of Defence's rehabilitation centre for wounded soldiers.


Rest of article at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/6520427/Remembrance-Sunday-Fusilier-James-salutes-comrades-and-tells-of-his-own-ordeal.html