Shropshire Magazine

Alistair with proud parents Josie and Frank.

Neil Thomas meets one of the true heroes of the armed forces

One second Alistair McKinney was standing there; the next the lights went out. Darkness, nothingness. He was slumped on the ground, a hole where part of his head once was. It would be the worst kind of journalistic cliché for the sake of drama to say that Alistair McKinney will never forget August 9, 2006; the fact is, he can’t remember most of it.

August 10 didn’t exist at all, nor August 11, nor many days thereafter. Alistair was in a coma.

Fast forward two years to a modest semi-detached house on the outskirts of Market Drayton where Alistair McKinney spends many of his wheelchair-bound days. Shropshire’s leafy country lanes, summer blooms and green fields are a far cry from the blood and dust of Afghanistan.

Here, just three miles from the birth of that great 18th-century adventurer and empire builder, Clive of India, Sergeant Alistair
McKinney is battling to recover. His ‘adventure’ in the Asian subcontinent turned out to be rather less successful than Clive’s. On sentry duty, he was felled by a single sniper’s bullet to the head. Cut down by one whose face he never saw.

Alistair as a serving soldier before the injury.

Some 99.9 per cent of similar cases die instantly. However, Alistair turned his head in the very blink of an eye that the bullet travelled and, rather than fatally entering the forehead, it passed through at an angle. Though critically hurt, he survived by this fluke. His story made national headlines in Britain, where he was dubbed ‘Miracle Man’.

Alistair has undergone a series of operations and the recuperation is painstakingly slow. He is completely paralysed down his left side, though is now convinced he can wiggle a toe, which is indicative of the optimism that infuses our three-hour meeting.

Brain damage affected sight and speech, though both have improved markedly, he says.

“I couldn’t see anything on the left side to begin with. It was like tunnel vision. But I can see far more now,” he says.

At the age of 36, Alistair is now back where he was more than three decades ago,dependant on a loving mother and father. Alistair’s marriage to Tracey broke up earlier this year and she returned to their native Scotland, taking their only child Owen with her.

To say Alistair misses his eight-year-old son is an understatement. This veteran of Kosovo, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, two tours of Iraq and two of Afghanistan, can talk with equanimity about his own privations and sufferings. Mention his child and he falls silent, eyes misting.

Mum and dad, Josie and Frank, are there for their boy, though. Josie, whose bright bubbly personality must be a tonic in itself, has moved down permanently from Ayrshire to care for Alistair, while Frank gets down when work allows. Both had careers in the services and Frank was 22 years, unscathed, in the same regiment as Alistair, the 1st Battalion, The Royal Irish.

Alistair’s brother Kevin, who is 34, and his 30-year-old sister Louise have been a great support, while the rest of the family have also proved the proverb that blood is thicker than water. A cousin, when asked what she’d like for a landmark birthday present, requested plane tickets to fly to Birmingham to visit Alistair when he was in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital neurological unit.

“We are a very close family,” says Josie, whose face crumples with emotion as she tells the anecdote in a breaking voice. “Alistair was also Kevin’s best man which meant a great deal to everyone.”

Josie comes across as one who looks for a positive in every negative but there’s no glossing over the fact that the McKinneys have experienced traumas that would test the resilience of any family. Josie will never erase the first sight of her ‘baby’ on his return to Britain from hospital in Pakistan three weeks after being shot.

Shock

“He was at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and they had put him in a quiet corner. When we turned the corner we stood in total shock. We thought we had prepared ourselves for it but we just froze,” recalls Josie.

Alistair with son Owen.

Owen was kept away at first. “We were worried about the effect it might have on a six-year-old child. He was used to his dad being away but how would he react to seeing him so badly hurt?” says Josie.

“That was the one thing that really affected Alistair, worrying how Owen would cope. He really didn’t want him to see his dad like that, to see the pain on his face,” says Josie and, as she talks, Alistair swallows hard and his eyes moisten.

“As it turns out Owen dealt with it really well. He was happy to have his dad back. Children are very resilient.”

Alistair says: “I was sedated and put into a coma in those first weeks. When I came out of the coma I had no recollection of what had happened. I was told I had been shot and sustained a very bad head injury and that I was in a high dependency unit.”

He has since learnt of the Danish medical team whose prompt in-the-field action saved his life and of the doctors in Kandahar and Karachi who cared for him in those early critical days.

Though Alistair might recall nothing, there is a detailed record of his long recovery battle thanks to Frank’s decision to keep a journal. Dates when Alistair was in Birmingham, at the Headley Court Tri-Service Rehabilitation Centre in Surrey, and the Birt Unit at West Heath have been meticulously logged and progress noted.

“It means we have got exact dates of when Alistair went to places, how long he was there and we can measure his progress,” says Frank.

Pain, of course, is not confined to the physical in such pitiless conflicts. Alistair lost friend and comrade Paul Muirhead.

“He was called Moonbeam because he had a big smile and he was always smiling. We shared a bag of Haribo sweets on the plane over there.

“There were three of them hit by mortar fire. One was killed and two, including Paul, had head injuries. He died in hospital,” says Alistair.

Alistair, in fact, found out later since he was in rehab at the time and it was feared he might suffer a relapse if told of his friend’s death.

“The funeral was on the news and we asked the staff not to put the television on in Alistair’s room,” recalls Josie. “It’s hit Paul’s mother very hard. He was only 27.

Alistair weeps.

His current plight is partly down to his own derring-do. We civilians, fed a daily diet of grim TV footage from the frontline, might consider Afghanistan to be hell on earth. Alistair volunteered for his latest tour.

“The Paras needed an extra 200 men out there and I wanted to go. It’s a kind of buzz. You are excited and frightened at the same time. You can’t explain it to people who don’t feel it,” he says.

And Alistair feels he was making a difference, too. “We are protecting the underdog out there. When we move in, the Taliban moves out.”

He had been there barely two weeks, working, ironically, as a sniper instructor, when the hidden gunman struck.

Despite it all, he is keen to sign up again when his current term runs out next February.

“The regiment has been fantastic to us,” says Josie. “Captain Nigel Bradley told me to get in touch if we needed anything. He said ‘your problem is my problem’”.

Another big factor in Alistair’s recuperation is his environment. His home has been specially adapted for his needs with a lift and wet room. The front overlooks delightful countryside.

“We love it here in Shropshire,” says Frank. “After all that’s happened and all that Alistair’s been through, there’s peace and quiet here. It’s a wonderful spot.”

When I met them the family were looking forward to a trip to Shrewsbury Flower Show, having been gifted tickets. Alistair is deservedly getting a few perks these days – there was a VIP invitation to last year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone and a ride in a Ferrari.

Visit www.HelpforHeroes.org.uk to see how you can help.

The family were also keen to promote the work of the Shropshire branch of Help for Heroes. The national appeal was founded by cartoonist Bryn Parry, to help those wounded in current conflicts.

Bryn says: “I was in the Army for 10 years but nothing in my experience came close to what our servicemen and women are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, has said funds raised will help to build the urgently needed new gym and swimming pool complex to aid rehabilitation at Headley Court.

Remarkable

Shropshire branch spokesman is the county’s former emergency planning officer Ian Sawers, who says the appeal has provoked a remarkable public response nationwide.

“The aim was to raise £6m by this December and leave it at that. Well, as of August 1, it has raised £8m and the plan is to carry on. There is so much more we can do. The public, whatever they feel about the politics of it, know that the men and women out there have one hell of a tough job and that some of them are coming back with some terrible injuries. People are determined that these young men and women, who show amazing raw courage day in and day out, shouldn’t be ignored and forgotten and the response we get is amazing and so generous. You are pushing on an open door, basically,” says Ian.

“We have someone swimming the channel, another two doing a tandem freefall parachute jump and someone else kayaking, all to raise money for the cause. It is fantastic what people are doing.”

The branch is also holding a fundraising reception at Shrewsbury School on September 25 when there will be the chance for guests to hear from some remarkable people and learn more about the appeal.

Major Nathan Teale and Sergeant Daniel Daly, of the 4th Battalion, The Rifles, will speak about a recent tour of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. Then Sir Richard’s wife, Lady Dannatt, president of Help for Heroes, will give a short talk. The event, to be held in Alington Hall from 6.30pm, has been sponsored by the Head of Shrewsbury School, Savills estate agents and the Commander of Regional Recruiting (West Midlands).

It’s a chance to devote some thought to people like Sergeant Alistair McKinney, a family man serving his Queen and country, who has picked up no less than nine medals in his 20-year career. A man whose body was broken defending not his own island and loved ones but those he does not even know. Sure, there is a cash payout for his injuries. Yet here was a man described by his mother as a “hands-on” dad, who loved nothing better than to go off into the hills with his son on mountain bikes together. Those days are over, possibly for ever. How do you compensate for that?

• www.helpforheroes.org.uk