Shropshire Magazine

Stuart Trow at home with wife Lisa and daughters Georgina,three, and six-month-old Bethany. Picture: Russell Davies

Despite suffering horrific injuries having been hit by sniper fire while serving in Afghanistan, Stuart Trow has exhibited huge strength and determination in fighting back. He tells his story to Neil Thomas

The Afghanistan war is daily news. Barely a week seems to go by without the report of violent death or horrific injury. Our young servicemen and women are putting their lives on the line in the hell that is Helmand. One man who knows only too well about the dangers they face – and the pain they endure – is Shropshire’s Stuart Trow. 

He was a high flier in the parachute regiment when he became the first casualty of the Afghan campaign. He was hit by three bullets in fierce fighting. In a few mind-blurring seconds his life changed forever. He suffered massive trauma and his left leg was later amputated below the knee. To a 25-year-old man of action, it was a shattering blow. His active career was over, his hobbies of football and distance running snatched away. There were many dark moments but, slowly, Stuart has rebuilt his life. 

He learnt to walk again, swims and cycles regularly, even played in an amputee football match – and he has enrolled at university. His girfriend Lisa stood by him, they married and now have two little daughters, Georgina and Bethany. 

Stuart Trow has fought back from adversity in a truly inspiring way. Here he talks about growing up in his native Shropshire, a dream job in the army, the Afghanistan nightmare, building a fulfilling life from the blood and dust of Helmand and how he is preparing, later this month, for his greatest challenge yet . . . scaling the world’s second highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, on one leg.

♦

Serving in the Parachute Regiment.

Stuart Trow grew up in the shadow of an iconic Shropshire landmark, the grey, craggy peak of The Stiperstones. As a boy he used to make regular runs to the top, often timing himself, straining lung and sinew to beat his own records.

“I used to set myself targets. I liked a physical challenge and needed goals to aim for,” he recalls.

Little did he realise that it would one day help to save his life.

Education at Stiperstones Primary and Mary Webb, Pontesbury, was followed by a short spell at Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology. A physically active career beckoned, though. Stuart was a talented footballer with Bridgnorth Town and even had trials with league club Bristol City with a view to turning professional.

“When that didn’t pan out, the Army seemed a natural progression,” he says. At the peak of fitness and fiercely ambitious, Stuart was taken on by the crack Parachute Regiment. He started to see the world – Canada, Norway, France, as well as the gritty streets of Northern Ireland. This was 1997, a year before the Good Friday Agreement, and hostility towards the uniform in Republican strongholds was still rife.

“I remember one occasion in a strong IRA area where one man came over and just punched one of our guys hard in the face. 

“It was a test, he was trying to provoke a reaction but it was nasty. Our guy could do nothing but stand there and take it.”

Despite such occasional hardships, Stuart recalls the camaraderie of his time with the Paras.

“I’ve never laughed so much. It’s a bit of a man’s world, you’ve a lot of guys together, having little jokes at each other’s expense but always relying on one another and working as a team,” he says, as we chat at the family’s rural cottage at Harmer Hill, near Wem.

On September 11, 2001, Stuart was at Chepstow, south Wales, on a promotional course to become a sergeant. At around 2pm he had just got himself a cup of tea when he saw the news flash on television. An aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

“Like everyone else, I was gobsmacked. I was with a friend and, when it was reported as a terrorist act, we knew, even then, what it meant for us. We knew that we would have a role to play.”

Sure enough he was right and a posting to Afghanistan eventually followed.

“I was 25 and, as a young man, I wanted to go, to be with my mates on the front line.”

After a few weeks of routine patrols, Stuart’s regiment became embroiled in a major battle against Taliban forces, an entire day of fierce combat.

“It was hot, we were outnumbered and the enemy was dug in well. It was fighting at very close quarters. That day was pure adrenaline, you were surviving on pure adrenaline.” 

Stuart was moving forward as he and his comrades tried to seize ground and drive the Taliban back.

“I located a boulder which I thought would provide cover and I was sprinting forward. I was three feet away when I fell. A three-inch bullet from a 7.62 had hit me in the thigh.”

A second bullet tore through Stuart’s left knee, up through the thigh, smashing through the femur and lodging in his left buttock.

“I was in total shock. I realised I had been shot, my leg had swelled to twice its normal size. I shouted to my friends and colleagues but in the intensity of the battle they did not realise, at first, what had happened.”

Stuart was prone on the ground, suffering massive internal bleeding and, worse still, a ‘sitting duck’ target.

Bullets were bouncing off the dirt inches away, inches from a potentially fatal third hit.

“They were trying to finish me off,” says Stuart. He grabbed his injured leg and, with one massive rage-fuelled power surge flung himself violently behind the boulder he had been aiming for.

“I couldn’t believe I had been hit and I was feeling pure anger.”

Colleagues realised that Stuart was lying in the dust, badly injured.

“Two mates got either side of me and gave me some pain relief. We carry morphine with us – it never touched the sides.

“I remember looking at several guys who were shouting at me. I was looking at the enemy and thinking ‘it’s now or never’.”

Propped between his comrades, the three men emerged into the open and scrabbled as quickly as they could towards safer ground and emergency medical aid.

“At that point, we were out in the open under gunfire, me being dragged along. I thought ‘this is the end’.”

Stuart was hit again, this time in the hip. Somehow his head and heart escaped the bullets.

Emergency

At last, safety. It was 7pm and dark when Stuart was stretchered into a Chinook helicopter, where a medical team, wearing head torches in the gloom, stripped him and carried out emergency blood transfusions.

“I was conscious throughout. I had lost so much blood, with huge internal bleeding. Overall, I was given 38 units of blood.”

Grainy images of a young boy, racing to the top of the Stiperstones with stopwatch in pocket, flicker to mind as he says: “Being physically fit saved my life that day. No doubt.”

Stuart was transferred to a Tristar plane and flown to Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham. Surgery was carried out from which he awoke four days later – to be confronted by a head-spinning decision. His surgeon recommended the amputation of his left leg below the knee. He left Stuart and Lisa to talk it over.

“We had 10 minutes to make a decision. I was 25, she was 20 and we had very little life experience. It was devastating – I was sick all over the floor.”

Stuart agreed to the operation, knowing his life would never be the same. Loved ones shared his despair.

“A friend’s wife fainted when she saw me in hospital. My uncle and auntie, who were like second parents to me, were angry over what had happened to me. I could see they were suffering for me.”

Stuart is a keen cyclist.

Stuart had to learn to walk again. The prosthetics centre at Headley Court, the services’ specialist rehabilitation unit in Surrey, tried out six different artificial legs over six to eight months. There were also regular four-hour journeys to the limb centre in Dorset. Stuart received emotional support from his regiment’s association. “The RSM was a good friend,” he says.

There were inevitable dark periods, where he dwelled on the end of his active service, that he would never play football at the same level, never just jump into a car and drive off. He still had a potential 12 years left in the army but couldn’t face the prospect of a desk job. He took a medical discharge. He fancied being a plumber – but how could he climb into a loft?

“As silly as it sounds, I went through a period of guilt and embarrassment that, as a young man, I looked out of the norm.”

He tried to push girlfriend Lisa away, thinking she would have a fuller life without him. 

“I couldn’t even get down on one knee to propose,” says Stuart laughing.

“That’s one way of getting out of it,” adds Lisa with a smile.

It didn’t stop them tying the knot in 2006, though. 

“Lisa was fantastic, a pillar of strength,” he says. She had been training to be a teacher but put her own career on hold. There was her man to look after and, eventually, daughters Georgina, who is now three, and baby sister Beth.

“My three girls just make everything seem so worthwhile,” Stuart says.

Rather than lament what he couldn’t do, Stuart began to focus on what he could do – and on doing it to the best of his ability.

“I don’t consider myself disabled,” he says. “I’ve always been passionate about sport and swimming has helped a great deal. I fell just short of qualifying for the Beijing Paralympics,” he says. He uses the gym at Adams School at Wem and goes out cycling with Mid Shropshire Wheelers on a specially adapted mountain bike. He enjoyed playing in an organised amputee football match at Manchester United’s former training ground, though distance prevents it from being a regular activity.

Last month he started a physical education course at Wolverhampton University. 

So you can see that this amiable 33-year-old has worked hard over the past few years to give himself a hugely fulfilling life, if not necessarily the one he had originally mapped out. 

Then, there is mountain climbing. 

“I was searching for something to do for Help for Heroes or Blesma (British Limbless Ex-Servicemen’s Association), or The Royal British Legion. I wanted a challenge. Then, in January I learnt about the Kilimanjaro Trek for Help for Heroes. It was walkable and achievable for me. I tried a little hill walking to see whether it was feasible, and then I walked up Snowdon. I struggled quite badly with blistering on my leg and my back was horrendous.”

Undeterred, this month, he will set off to scale the near-20,000ft of the Tanzanian peak, along with other sponsored volunteers from across the UK. The climb will take Stuart six days in the company of other military amputees, camping in tents along the way.

He has already raised £10,000 in sponsorship from family, friends and events, which will go to help those wounded servicemen and women returning from Afghanistan today. “I’m so grateful to all those who have sponsored me,” he says.

Lisa once wrote to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“I was pretty angry. I felt that Stuart had been shot and forgotten, like he was nothing more than a tin soldier,” she says.

“He wrote back, a personal handwritten letter, and we went to see him at 10 Downing Street,” Stuart adds.

“We had tea and biscuits and he came across as very genuine. It was quite surreal, being one on one with the Prime Minister in a room.”

On October 22 Stuart Trow will, like that young boy from long ago on the Stiperstones, push himself to the limit of physical endurance. A man stuck on medication with a constant ache in what’s left of his left leg, shrugging off soreness and fatigue, to ensure that those young men and women returning from Afghanistan with horrific injuries today are not tin soldiers, are never forgotten and receive the welcome home they deserve.

• To sponsor Stuart visit his webpage at www.justgiving.com/heroclimb

♦

Another tip for the top . . .

Francesca Spickernell. Picture: Russell Davies.

 The charity Help for Heroes holds a very dear place in the heart of Shropshire’s Francesca Spickernell. So much so that the 24 year-old will attempt to scale the world’s highest free-standing mountain to raise thousands of pounds for it.

Francesca – Frankie to her friends – is taking part in the Help For Heroes Kilimanjaro Trek this month. She has been in serious training to tackle the steepest route of the near 20,000-foot peak.

Frankie is driven by both the challenge and the desire to help wounded soldiers returning from the front line in Afghanistan.

It’s hardly surprising, for although she herself works in the arts world, her life abounds with military associations. Her boyfriend recently left Sandhurst to join the 1st Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles, and will be off to Afghanistan next year. Her best friend’s boyfriend has seen service in Iraq with the Scots Guards.

In fact, remarkably, at least eight friends and acqaintances from her time at Durham University, where she studied English, are in the armed services.

“One of these friends was on a seven-month tour of duty with the Queen’s Dragoon Guards in Afghanistan and told me the shocking news that 10 to 15 servicemen and women are flown home every day with horrific injuries. As such, I was galvanised into action and, before I knew it, had signed myself up for the experience of a lifetime,” she explains. “Help for Heroes is a charity which provides fantastic support to the UK’s wounded servicemen and women. I’m hoping to raise far more than my £3,000 target.

“My grandfather was in the Royal Tank Regiment. His experiences in the military were very formative for him and he remained very attached to the regiment and the Army. My dad has an extensive knowledge of military history so I did grow up rather steeped in it,” she says.

However, Frankie chose a far different route on leaving Bridgnorth Endowed School and Durham, first completing a Master’s Degree at University College London before becoming assistant curator at the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, Sussex, which promotes the work of modern artists. Her busy working life is divided between London and Sussex, although she finds plenty of time to visit the family home at Brockton, near Shifnal.

The Kilimanjaro project has certainly kept Frankie busy over the past few months, with fundraising to collect the £3,000 minimum needed to take part – she organised a live music gig at the Troubador Club in London’s Earl’s Court in July – as well as what she calls “heinous amounts” of training.

“My boyfriend is a keen mountaineer and got me interested in it and I’ve always been into trekking,” she says. “I’m a keen horserider, too, so I’ve tended to be reasonably fit. I’ve been running at least three times a week. The only thing that I’m slightly worried about is the altitude but I’m determined to get to the top.”

She flashes a broad, winning smile. “It’s very exciting.”

• To support Frankie’s efforts visit www.justgiving.com/francescaspickernell 

Destination: Kilimanjaro