The hurt of the hidden wound

Stewart Hill suffered a devastating brain injury in an IED blast in Afghanistan. Then he became involved with the On Course Foundation

t was July 4, 2009 when Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Hill had his independence taken away from him. But he doesn’t remember much of what happened on that hot, dusty Saturday, and has no recollection at all of the moment the lights went out on his former life for ever.

His last memory was of a Chinook helicopter rising from a ploughed Afghan field. It carried the lifeless body of 18-year-old Private Robert Laws and other injured men of the Light Dragoons and 2 Mercian, victims of an attack with rocket-propelled grenades by the Taliban. After that, the gaps have to be filled in by others.

Although Hill was in an area that had been swept with metal detectors for improvised explosive devices (IEDs), one had escaped detection. After the helicopter had taken off, Lance Corporal David Dennis stepped on an IED and was killed. Hill, who was in command of 160 men, was blown into a hedge by the explosion. As he says now, these things happen – they are simply the cold and cruel reality of war. He was found curled up in the foetal position, his radio antenna embedded in his skull.

He also had shrapnel lodged in his cerebellum (part of the brain at the back of the skull) and had badly bruised the frontal lobe of his brain. On the flight back to the UK, the plane had to land twice for fear that the medical team was losing him, but he made it back alive to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham.

Today, there is little to show that he was blown up by an IED. He lost none of his limbs and suffered no disfigurement. The only physical signs that something might be wrong are the hearing aids fitted to both ears – his eardrums were perforated in the blast.