Agony and courage of a real hero in mourning
No commentary, just my salute to some fellow soldiers, men much braver than I could ever hope to be. God bless you guys! Here is my Salute!
It was a day that he set aside his personal agony for the sake of friendship and honour.
Plastered in bandages and in excruciating pain, Fusilier Thomas James left his hospital bed for the funeral of the comrade who was fatally wounded alongside him.In a humbling symbol of the suffering of our troops in Afghanistan - one which the Ministry of Defence might have preferred to keep out of public view - he paid his respects to Fusilier Shaun Bush.
Fusilier James lost his right arm in the same Taliban bomb blast that killed his friend five weeks ago.
He carries many other wounds that are yet to heal. But he asked for no sympathy as he was helped into his uniform and placed in an ambulance for a 20-mile drive to pay tribute to his dead friend.
Within the hour, he had arrived on time at Coventry Cathedral, where he was pushed into the church to pay his respects to his friend.
Hero: Fusilier Bush died trying to save his friends following an explosionYesterday, wheeled around by an unnamed colleague, Fusilier James used his own mutilated left hand, with half the little finger gone, to hold on his lap a portable ‘negative pressure wound therapy’ device, which encourages healing.
The machine creates a vacuum around a wound, sucking the edges together and keeping the flesh moist to encourage quicker healing, while draining off excess fluid. His injured right eye was covered by a patch, there was a large wound on his left arm, cuts and scratches continued to scar his face, and a dressing was placed on the stump of his right arm, above the elbow.
But that tally of injuries was put to one side for the sake of the late Fusilier Bush, 24, who was the 207th British victim of the war in Afghanistan.
