However, the army had now sent me "home" for six months.

The major from the Ministry of Defense, the Wounded Personnel Liaison Officer, had been fair but firm during his recent visit. "Six months leave on full pay," he'd said."To recover. To sort yourself out. Then we'll see."

"I don't need six months," I'd insisted. "I'll be ready to go back in half that time."

" ' Back'?" he'd asked.

"To my regiment."

"We'll see," he had repeated.

"What do you mean 'We'll see'?" I had demanded.

"I'm not sure that going back to your regiment will be possible," he'd said.

"Where, then?" I'd asked, but I'd read the answer in his face before he said it.

"You might be more suited to a civilian job. You wouldn't be passed fit for combat. Not without a foot."

The major and I had been sitting in the reception area of the Douglas Bader Rehabilitation Center in the Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton, London.

Part of Headley Court, the military's own state-of-the-art rehab center in Surrey, had been temporarily closed for refurbishment, and the remaining wards had been overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded with missing limbs. Hence I had been sent to Queen Mary's and the National Health Service.

It was testament to the remarkable abilities of the military Incident Response Teams, and to their amazingly well-equipped casevac helicopters, that so many soldiers with battlefield injuries which would in the past have invariably proved fatal were now routinely dealt with and survived. Double and even triple traumatic amputees often lived, when only recently they would have surely bled to death before medical help could arrive.

But not for the first time I'd wondered if it would have been better if I had died. Losing a foot had sometimes seemed to me a worse outcome than losing my life. But I had looked up at the painting on the wall of Douglas Bader, the Second World War pilot, after whom the rehabilitation center was named, and it had given me strength.