Before doing what I do now, I was a Royal Marines commando. In September 2007, I was deployed to Afghanistan for a six-month tour. On Christmas Eve, while on a routine foot patrol, I stood on and detonated an explosive device and became the UK’s first triple amputee from the confiict. I actually think I was pretty lucky. When something like that happens, there are two ways you can go. You can think, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Or you can look at it, assess it and say, ‘Well, there isn’t a lot I can do about it now, so I’m just going to get on with it.’ That was my natural go-to attitude.
In the beginning, it definitely shook how I saw myself as a man. I used to be 6ft 2in and weigh 16 stone – not from being fat, but from being fit and lifting weights. All of a sudden, at my lightest, I was just over 9 stone and, without prosthetics, stood at 3.5 ft tall. One day, I was a Royal Marine – one of the fittest professions in the country – the next, I was in a wheelchair, not even able to sit up without someone helping me. That really hurt at the beginning. I based a lot of who I was on being the alpha male macho guy, and it all got taken away from me.
I had a few low moments in the first few weeks after being injured. When I started doing rehab, it was really diffcult physically. I realised physio is just as hard as military training, and it made me think, ‘If I can do this, then I’m still the man I was before.’