Soldier loses leg after Afghan bomb

3:07am Tuesday 20th May 2008

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Surgeons have had to amputate the lower left leg of a Bradford soldier who suffered horrific injuries in a land mine blast in Afghanistan.

Private Carl Clowes, 21, who serves with the Royal Logistic Corps, was on his first tour of the war-torn country when an armoured Land Rover was blown up in the notoriously dangerous Helmand Province.

One of his colleagues in the vehicle suffered a broken arm, while the other escaped unhurt.

After emergency treatment at base camp, Pte Clowes had to be airlifted to the UK for treatment to shattered bones in his lower body, cheek and jaw.

He spent 14 weeks in the military-managed ward of Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham with his jaw wired and a tube in his throat to help him breathe, before being transferred to Headley Court - the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, near Epsom, Surrey.

Within a month, he was able to walk with the aid of crutches but as his right side healed during ten months of gruelling treatment, he was told he was going to lose his left leg below the knee.

The operation was carried out earlier this month and he will return to Headley Court to have an artificial leg fitted.

Pte Clowes has now set himself the challenge of walking again and his bravery has not gone unnoticed and he has been hailed the outstanding Royal Logistic Corps Soldier of the Year.

Last week he met Prince Charles who visited the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak Hospital.

A spokesman for the Prince of Wales said: "It was a wonderful opportunity for him to meet injured personnel here and to see how brave they have been to overcome their injuries and how positive they all are."

Earlier in his tour of duty Pte Clowes, a former shopfitter, had spent his 21st birthday serving at a major checkpoint to stop the Taliban in the middle of the Afghan desert in southern Helmand.

The gunner driver, who joined the Army when he was 19, had then been in the trouble-spot for about a month.

Three months later, on July 11 last year, his vehicle drove over the mine as it navigated a dried-up river on a re-supply mission.