Reporter pays tribute to armed forces after being taken ill in Afghanistan

I’ve written it with a cannulator stuck in my right arm and forearms pinpricked with needle marks and painted with bruises.

Three days into a two week press trip to see Dorset soldiers in action I became heat stroke casualty.

I did not get the chance to do what I came out for but my stay in hospital has given me a new perspective.

I became ill out on my first patrol with 1 Rifles and the Afghan Army, wearing the heavy Osprey armour in 45C.

I’d been flown by Chinook into Patrol Base 2 and walked out the gates with members of C-Company to see them set up a vehicle checkpoint.

The quiet, hulking Royal Marine sergeant who was acting as media minder saw I was flagging and I thought he would tell me to pull my socks up.

But he recognised the symptoms of heat illness, stopped the patrol, and began pouring his own water over me.

The rest of the patrol – who to my huge guilt were now waiting in the open – helped me move back into shade.

My last memory is of the sergeant, who doesn’t want to be named because he hopes to join the Poole-based SBS, helping me to walk while I insisted, in a confused way, that I could manage alone.

I was lucky the soldiers, led by Sjt Lee Goodwin, were so well drilled and professional – their number included Lance Corporal Aaron Bastick, 26, from Dorchester.

He’d told me not long before we left he was a veteran of the notorious town of Sangin so the threat of being shot or blown up didn’t worry him as much as the younger men.

The men got me back to an Afghan police station and I collapsed unconscious – so I’m told.

I was then brought back to Patrol Base 2 in a Mastiff armoured vehicle and instantly vomited on arrival.

There two medics, Major Dan Murphy and Chief Petty Officer Vinnie Vines, cut open my shirt, poured water on me, and started pumping fluids into me despite my confused attempts to fight them off.

I have a huge bruise on my left arm from where I apparently ripped one cannulator out.

The crew of an American medical helicopter were scrambled and flew me back to Camp Bastion within minutes, treating me on the way – they injected a sedative into my thigh because I was trying to fight them off.

I remember none of that and awoke with drips in both arms, an obvious diarrhoea problem, and a nurse asking me did I know my name.

The nurses were fantastic – reassuring and attentive.

In the next two days, the main man looking after me was Petty Officer Steve Connett, 43, originally from Ferndown, now living in Portsmouth.

I felt stiff and was covered in cuts and scrapes but otherwise okay and it was only in the following days I realised how bad I had been.

Stopped breathing The patrol base medics had measured my temperature at 42C and one believed I had momentarily stopped breathing.

I was admitted into Bastion hospital’s intensive care unit and one doctor said I was the worst heat casualty they had seen this year.

The doctors checked my blood for a protein that shows muscle damage.

A normal reading is 120-300.

The machine was limited to 999,999 and could not read mine.

The first actual recording was 700,000.

Mercifully there was no significant organ damage.

The two doctors in charge were fantastic; calm and informative - Wing Commander Jon Naylor, and Surgeon Lt Commander Matt O’Shea.

Chief Petty Officer Vines visited me and I had the honour of shaking his hand in thanks and apologising after he said with a smile I’d been a “monster” in my confused state.

Even the hospital boss, Commander Carole Betteridge came to visit – and she turned out to be a Bournemouth woman.

I’d started to become sickly before we left the patrol base but thought it was from the fear.

I was about to face the threats the men of 1 Rifles face as a matter of routine.

But tests at Camp Bastion showed I was actually coming down with Salmonella poisoning, which had lain dormant from a meal before I even left Bournemouth.

The bug causes high temperatures, dehydration, diarrhoea and vomiting, and could not have developed on a worse day.

Fantastic care My fantastic care continued with an RAF flight home three days later with a chirpy medical team and then four days in Birmingham’s brilliant new Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

The memory that stays with me most is of eating a meal in the general ward of Camp Bastion hospital.

To my right was the screaming of an Afghan girl who was badly injured by a Taliban IED.

Later she somehow managed a smile as an American nurse wheeled her around.

I should emphasise – most people treated there are Afghans, including many children.

Sat opposite me was a shot Afghan policeman struggling to eat his pie and chips.

I cut up his food and he offered me a shy nod of thank you.

Behind me, a boyish American with blast injuries was getting back into bed.

To my left, the rolling news was going on about the Royal Visit to Canada.

Sitting there, hearing the girl’s cries, it felt a decadent, distasteful irrelevance to even give the TV a moment’s glance.

I was very lucky compared to everyone else there and was just one of the many people who receive such excellent care.

But while I’m sure I was just one more patient to them , I will always remember the professionalism and care of the people who helped me from a dusty Afghan roadside all the way back to a fifth floor hospital ward in Birmingham.