A soldier's fight to survive life after the Iraq frontline: 'It's a never-ending story'
Fear will conquer your senses and you will bring it on yourself and your men.
Sometimes it doesn't matter. No matter where you turn, how protective the armour, how good the training, how many bases you think you have covered, if you're going to get hit there is nothing you can do. This is a war zone after all and people are trying to kill you.
One minute you are a warrior the next a patient in a hospital bed. Those are the risks that every soldier knows when he signs on the dotted line. No complaining. It's nobody else's fault. Get on with life. Ignore the flashbacks or live with them.
"I've always been a positive person and death didn't cross my mind," says Karl Dobson. "If they were going to kill me they'd have to shoot me through the head."
After eight years service for Queen and country, Karl, 27, was invalided out of the Grenadier Guards in 2006 due to a bomb blast which almost tore his right arm from his shoulder.
In a split second, his future changed, and in the years to come he is taken to 'some very dark places' as his mind tries to cope with his new reality. Like many returning soldiers he feels as if he has moved from one war zone to another, only this fight is with himself.
"It's the missing part of the soldier's story."
But in the immediate aftermath of the blast he had no time to think about that.
"I waited for an hour to be flown back to field hospital, the longest flight of my life. The morphine really wasn't doing it and I was in agony. Later I was in intensive care for three or four days. I was still in a bad condition, I could just about get out of bed but was bed-bound pretty much. I didn't know what to expect on injuries. I remember saying to them 'can I take photos of the shrapnel, as a memento?'"
The bomb had landed 15 to 20 feet away.
"It had hit me from behind. It wasn't the body armour that failed, in fact the armour was much better than my first tour in 2003, it just wasn't covering that part of my arm. The armour couldn't cover everywhere, you need some space to be able to move properly.
"The shrapnel had sliced through solid bone and lodged an inch from my right lung."
Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham cares for injured servicemen and women from conflict. Karl was taken there in July 2006, a few days after the bomb.
Doctors opened his shoulder around the entry of the wound until the exposed area was the size of a dinner plate. They picked out bits of the shattered scapula and removed pretty much all of the dead deltoid muscle to get the shrapnel out.
There is a nerve junction in this part of the body which sends signals to the brain about touch and temperature. Many of those nerves were obliterated.
"The doctors talked of freezing the joint or amputating it. In eight weeks I've been under [the doctor's knife] 10 times. Now I've got about 40 to 45 per cent movement, severe scarring and muscle loss. I'm still suffering from nerve pains and get ongoing treatment and medication."
But Selly Oak is also an NHS hospital open to members of the public and Karl was put on a public ward.
The transition from being a soldier to an NHS patient was difficult for him to take.
"I was put in a ward with someone who was incontinent and a really old lady who had a lot of problems. No disrespect to those patients, they were there for a reason, but it was a total shock to the system.
"I was still thinking about what has happened to me, it was all still sinking in. The nurses weren't qualified in dealing with soldiers who were injured, they did their best and adapted but I would have expected to come back after spilling blood in the desert to have hospital designed for military personnel."
Eventually he was transferred to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court in Surrey. But as medics patched him up his centre was falling apart. The shock of his situation, the constant re-living of events, the fact that he was no longer with his men fighting in the war, the lack of purpose, gradually chipped away at his core, redefining who he was.
Headaches, anger, fear, guilt, flashbacks — where the trauma is relived like a film. One unholy, messed-up story of which he was the anti-hero and everyone else was an enemy. He couldn't understand it. Something had to give.
"I was angry against the system. Generally angry about everything but mostly because I couldn't do what I wanted to anymore. I thought they were stopping me and I was worried about the future.
"When I was there I heard that one of the four soldiers who helped to save my life was killed in Afghanistan by a bomb and that really set me back quite a lot. It was really hard for me to deal with. When you think you're making good progress and doing so well and then told a guy who helped save your life has been killed, it screws you up."
Karl knew two of the Grenadier Guardsmen killed in Afghanistan last week.
He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and gradually, during the next 18 months, learned to trust the doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists and nurses who carefully pieced him back to together.
They began by telling him it was not a sign of weakness, just an understandable reaction to a traumatic event.
A recent army study shows that one in eight soldiers who served in Iraq report symptoms of PTSD. Karl's situation was exacerbated by his physical injury.
"I must say those guys at Headley Court get forgotten about and they are a credit to our service. It took me ages but they convinced me that small steps equal big progress."
He had already spoken to his mum while in the hospital bed in Basra. Back in England his family were at his side.
"There were big signs of me going down the slippery road to very dark places. I still can't get my head around all the amazing support of family that brought me through the other side."
Mountains still lay ahead after he left Headley Court, but they were growing smaller.
A couple of weeks after leaving, he was sent certificates through the post of courses he had completed while in the army and a Veteran's Badge. He questioned whether that was a fair trade for his obliterated shoulder.
Like thousands of ex-servicemen who come back from war, Karl does not want sympathy or an easy ride through life, just to be understood.
"There is no help for soldiers going back to work. People never think they will come across a soldier and they come out with silly comments that could be detrimental. I went into a bike shop for a trainer to keep my fitness up. The woman turned around and asked what happened to my arm. When I told her she said 'did you not get a chance to catch it?'
"It may sound like nothing to her but I came home to my family in bits.
"There are a lot of people, a minority, who don't understand what is going on after a soldier comes out on the other side.
"You go to Headley Court and out the other side and people expect us to be normal people again. It is not going to be like that. I have ongoing flashbacks.
"It doesn't end for an injured soldier in rehab or for a healthy one when he comes home. I see my friends go to Afghanistan and there is nothing I can do. When you hear someone has been killed and the names are not given out you think, is it them? Is it people I was really close to? The last time it was. People have got to know it's a never-ending story."
After Northern Ireland, Iraq, Bosnia and Iraq again, Karl is now home in Paignton.
Each day brings some distance from events, from his past. It isn't easy and short steps take time. There will always be a piece of him which was lost in the desert during Iraq war but he wants ex-soldiers to know that challenges can be overcome and the future is not written.
"At the end of the day, I was doing a job. I signed up, took the oath and I was obeying orders. It's in the job. A frontline soldier means that, whatever happens."
No complaints. If that bomb had his name on it, so be it. He is proud to have served as a Grenadier Guard in the best army in the world.
Through the Youth Offending Team he is a voluntary worker with the charity Hand In Hand, striving for enough experience with young people to become a youth worker in the community. Then more qualifications, more life experience, just like everybody else.
He works with young people on Outward Bound schemes, riding bikes, camping and kayak training.
"I've put a negative and spun it around. I'd like to get more into youth work and that's my ambition.
"Attempt and overcome, it is all in the mind. There are no limitations."
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