From fearless fighter to being spoon fed by his dad in the blink of an eye

Posted: 27 / 07 / 2022

The inspirational story from Royal Marine, Andy Grant

Two flashes; two thunderous crashes followed by a flood of pulverising pain turned his life upside down.

In the dead of night, in February 2009, he was blasted by an improvised explosive device while on a routine foot patrol in Afghanistan. He was stretchered onto a Hercules helicopter, ferried from Helmand Province and salvaged by surgeons at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital.

When he emerged from a ten day coma, Andy learned the extent of 27 injuries absorbed by his body. Cracked sternum, broken arms, broken legs, nerve damage to the hands, deep chunks of flesh flayed from his cheeks.

And then true devastation. Andy would no longer be able to have children. At the age of 20, the Liverpool lad had been hit with enough horror to overwhelm any human; however, in his short life he’d already felt pain on a par.

Eight years prior to the agony of Afghanistan, in a hospital near to his home in Bootle, Andy watched his mum pass away. She battled Leukaemia bravely until she could fight no longer and the heartbreak that ripped through him would never truly subside.

Inspired by an urge to make his mum proud, Andy became a Royal Marine and served in Iraq before his fateful tour of 2009. In the years that followed the tripwire blast, Andy learned, painstakingly, to walk again.

Normality returned; he could hobble around the house, shuffle to shops; blend into heaving football crowds and prop up the bar with his pals. But normality was excruciating. Andy wanted more; he wanted to run again, to play football again, to push himself further than ever before and sever the shackles of injury for good. And so, in 2010, against the advice of friends and family; of those who couldn’t bear the thought of more risk, pain and suffering, he chose to have his leg amputated.
Andy made a decision only he could make and took it with conviction.

In the years that followed, he learned to ski and sky-dive; climbed mountains across continents and ran like never before.

He won the admiration of Prince Harry through two gold medals at the Invictus Games, and then, in 2016, set a new 10k world record for a below-the-knee amputee.