Would Your Wife/husband Stay If...

mrh2008 · #1 ● 11-04-2010, 02:41 PM

Love helps heal war hero’s wounds
By Hannah Stephenson

Published: 28/03/2009

Martyn suffered third-degree burns to 75% of his body when the Taliban ambushed his armoured tank in Afghanistan in 2006

IT is impossible to measure the agony that soldier Martyn Compton has endured since he suffered horrendous burns when the Taliban ambushed his armoured tank in Afghanistan in 2006.

Three of his colleagues were killed when a roadside bomb and rocket-propelled grenade hit the vehicle, turning the engine into a fireball.

Martyn, then 22, managed to escape, on fire, and roll around on the ground until he put himself out, but not before half of his body armour had melted into him.

A lance corporal in the Household Cavalry, Martyn suffered third-degree burns to 75% of his body – 25% more than the injuries sustained by Falklands hero and former Welsh guardsman Simon Weston on the Sir Galahad.

He sustained a further horrific injury when, after dragging himself from the blaze, he was shot in the thigh by a Taliban soldier and the bullet exploded inside his leg.

Meeting Martyn today, he still wears a beanie hat to hide his scalp and the bare patches where he once had ears. Under his eyes is a fiery red raw patch, although a series of operations to his eyelids have enabled him to close his vivid blue-green eyes and some of his upper eyelashes have grown back. Part of his nose has gone and skin is peeling off his lips.

Now 25, his world since the attack has been an endless succession of skin grafts, physiotherapy and rehabilitation.

What keeps him going? Well, a lot of it is down to his wife, Michelle, a 28-year-old schoolteacher he married last year in an emotional ceremony at Port Lympne in Kent. They now live in east Sussex.

After a six-month romance, he popped the question days before he was posted to Kabul in June, 2006. On August 1, his world was literally blown apart. Rescued by another soldier from his regiment, he was brought back to life twice after he stopped breathing and was later told that had he not been so fit, he wouldn’t have survived.

On his return to Britain, Martyn was sedated for three months before finally coming round, with Michelle at his bedside.

Michelle, a forceful, no-nonsense blonde, says she doesn’t know how she coped with the stress.

She declined counselling, instead writing her thoughts in a diary, which she has used to help piece together the whole story in a book she has co-written with Martyn, entitled Home From War.

Amid all the horror and pain, it is a love story about two people who have faced the worst and come through it together. The couple are still optimistic about the future and the prospects of having a family. Martyn has been told his injuries will not affect his ability to have children.

“That was one of the first questions I asked the doctor,” he recalls.

“The biggest thing I had to work towards was walking Michelle down the aisle,” he says.

Less than two years later, he achieved his goal.

“I am grateful to be alive, don’t get me wrong, I truly am. And I would never disrespect my friends who died by believing otherwise.

“But if I had a choice about serious injury, I’d rather have lost a limb than been burned like this.”