Never Broken

M
y first memory was of deafening silence. I was in a place somewhere between life and death when something primeval kicked in, making me use the last bit of strength I had to let out a guttural scream. Even if I tried my hardest to recreate it today, I don’t think I’d be able to find that place inside me. I was screaming for my life, buried alive under tonnes of rubble in a sweltering coffin of dust after a mortar attack. If I wanted to get out of this, I just knew I had to scream and scream. The blistering forty-degree sun over the British military base, Camp Charlie, in the Iraq desert near Basra, had been blanked out by pitch-black darkness and there was a deathly quiet. I was entombed by hot earth and debris and every time I tried to open my mouth in an attempt to alert anyone I was still alive, I was choked by more dirt. It was packed so tightly against me that my nose was squashed and I couldn’t even open my mouth properly. The pole that had pierced my face made it difficult for me to open my mouth
fully. I was so parched as the inside of my mouth, throat and even my eyes was coated with dust from the explosion. Mummified by wreckage so tightly packed, I couldn’t even move my little finger. Each breath was a Herculean battle against the crushing debris that engulfed me. I was twenty-three years old, I had a two-year-old daughter Milly, and with every ounce of will I had inside me I knew it wasn’t my time to die.

There’s nothing comparable to the sense of abject horror and disbelief you feel when you regain consciousness and realise you are buried and you don’t know if anyone will ever find, or even hear, you. When you suffer something so unspeakably terrible, I’ve been told your brain becomes incapable of storing the memories and it can even create false memories too. In many respects that’s true. I lived my nightmare through a series of flashes – like glimpses of action through an old, flickering film reel. The darkness was not only due to me being buried five feet underground but also because my sight had been damaged. Both my eardrums had been perforated, so as sounds started to drift down to me they were muffled, gurgling and distorted, like I was underwater. A brain injury, caused by a piece of flying debris, left me semi-conscious with every one of my senses dulled. Despite that, on some level I knew I was trapped and I knew that my hands were pinned to my sides. That knowledge came not because I could feel them but because I became aware of my fingernails ripping off as I clawed in a futile attempt to free myself from what would otherwise become my dusty grave.

Ever since I’d been deployed in Iraq at the end of February 2007 I’d been terrified that I would be bombed when I was
somewhere alone. I’d cried when rockets had whizzed over the top of my tent, night after night, fearing I’d fall to pieces if my worst nightmare happened to me. Now my fears had become my reality. Overcome with a strange, almost serene sense of calm, I didn’t even feel any pain at first. When my blood began to run down my hands and my face from the pole that had unwittingly grazed my eye and impaled my cheek, I just registered that I was soaked with a sticky substance, with no comprehension that it was my own blood. The strangest part was that I felt like I had no legs at all. That sense of tranquillity, despite the horror I faced, then expanded exponentially until I had what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. I felt like a ball of floating consciousness. There was no feeling and no pain, just a sense of drifting peacefully like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. I honestly felt as though I was completely outside of my own body. It wasn’t what I’d think of as a typical out-of-body experience as I didn’t look down and see myself. In fact, I didn’t see anything at all. It truly was like I’d become a bubble of thought. Perhaps it was my brain injury, perhaps I was still dazed or maybe it was my body’s final act of self-preservation; I honestly can’t explain what it was.

I later discovered your brain fills in massive blanks during trauma, so even now I can’t be 100 per cent sure of what was real and what wasn’t, but I’m convinced it did happen. I’ve also spoken to other soldiers at the military rehabilitation centre Headley Court in Surrey who have faced death. They have told me first-hand how they’ve experienced similar sensations.

Then, as if someone had clicked their fingers, I was back in my body and a steam train of reality hit me. Everything
instantly became colourful and in focus, as though life itself had been taking place through a blurred camera lens and in slow motion.

I still didn’t fully comprehend the horror of what was happening to me but I thought: ‘Oh my God, you’re going to die! If you let yourself drift again you’ll never see your daughter Milly. If you want to hold her and see her grow up, you need to keep screaming.’

Pain hit me, like another wave of reality. It took me years to even acknowledge to anybody that I remember feeling such agony for I couldn’t talk about it. I was afraid that if I let it in, because it was so terrible, that it might consume me again. It was the most exquisite pain ever: so horrific, so awful it would have been so easy to let it overwhelm me. I had to battle inside my own head to be able to scream over it. If I gave in, I knew I would have passed out and then I would have had no chance. I thought of the photo of Milly, which I carried in a pocket of my uniform next to my heart. Although I couldn’t touch it, as my arms were pinned down, knowing it was there gave me comfort. I willed myself to believe that I would see her again. It was like thinking of a long-lost memory that I had a daughter who I couldn’t give up. It was a massive mental battle, the biggest of my entire life, but somehow I managed to keep screaming.

The next thing I remember is hearing voices with American accents somewhere beyond the pitch-black darkness, along with a faint sound of digging. Members of the American Special Forces, who were in a neighbouring camp, had heard the explosion and come to help. It took them more than two and a half hours to dig me from the rubble; it felt like an eternity but in the Army you know the lads will do everything
possible to get you out. So I had to stay alive and keep calling out to help them find me.

It seems ridiculous now, but hearing American voices triggered an idea of Hollywood action heroes in my mind and that planted a seed of hope. There was a weird little part of my brain that thought: ‘God, it’s the Americans! I’m actually going to be saved.’ It wasn’t to do with not having faith in the British Army, as my loyalties absolutely lay with them, but it was like an alternate reality and Hollywood films are where all the happy endings are, aren’t they? That’s how my brain was working. It was completely surreal. Then I could hear the clanking of spades getting closer and I think I heard my colleague, Lance Bombardier Karl Croft, shout: ‘Hannah, we’re coming! You need to hold on.’

There are no words that can describe the terror you feel – that you might die alone, in the ground, crushed by rubble and dirt. You just cling to the hope that they’ll get to you before death does. Hearing Karl say: ‘We know where you are, we can hear you’ was the most comforting thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I told myself: ‘Just hold on, they’re coming’, then suddenly there was light and I saw the silhouette of a grey military helmet, which is what the Americans wear. This was quickly followed by a sensation of being pulled. It was Karl, who was terribly injured himself, who pulled me free from the rubble. He was the man who saved my life that day. I must have been holding on for them because as they reached me, I had a massive heart attack and they fought and fought to bring me back. I vaguely remember being put into the back of a vehicle before darkness consumed me again. Exactly when it was I’m not sure, but the next flash of reality I have is of waking up in the field hospital in the most excruciating
pain. A doctor was holding my hand up, trying to stem the blood loss from it, and I realised it was split in two, with the tendons showing inside, but I was too dazed and drugged to react. The fuzziness I’d experienced before had gone. It was replaced with a raw, brutal pain that made it hard for me to absorb anything that was going on around me.

I looked at the doctor and said: ‘What’s happened to me?’

‘You’ve been hit in a mortar attack but we are helping you,’ he replied.

Then the awful gravity of what had happened hit me like a tsunami. In reaction I shouted: ‘
No!
’ That was the first time I realised I’d been badly hurt on some level before darkness engulfed me again.

The next time I regained consciousness was in the field hospital. Everything seemed chaotic, jumbled and confused as my mind wasn’t functioning normally – I’d suffered a bleed on the brain from the debris that had smashed into me.

A doctor leaned over me, saying: ‘Hannah, can you hear me? Hannah…’

I struggled to focus on him, amazed at what I could see over his shoulder. Alongside all the usual medical paraphernalia I experienced a bizarre hallucination where I could see hundreds of people like ants beavering away in the background. They seemed tiny, as if I was looking through a telescope backwards. I was somewhere reality and unreality seemed elastic; life itself hung in the balance. They must have knocked me out with a sedative as yet again I slipped into unconsciousness.

The next time I came round was as terrifying as being buried in the ground because the hospital was being bombarded in a mortar attack. I remember the mortar alarm went off and I became absolutely hysterical. Then there was a really close
bang. I lay, unable to move, on a stretcher while the medical staff crouched down next to me. One doctor laid a normal set of body armour over me – it must have been the only thing they had to hand to protect me in case shrapnel flew through the room. Because of the urgency my injuries demanded, within seconds of each siren going off the doctors and nurses calmly carried on working on me again. In my confused state it was like the attack and my living horror was never-ending. When the threat finally passed over my sobbing from terror turned to tears of relief. I was just so grateful to the doctors and nurses for carrying on regardless. I owe them everything.

Despite the horrific reality of my situation, I realised someone else was going through exactly the same as me. I became aware there was a hospital trolley next to mine and in it was a male soldier being treated. Out of the corner of my eye I watched intently as he started fighting with the doctors and nurses – fighting everything that was going on and repeatedly trying to get off the bed. I think he was shouting as I could see his mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. I just remember the violence of the situation, without fear, in my peripheral vision. I think that man was Karl but I can’t be 100 per cent sure. Everything then went on fast forward around me – people rushing around, a dizzying chaos that left me spinning until it all went dark for hours again.

The job of the field hospital is to save your life and get you well enough to survive the flight back to Britain, where surgeons will then start the job of putting you back together. My family had been informed I’d been injured at midnight UK time, just three hours after the blast, and within minutes of me being found alive. Since then, they’d all sat waiting for an update phone call from the hospital, playing through all
sorts of nightmarish scenarios in their minds. Already they’d been told I was seriously injured, but because of the nature of war it takes time for information to get through as the priority is saving your life. Also, what many people don’t realise is that our wounds can take days to come to light since soldiers are often too ill to say where they hurt. So medics save your life, treat any other life-threatening injuries and get you stable. That means, since injuries are often so complex not every detail will be known. As they waited, my family was tortured by every fear imaginable: What if she’s blind? What if she’s severely brain-damaged? What if she’s not the same person when she comes back? So although it was probably horrific hearing what was wrong with me, it was also a relief to hear I was alert and that I was still ‘me’, albeit desperately ill as my brain swelled and began to bleed from the impact of the injury. Not everyone was so lucky.

I woke up again at 4.30am and as I was more
compos mentis
my nurse helped me to take a few sips of water because I felt so parched. Then, in front of me, he rang my parents, followed by my husband, Jamie. He told Mum: ‘Your daughter would like to speak to you.’ I can’t remember a thing about it as I was so drugged but apparently I said: ‘I love you, Mum’ and I was desperate to hear that she loved me too. Then I became very concerned about what had happened to my face – it was really hurting – and not much else. I told her, although it was garbled: ‘I’m coming home. Will you meet me at the hospital?’ Mum says she was reassured by hearing me say those words but she just wanted to hug me. Instead, she told me it was all going to be OK and she would see me there.

Then the phone was passed back to the Intensive Care nurse, who explained I would be flying back in around forty-eight 
hours once I was stabilised. I remember he started listing some of my initial injuries and telling Mum what was wrong: a pole through my face, a bleed on the brain, a smashed right hand, high-velocity shrapnel wounds to my hip and stomach, a completely shattered left leg that also had a pole through the thigh. They also told her that I’d had a heart attack as they pulled me free. I truly believe I’d had the heart attack in the rubble, before I was pulled clear, as that’s when I felt I had left my body.

After speaking to Mum I drifted off to a more peaceful sleep. Sometime later I came around again, this time in a kind of dream-like state – except it was a nightmare. My brain had swelled so badly from the impact injury that reality remained distorted. The doctors and nurses who were treating me became, in my mind, strangers who were violating me. I didn’t want them to touch me as I didn’t understand how badly injured I was. I started swearing and shouting at them to get off me. I don’t know if I fought them. Of course I had no nails left to claw at them but I’ve since been told that I did fight my imaginary enemy. Ultimately, I had to be sedated, as I was so traumatised I was fighting everything and everyone inside my own private nightmare.