It happened to me: Matt Croucher

The young George Cross hero tells Legion what races through your mind when you trip a grenade…

I was inside a Taliban compound in the middle of the night when
I tripped the grenade. I felt the wire press against my shin.

I hadn’t seen it through my night-vision goggles, but I could make out the grenade. It was pineapple-shaped, probably dating back to the Russian occupation. There was no point pissing about. Our covert reconnaissance mission was blown. I screamed out:
‘Tripwire! Grenade!’

We were in serious trouble.
I remember thinking: ‘There’s
no point taking cover. I’m a goner. I must shield the lads – it was me who tripped the wire and I’m the closest. It might as well be me.’

So, I flipped my day sack from my shoulder and onto the grenade. Dropping down with it, my back facing the grenade, I curled into the foetal position. I lay there and waited.
It’s strange waiting to die. Seconds seem like hours. What went through my mind? That I never said my goodbyes. There was just a note for mum and dad. It said I loved them.

With the majority of grenades, the delay is three to four seconds. This one took seven. I was counting all the time. I was thinking all sorts: ‘Is it really a grenade; is it a rock, has the pin not come out?’ I was just waiting for it to go off and, eventually, it did. In some ways it was a relief that it was a grenade, it was live, and that I hadn’t compromised the mission by shouting: ‘Grenade!’ when there wasn’t one. Although, obviously, the blast was painful. I had perforated eardrums, concussion, a nosebleed, scratches and bruises. But no broken bones and no serious injuries.

There was a lot of confusion, and I was a bit disoriented.
The battery that was in my day-sack was blown out and then blew up – so there were lots of flames coming out of that. We didn’t initially know if it was a secondary device – so many flames were coming
out of it. And the Corporal behind me had some shrapnel through his nose.

We had to pull ourselves together quickly. You can’t run straight to a casualty – there’s a reason why he got injured and you don’t want to end up the same – so we had to check around for booby traps, mines and then make our way to him. 

It wasn’t a particularly new scenario. I’ve been in loads of situations with casualties, so it was nothing I hadn’t experienced. The grenade incident was in February 2008, but the previous November, we’d taken around eight casualties. The doctor said one lad had the most severe injuries he’d seen anyone recover from. Another was shot through the chest, so I sealed up the wound.

It’s extremely hard to describe what it’s like in that kind of situation. It’s one of the most surreal feelings – looking at someone who’s shooting at you, trying to kill you – and you’re trying to get out of the way
and shoot back. You just don’t experience that on a daily
basis back home.

I was out of action for nine months after the grenade. As
soon as I could I sent my mum a message, to tell her that I’d been in an incident, but also that I might get to see the Queen. She’s coped with it remarkably well, but then it’s not the first time I’ve been blown up – I got a fractured skull from
a roadside bomb in Iraq
in 2004. In fact, my mates have started to call me ‘bullet dodger’ –
and even ‘bullet magnet’ – but we went with Bullet Proof for the book.
I just hope that Al-Qaeda doesn’t hear about it and try to prove me wrong.