Tonyhd

In the dark, he felt something tighten against his leg. It was a tripwire. He had a few seconds to decide, and he chose to lie down on top of the grenade. It was the night of 9 February 2008, near Sangin in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. A four-man patrol from 40 Commando, Royal Marines, was moving through a compound on a reconnaissance mission. It was pitch black. At the front of the patrol was a 24-year-old lance corporal from Solihull in the West Midlands. He had joined the Royal Marines in November 2000. He had served three tours in Iraq. Only three months earlier, in November 2007, he had kept a comrade who had been shot in the chest alive for more than twenty minutes under heavy fire, until the medic could reach them. A week after that, he was injured in a road accident and flown home with a suspected broken leg. He went through intensive physiotherapy and was back in Afghanistan within weeks. His name was Matt Croucher. As he moved forward that night, he felt the wire against his leg. He looked down. He had set off a grenade. There was no time to run. There was nowhere to go. The other marines were close enough that the blast could kill them. So Matt did something almost impossible to imagine. He threw himself to the ground on top of the grenade. He used his rucksack to pin it to the floor. He pulled his legs up tight to his body. And he waited for it to go off. It exploded. The blast threw him some distance. It ripped the rucksack off his back. His body armour and helmet were pitted with fragments. A large lithium battery in his pack, used to power the patrol's electronic equipment, was ruptured and burst into flames. And somehow, he was alive. His rucksack and body armour had taken the force of the explosion. He had a nosebleed, perforated eardrums and was badly shaken. That was all. Of the rest of the patrol, one man had managed to get round the corner of a building. The patrol commander had thrown himself to the ground and was hit by a small fragment in the face, a superficial wound. The fourth man had not had time to react at all. He was still on his feet, well within the grenade's lethal range. Matt's body, and the pack beneath it, had been between that man and the blast. A medic recommended that Matt be evacuated. He refused. The marines knew the explosion would bring enemy fighters to investigate. They stayed, set an ambush, and fought them. Matt was originally put forward for the Victoria Cross. Because the grenade was a booby trap rather than an act of an enemy in front of him, the award he received was the George Cross, which recognises the same level of courage when no enemy is present. It was announced on 23 July 2008. On 30 October 2008, Queen Elizabeth II presented him with the George Cross at Buckingham Palace. He was one of only a handful of living recipients of the medal. His home town of Solihull gave him the Freedom of the Borough that December. He later wrote a book about his experiences, called Bulletproof. The rucksack that saved his life, burned and torn, has been kept and displayed alongside his medals. Most acts of heroism end with a funeral. Matt Croucher's ended with a nosebleed, and three friends who got to go home.