Ten years on: My life after death

Ten years ago today, I was pronounced dead on the front line in Afghanistan. I had collapsed with acute heatstroke in temperatures of 52°C during a military foot patrol. I am a reporter not a soldier, but for four minutes, as a medic attempted to restart my stopped heart, I was a category A. That’s Army speak for ‘goner’.

Six days later, as much to my own surprise as to that of the incredible soldiers who saved my life, I walked out of Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham on my father’s arm and into the cool of an English late summer’s evening. It was starting to rain. Cars were beeping on a nearby dual carriageway. The smell of cut grass mingled with that of an overflowing bin on which a seagull was solemnly picking at a kebab. I thought it was wonderful.

There in the drizzle, wearing an ill-fitting raincoat over my backless hospital gown, I found myself standing in awe of this most underwhelming of British landscapes.