A soldier’s story of sheer grit and determination

Three years ago Nick Beighton lost both his legs and was close to dying after a bomb blast in Afghanistan. He took up rowing to aid his recovery — and now has his eyes on a Paralympics medal, as Cathy Wood reports
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28 August 2012

Growing up in Shrewsbury, the only thing Nick Beighton wanted to do was run around with a gun and join the Army.And despite chasing his three older siblings up some of the country’s most famous peaks, including Ben Nevis and Scafell, and being good enough to play county level rugby, his passion for soldiering never wavered.

At 13, Beighton joined the cadets and after A-levels spent a year with the Army before going to Sandhurst, where he was commissioned in 2006.

Three years later, on a first tour of duty with the Royal Engineers in Afghanistan, Beighton was embedded as a troop commander helping infantry battle groups build checkpoints and patrol bases and anything else needed.

It was October 2009 and, like everyone else, the then 28-year-old Beighton was fully aware of the threat posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

“You’d go out on patrol and see holes in the ground,” he explained. “They’d see you walk past so they would come back, dig them up and move them.”

Six weeks into the tour Beighton stepped on an IED, the full force ripping through his 6ft 7ins, 110 kg body.

“A lifetime’s worth of realisation went through my head the moment it happened,” he recalled. “I could honestly say I knew everything was going to be different.” And it was.

Such was the severity of his injuries that Beighton, who lost 36 pints of blood, was in danger of dying. There was nothing of his left leg remaining and, after 20 hours in theatre at Camp Bastion, his right was amputated. His pelvis was also broken.

Back at Selly Oak hospital in the Midlands, two bolts were inserted in his pelvis. But it would be 10 days before he regained consciousness.

Three months later Beighton was at the Army’s rehabilitation centre, Headley Court, in Surrey.

Of course there was anger at the extent of the injuries and a life changed irreversibly. And there were questions about what might have happened had he stepped to the left, or right, of the device and avoided it. But not for long.

“Well, I didn’t [miss it],” he says. “It’s idle curiosity to think something could have been different. It isn’t. At the end of the day I’m a soldier and I was out fighting in Afghanistan and these things happen. I’ve had friends killed before and since. It’s life. Bad things happen. You get on with it.”

So Beighton quickly made a deal with himself to focus not on what he couldn’t do but on what he could.

It was this resolution which turned out to be so in tune with the ideas of the Paralympics’ founding father, Ludwig Guttmann, who nearly 70 years ago began work at Stoke Mandeville hospital helping servicemen paralysed in combat rehabilitate (see story overleaf). One of the foundations of Guttmann’s programme was to work on what could be achieved and to use sport to restore self esteem.

In early 2010, the last thing on Beighton’s mind was the Paralympic Games in London 2012, but while at Headley Court advisors for a military initiative called Battle Back suggested he go to a Paralympic talent identification day at Brunel University. “The point is not to get soldiers onto the national team,” says Beighton. “It is to give confidence.”

Given his height and weight, it was suggested that he give rowing a go. But in those early days he was neither fit nor physically well enough to consider it. So he spent six months learning to walk on artificial legs, catching up with friends, sailing around the Caribbean and starting to rock-climb again.

“I got my life back,” he says. “Rowing wasn’t at the forefront of my mind — but I knew it was an option.”

So he started to learn to row and after an promising initial time trial over one kilometre he was encouraged to carry on training and try again.

When his time improved significantly, Beighton was invited to row in a mixed double scull with Samantha Scowen at a World Cup in Munich. They took bronze and then came sixth at the 2011 World Championships in Bled, Slovenia, good enough to earn selection for Britain at London 2012. So far, rowing has been a hugely beneficial decision.

“In some respects I needed it because you have a real identity crisis when you are first injured,” he says. “‘Who am I? What am I?’ Everything you define yourself by you think has gone, you almost need to clutch at something to replace that.”

What happens after London 2012 is unknown. Beighton remains a serving officer in the Army and will decide in due course what to do next. By then, though, he will have added something else to his boyhood dream. He will

have competed on the second biggest sporting stage in the world and earned an accolade no one can ever take from him.

Nick Beighton will be a Paralympian.

Cathy Wood is the author of Paralympic Heroes, published by Carlton, £18.99. cathywood.co.uk

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