Model soldier
EXCLUSIVE WAR HERO TEACHING OTHERS
A SCOTS war hero has forged a career reliving the worst day of his life.
Former paratrooper Stu Pearson lost his leg in a Afghanistan minefield in Afghanistan – a devastating incident that killed his best pal and was immortalised in the movie Kajaki.
Now he works as a casualty model, using his traumatic experience and amputee status to help train soldiers and medical staff about what to expect when disaster strikes.
Stu, 44, said: “I work with a company called Casualty Resources, playing an amputee in military exercises and stuff.
“My thought behind being an amputee straight away was, “Right, get on with it. You could say your “what-ifs” ‘til the cows come home but it’s never coming back.
“Once the job became available, I thought I might actually like it because it’s such great training for the troops and paramedics.
“The make-up girls make it look so real. It’s brilliant training.
“Soldiers will have to deal with an amputee, whether it be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or wherever. They think back to the training they have done with us and say, ‘Right, what did I do here with Stu?’
“I can use my experience to act like my incident just happened in front of them.”
On September 6, 2006, Stu, a former corporal, lost his leg after he was marooned in the minefield as he travelled to break up a Taliban checkpoint in Kajaki, Afghanistan.
The mine killed his best friend Corporal Mark Wright and severely injured five other comrades.
Casualty Resources hires amputee actors who simulate traumatic
BY STEPHEN STEWART s.stewart@dailyrecord.co.uk injuries for training purposes. After Ollie Hancock, who founded the company in 2015, takes on a client, Stu is flown to the training centre, where he is given grisly make-up.
Stu’s job is to behave exactly how he did when he stepped on that mine for the trainees.
He said: “I stood on a mine, trying to rescue a friend who had also stood on a mine. It just escalated from there. A helicopter came in and that set off a third mine beside me, which injured me further.
“And then one of the guys beside me got up and stood on another mine. He lost his left leg and injured me and my friend, Mark Wright, further.
“Eventually, we got extracted back to Camp Bastion. On the way there, my friend Mark sadly passed away. For me, it was straight into the operating theatre for major surgery, where they then took my leg off above the knee and continued to do work on my right leg to save that, which thankfully they did.”
Record Our Heroes winner Stu said he doesn’t relive the trauma when he re-enacts the scenario.
He said: “It was clearly the worst day ever but I’m lucky that I can deal with it because I know there’s plenty of other guys that can’t deal with it.
“There was a movie made about the incident but a lot of the guys that were in the same platoon as Mark, who died, they can’t watch it. I’m just lucky that I’ve not been affected badly. I feel that I can actually go and relive it again.”
STU PEARSON ON RE-ENACTING INJURY