Bear Grylls’ TV island did what an Iraqi mortar couldn’t... turn me into a total wreck
MAIMED WAR HEROINE HANNAH CAMPBELL ON HER DRAMATIC EVACUATION FROM C4 SURVIVAL SHOW
STRANDED on Bear Grylls’ reality TV island, Iraq War veteran Hannah Campbell expected to be challenged by scorpions, snakes, hunger and swamps. She did not expect to be undone by her own history.
A deafening tropical thunderstorm that crashed through the Pacific archipelago where the show is filmed plunged her back to the terrifying mortar attack that buried her alive in Basra in 2007, leaving her with life-threatening injuries.
‘We watched it rolling in as darkness fell,’ she recalls of her experience on The Island With Bear Grylls. ‘The thunder started and there was the biggest boom I’ve ever heard – immediately every panic response in my body was triggered.
‘I couldn’t control myself – I started shaking, felt sick and was sweating. As the booms kept coming, I was taken back to Iraq and had to tell myself, “Don’t lose it.” I was overcome with emotion, I felt utter shame that I was a grown woman terrified of a storm. I tried to hide it but I was crying, my heart was pounding and I couldn’t breathe.
‘I thought after all these years I’d beaten it. But when you test yourself as I chose to on The Island, you go in search of your limits and it seemed that I’d found mine. I knew it would be physically gruelling but that wasn’t what broke me – it was my emotions.’
After the storm, 31-year-old Hannah, who lost a leg in Iraq and suffered serious shrapnel wounds to her face and body, fell back on the discipline of her Army days to pull herself together – only to succumb to excruciating pain from the stump of her amputated leg.
Contestants arriving at the island for the first time must swim the last few hundred yards from a boat – and for Hannah this meant dragging her false leg in a box behind her.
She succeeded with that task, but unfortunately the war injury later forced her participation in the show to end. ‘I’d pushed myself punishingly hard on the island and had a few twinges, but after the storm the pain became completely consuming,’ she says. ‘It was clear I could not go on.’
The producers of the Channel 4 show, which starts its third series tomorrow night, decided to evacuate her. ‘There was no way I could stay – the pain was immense,’ says the divorced mother of two. ‘As I was carried down the beach and on to a speedboat, I couldn’t stop crying. I really wanted to finish and I wasn’t able to because of my leg.
‘I didn’t want my disability to let me down. For someone like me, who has tried so hard to overcome it, that was a harsh thing to confront.’
Hannah was flown to a private hospital in Panama, where she was diagnosed with bursitis, a chronic inflammation at the point where her leg had been amputated. Her deter- mination to put her past behind her has never been in question. Hannah has spent £52,500 of her medical compensation on cosmetic surgery, including a gastric band to lose the weight she gained when she was immobilised by injury.
She is even fitter than when she was on active military duty, having taken up running and skydiving. Most importantly, having been warned that her abdominal injuries made it unlikely she’d ever carry another baby, she had her ‘miracle’ second daughter, Lexi-River, in March 2014, though sadly she split with the child’s father last year.
The former corporal in 19 Tank Transporter Squadron was keen to push her physical boundaries still further by volunteering for Grylls’ Bafta-winning show.
Hannah was selected from 135,000 applicants to live for a month in the wild on the island. Contestants have to purify their own water and hunt for their food. While on the island, Hannah found an unlikely ally in fellow contestant Erica Roe, 57, who found fame streaking across Twickenham during an England rugby match in 1982. She saw Erica, who was u unpopular with other contesta ants, as misunderstood.
Hannah’s first setback was being stung by a scorpion while collecting firewood. She was t treated by medics but dismissed the idea of further attention because she was desperate not to have to leave the island.s That drama was soon to be eclipsed by the tropical st storm. ‘Experiencing a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder episode after so many years was a watershed,’ Hannah says. ‘I have had to make peace with the fact that I’m not always fine with what happened to me in Iraq.
‘After Basra, I felt my entire life had been taken from me – I was stuck at home on painkillers in a wheelchair. I was angry about my injuries, and when I could walk again I overcompensated, running a marathon, skydiving, having cosmetic surgery, trying to make my daughters proud and not feel ashamed about having a disabled mother.
‘Being on the island helped me see that I don’t have to keep doing all that. I am an amputee, I was in a war, I have been through a lot but I’m still standing, being a good mum, happy to be Hannah. And that’s my definition of success.’
The Island With Bear Grylls starts tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4.
‘Every panic response in my body was triggered’