A mother's fight for her warrior

If you are six feet four at the age of 16, bright, broad-shouldered and good humoured, there seems a good chance something fairly special might be in store for you as a career.

Ben Parkinson's passions were boxing and sailing and soldiers. He was 16 when he went to Army college with an eye on joining the paras. He made the grade and soon found himself at the sharp end, serving throughout the Iraq war in the desert with 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2007, Lance Bombardier Parkinson, then 22, was in Afghanistan in a Land Rover known as a Wimik. It was unarmoured and offered little protection from the blast when it went over a land mine. Ben lost both his legs, suffering 37 separate wounds. An aircraft flew him straight back to England.

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When she heard, his mother Diane Dernie left her home in Doncaster to stay at his bedside and remained there, in various hospitals, for a year. She also took up arms against the Ministry of Defence, not over inadequate equipment, but over what she reckoned was owed to him.

Her campaigning has won Ben a new financial deal. But in the process her eyes have been opened to the inadequacies in the military of dealing with one particular type of injury. Treating and compensating the brain damaged, it seems, is an area where the system falls down.

Having achieved her first target, Mrs Dernie is now widening her fight. She has a strategic plan to make Doncaster a national centre for taking brain-injured soldiers.

It amounts to a new beginning for Ben. Shortly he will leave his Doncaster home to re-start work in a desk job at 7 Para in Colchester.

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"He will start going down a day at a time, acclimatising, getting used to his surroundings," says his mother. "He's working, not visiting. He's been doing a computer course, so we hope the work will be computer-based, like stores."

Her plan is that he will spend one week a month there and three weeks on the charitable fund-raising project she is mapping out. It means taking one step

at a time and for the moment they have yet to reach level ground.

Ben needs 24-hour care and a care package is not yet in place. There are legal snags because this arrangement will be a first for a wounded soldier. It involves setting up a company, in this case Ben Parkinson Healthcare Ltd, to be run by an unsalaried board of directors made up of family members and friends. It is expected to get the go-ahead by next month.

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"It's marvellous, it will mean Ben can employ carers of his choice here," says his mother. She and her husband, Andy, are currently Ben's sole carers. The care plan negotiations are with the Doncaster Bassetlaw and Rotherham Primary Care Trust. "It's of benefit to the PCT – they don't have to pay agencies to send staff – and it's tailored to Ben's needs. The British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association is on board, so it can become a model for others."

In her eyes there are two wonderful organisations – Ben's regiment and the PCT. The latter's willingness to take a fresh look at Ben after years of treatment supervised by the military has literally put him on his feet.

According to Mrs Dernie, his military doctors had ruled out Ben being able to walk again, or talk. "The biggest break Ben's had was when the PCT neuro outreach team said they'd come here and make their own assessment." The team's encouraging view has given a new momentum to Mrs Dernie's life and her family's.

Ben's regiment had one battery destined for Afghanistan. He volunteered to go and was able to keep the family up-to-date. "Ben used to phone up. That was the big difference with Iraq, he used to phone home. I said to him, 'It's not really bad, is it?' He said, 'This is real, there's 'contact' every day'. He came home on R&R his usual self – larger than life and funny.

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"On the morning of the 11th of November he phoned to say he was only a fortnight away from coming back. He said, 'I'm monging it'." (Army slang for idling). "I was over the moon. This was a Monday. We were going on holiday to Scotland on the Wednesday. I thought, 'All's right with the world'."

At six o'clock the next evening there was a knock at the door of the Dernies' house. "I could see this guy through the glass pane. Andy had to come through and bring him in because I was saying, 'Not my Ben' over and over again. A friend had told me that if they are dead, they send two to the house with the news. I got it in my mind Ben wasn't dead. I said, 'He's not going to die, is he?' The guy said, 'He might do' and promised to come back when he had more news.

"I later found out that as he was leaving the house he told Andy that Ben couldn't survive and to expect a phone call shortly. I thought if Ben dies, I'll tell myself he's on exercise for the rest of my life."

The whole family assembled at their house and waited. "The time came when the guy was supposed to come back passed. We now know it was because he was waiting for news Ben had died. Eventually he arrived and said, 'Strong boy. Nobody knows why he's still here.' He spoke to Andy again on the way out and said he didn't think Ben would survive the flight back to England."

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But he did and by Thursday Ben was in Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. "I was the first to see him in intensive care. I was petrified. I walked round the corner and I could see how shortened he was. It wasn't like the old war films where they put a cage over the bed to disguise it.

"There was a hideous hammock thing to catch the brain fluid that was leaking from his nose. But he was Ben, he was Ben. I smiled the biggest smile of my life. The only place where you could touch him was a tiny patch on his right arm and I sat stroking this little bit of his right arm."

The first of the operations which were to last for over two years began the next day. The doctors thought he might be strong enough to survive 10 minutes in the operating theatre. He was there for six hours.

"He squeezed my hand for the first time at the end of November. I had been told on November 17 he was blind – another low point. I was told various things. An Army psychologist told me she loved it when Ben went up the ward because it made everyone else count their blessings.

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"At first you are bombarded with people. They were saying, 'Things look black but they will improve'. The goal was Headley Court. But we were told he couldn't go there because of his range of injuries. That was the lowest time ever."

Defence Medical Rehabilitation Unit Headley Court, near Epsom in Surrey, is Britain's state-of-the art unit for wounded Armed Forces personnel. Eventually, they did agree to take Ben.

But it was still early days, when Ben was at Selly Oak, that the family heard he'd lose his paratroopers' pay supplement. The sum of money was not significant, but it was another deeply wounding blow from bureaucracy. "I just broke down and cried. Ben had gone to war in Iraq when he was only 18 and now they were taking the last shred of identity away from him. The poor guy telling us didn't understand. It was only 30 a month or something and he said: 'If you can't jump...'

"From being a tiny boy, Ben had wanted to be a soldier. He he was happy-go-lucky, laid-back but undisciplined. The paras worked wonders for him. You just knew he'd found where he belonged.

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"Ben received his discharge papers and he was so down. It was the only time he talked about wishing the bomb had done the job properly. But then his commanding office said, 'He's my soldier – no-one is going to tell me that he's out of the Army'. So Ben's still a serving soldier."

Six months after he was blown up, an official letter arrived in Doncaster from the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) setting out the sum he was due. "Ben's twin was at home at the time and he couldn't believe it – 114,000 for two legs, 38,000 for the brain injury and the rest for a broken elbow. Ben had 37 injuries and was to receive nothing for 34 of them. How could that be fair? It was not going to be enough to set him up with a house in Doncaster, or anywhere in the country.

"I was incensed. I phoned Derek Twigg, got through to his secretary and demanded he come and see Ben and tell him why he was going to be denied having his own home."

Mr Twigg, the Under Secretary of State for Defence, eventually agreed to come and see Ben and his mother. He explained the AFCS was under review, but couldn't say if any future uplift in compensation would be retrospective.

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Mrs Dernie eventually found she was banging her head against a brick wall. "I could cope with Ben but I couldn't cope with other people. I reached a stage when I walked out. I begged them not to make me go public with this." She took Ben's case into the media spotlight with reluctance. Mrs Dernie seems an undemonstrative woman – she still dislikes having her photograph taken – and her quietly-spoken manner does not give an indication of the steel within. "I haven't worked since the day Ben was injured. Our life is looking after him."

Thanks to her pressure, Ben's 37 injuries have been re-assessed for compensation and the figure this time was judged at 645,000, but capped at 570,000, the maximum payout. Some of the money has gone to buy for Ben a large detached house on the outskirts of Doncaster, now adapted for his needs and equipped with a multigym.

Mrs Dernie has strong feelings about Headley Court, the last military hospital to treat him and where he spent 18 months. "They have lads with trauma and amputation and for them it's the best place in the country. But they've never had an amputee with serious head injury like Ben. In some respects we are to blame. We pushed for him to go there."

She says Headley Court resisted the idea of an operation on Ben's damaged spine. He was permanently bent over, couldn't sit in a chair and dribbled. This was caused by a cocktail of drugs to alleviate congestion on his lungs caused by his posture. Ben now sits up and the drugs are no longer needed after the National Orthopaedic Centre at Stanmore in Middlesex carried out the operation six months ago. "You can't believe how the operation has changed his life. Ben was in intensive care after the operation. We had nowhere to go, we felt betrayed by Headley Court. An emergency ambulance brought him back to Doncaster. We thought we'd have to fund his rehabilitation. We were pulling our hair out.

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"That's when the PCT began to come in. Their neuro outreach team don't get many injuries like Ben's, so it's a learning curve for them. Ben calls them his miracle workers. He's had his legs for a month and he's doing brilliantly."

Ben is now five feet eight inches on his artificial legs, which are extendable. His physio wants to get Ben up to six feet because his brain thinks he's still that tall and acts accordingly in the size of steps he tries to take. "It's unbelievably complicated the work they do with him. Neuro physios work in a Cinderella area – teaching old ladies to walk after a stroke isn't very glamorous and there are very few of these teams in the country.

"There's supposed to be a golden 18 months after a head injury when there's an opportunity of getting better.

"Headley Court said there would be no more improvement. That's rubbish. The physio now says Ben will get better."

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After an early afternoon work-out with step-father Andy in the multigym, Ben was taking a break scrolling through his laptop. His mother says Facebook is how the disabled soldier keeps in touch.

One of Ben's pals, another "bilateral" who has lost both legs, has been telling him about the computer legs (they call them sea legs) being fitted at a hospital in Oklahoma in America. The ones Ben has, from a Sheffield hospital, are "early legs".

"We have a strong resentment towards the Ministry of Defence," adds Mrs Dernie. "It crucifies Ben's dad that he was sent out in a Wimik Land Rover." (Wimik is an acronym for Weapons Mount Installation Kit). "But that's not our fight. Our fight is about why is there nowhere that looks after brain damaged soldiers properly."

Does she have misgivings about going public? "I don't regret any of it at all. I've realised it's not about Ben. There are boys who have lost everything – and the compensation is still a pittance for some who have to cope with the loss of career and the loss of the military family.

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"A head injury may leave a soldier incontinent with no sexual function and requiring adapted accommodation. Yet they are assessed as a Level 3 head injury for which they get 230,000.

"Why should head injuries not get the same respect as others? Because head injury is taboo, unmentionable, not glorious. They can't pick up their lives again and shout about it.

"There's no words for how strongly I feel about these lads. We are the ones who can speak up for them and we are going to do this. We are very ambitious. I want to raise money for accommodation and treatment for brain-damaged soldiers in Doncaster."

Diane and Andy are discussing seeking charitable status for their project and are receiving encouragement from Lord and Lady Oswald of Nostell Priory. A fund-raising Ben's Challenge is planned for April 11 and there will be a Ben Parkinson Trophy for an annual Army charity march. His talking and walking improves daily and shortly he'll be back with the paras again.

"He's a miracle," says his mother.

www.benschallenge.com