Sergeant survives bullet to brain

A Shropshire soldier cheated death after a Taliban sniper's bullet passed through his brain.

Sergeant Alistair McKinney, from Market Drayton, amazed medical experts who said his recovery was incredible after being shot in the head while serving in Afghanistan in August 2006.

The bullet hit the 36-year-old above his left eye, passed through his brain and exited above his right ear.

The injury would prove fatal 99.9 times out of 100.

The father-of-one, of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, was hit by sniper fire as he patrolled the perimeter fence of his base at Musa Qala.

Sergeant McKinney's mother, Josie, said: "It's every mother's nightmare and probably every wife's nightmare."Mrs McKinney and her husband Frank, who also served as a soldier with the Royal Irish Regiment, kept a journal from the time that he was shot until he came out of hospital.

Mrs McKinney said: "He's still a sergeant, he is now up on a walking frame but most of the time he is in a wheelchair.

"He is walking further and further and he can do about 30 steps.

"It is slow progress but to us it's marathon jumps. That's what soldiering is about.

"If I said to him 'do 20 steps tomorrow', he would do 21."

Mr McKinney said: "There are hundreds of thousands of soldiers, why him?

"But that's the job he does and that's the risk he takes. He got injured doing the job he loved.

"That's what he wanted to do so we can't complain that it was him and no-one else."

Sergeant McKinney said: "I was out for weeks. I just couldn't believe I survived when the medics described exactly where the round had passed."

He clung to life in hospital and even overcame other complications including an MRSA-like infection, tuberculosis and a large cerebral abscess.

Sergeant McKinney, who has been left blind in the left side of both eyes, has now left hospital but is receiving treatment at the armed services rehabilitation centre at Headley Court in Surrey.

He said: "I can't complain because I've got no right to be alive really.

"I'm wheelchair bound at the moment but I'm getting up on my feet more and more. I can slowly feel the paralysis down my left side easing."

"It's frustrating sometimes that things take time to heal.

"But I'm determined to be out of this chair. The doctors told me I shouldn't really still be here.

"They've told me I'm a miracle case - so anything is possible."

Photo by Steve Woods www.newsteam.co.uk