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Surf's Up - and the Marines are coming!

Injured marines taught to surf in Cornwall (originally published in The Daily Telegraph).

July 1st 2010

Article published in The Telegraph by Bryony Gordon, July 2010. Click here to read the original.

Surf's Up...and the Marines are coming.

Nicolas Gibbons has never surfed before, but after just three hours in the water, he is standing up on his board, like a professional, to whoops and cheers from his instructors. To be riding waves like this within such a short space of time would be an achievement for anyone, but for 19-year-old Gibbons it is even more remarkable given that the Royal Marine Commando lost part of his right leg when he stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan just over a year and a half ago.

Gibbons - Gibbo to his friends - was on a routine night-time patrol when it happened. Eight members of his company had trodden the same path before him; it was, he says matter-of-factly, just bad luck that it happened to him. His right leg was amputated below the knee, and he spent many months at the Services' rehabilitation centre at Headley Court in Surrey, learning to use a prosthetic."I never could have imagined that I would be here, doing this," he says, as he lugs an eight-ft surfboard up Polzeath beach. "It was a pretty good feeling to get up on the board."

Gibbons is one of three injured marines who were sent to Cornwall to take part in a surf therapy course. Ben McBean, 23, lost his left arm and right leg in Helmand Province in 2008; he was hailed a hero by Prince Harry after they shared a flight back from Afghanistan. When Jason Hare, 29, stepped on a landmine in November 2008, he lost his left leg below the knee, his upper lip and his nose, and was blinded in one eye. They are alle_SNbSpart of Hasler Company, thee_SNbSRoyal Marine rehabilitatione_SNbSunit.

They are in Cornwall at the instigation of Royal Navy surgeon commander Anthony Lambert, who operated on them - Gibbons and Hare in the immediate aftermath at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and McBean back in the UK.
"They all had life-threatening injuries," says Cdr Lambert, who also visited them at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak, the NHS hospital in Birmingham that receives military casualties, and has kept in touch ever since. "I knew that these guys all did a lot of sports before they were hurt. I really enjoy surfing, so I spoke to some of the lads about the possibility of trying ite_SNbSout.

"Some of them weren't that keen at first, because they didn't like the idea of having to be carried into the water. But in the end there wasn't really that much persuading on my part - just the promise of a beer at the end of a hard day ine_SNbSthe sea."

So Cdr Lambert recruited Rich Emerson, a former member of the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars who now teaches surfing to soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. As Jason and Nicolas have below-the-knee amputations, they were able to wear their waterproofed prosthetics and normal wetsuits. Ben's suit was cut at the arm and the leg to accommodate his amputations, and the material was then sewn over. "Because he is unable to grab each side of the surfboard," explains Lambert, "we also secured a handle to the middle of the board for Ben to hold." Each marine was flanked by three instructors ("For health and safety," sighs Lambert).

Surfing requires strength, co-ordination, agility and balance; it is exhausting and gruelling for even able-bodied people, and the scores of them falling off boards during lessons in the sea at Polzeath are testament to that. "Even mastering the art of lying on a board to ride a wave in is quite difficult," says Lambert. "Actually getting up into a surfing stance is hard and most people don't manage it the first few times they go out."
But as marines, Jason, Ben and Nicolas have innate physical strength. "They are fitter than most civilians," says Lambert. "They just happen to have limbs missing. They also have a lot of drive. Their thinking is: 'well, we were doing a job, we got injured, and now we have to get on with our lives.' They don't let their injuries hold them back."

By the end of the weekend, both Nicolas and Jason are regularly catching waves and standing up. Incredibly, Ben manages to get himself up on to his only leg. All are going to try it again; Nicolas jokes that he might go pro, while Jason is now thinking about joining the Naval branch of the Army surf club. As Cdr Lambert says, as they drink their well-earned beers: "To have seen them as they were on the operating table, and to see them now achieving so much... well, it's just incredible."

The event was sponsored by Watercooled with support from Op Fortitude, the Royal Marine Rehabilitaion initiative. Surf Action: http://www.surfaction.co.uk/

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