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bobdina
09-10-2009, 02:33 PM
Wounded medic Sally Clarke stayed to treat injured soldiers in Afghan ambush
Michael Evans

Lance Corporal Sally Clarke

(MoD/PA)

Lance Corporal Sally Clarke continued to assist wounded soldiers

A female army medic in Afghanistan carried on treating seven injured comrades hit by a Taleban ambush even though she had been wounded in the same incident.

Lance Corporal Sally Clarke, 22, of the 2nd Battalion The Rifles, was with a group of soldiers on patrol south of Sangin, in northern Helmand, when the Taleban attacked with rocketpropelled grenades from the other side of a wall. The soldiers had stopped to deal with an anti-tank mine.

Lance Corporal Clarke, from Cheltenham, was hit in the back and shoulder by shrapnel. But, ignoring her wounds, she started to give lifesaving first aid to her seven injured comrades.

One soldier from 2 Rifles had been hit on the back of his rucksack, the grenade bouncing off and landing in the middle of the patrol, which dived to take cover. The most serious casualty had extensive shrapnel wounds to the top of his legs and buttocks.

“I didn’t feel like my injuries were bad enough to go to hospital, particularly as I was the only medic on the ground at the time,” she told the Gloucestershire Echo yesterday.

“I couldn’t leave them on their own. I came out here to support the troops on the ground and give them medical care when they needed it the most,” she said.

She applied field dressings and a tourniquet to the most seriously injured, Corporal Paul Mather, and then waited for an emergency response team to arrive.

Lance Corporal Clarke carefully tended to each soldier and helped to move them to the helicopter landing site to be flown to the field hospital at Camp Bastion, in central Helman