A hero police officer who fought all three London Bridge attackers with only his baton says there was “instant darkness” when he was stabbed in the head by one of the terrorists.

PC Wayne Marques, 38, had not long begun a night shift when he heard screams.

After spotting customers and bouncers at a nearby bar standing “like deers in the headlights”, he knew something was wrong.

Initially he thought it was pub fight or a gang fight “at the most”.

But he soon witnessed people being attacked on Borough High Street.

PC Marques said: “I don’t remember everything that happened that night. Part of my memory is still in patches.

“I remember being on patrol. Me and my colleague were on London Bridge Street.

“I heard a female’s scream. It was definitely a woman’s scream. I heard one scream that sort of echoed and made its way up London Bridge Street, on my left hand side.

“So I looked down the street and I couldn’t see who was screaming.

“But what did attract my attention is that there is a little restaurant that becomes a club and a restaurant at weekends, called Tito’s.

“I remember the bouncers and the people in the queue, the people having a cigarette.

“Every single one of them – they were like statues.”

PC Marques continued: “I remember grabbing my baton with my right hand and I racked (extended) it.

“I took a deep breath and I just charged the first one (attacker).

“As I got near him I swung at him with everything I had as hard as I could, straight through his head, trying to go for like a knock-out blow.”

He heard the attacker “yelp in pain”.

PC Marques, who was stabbed numerous times, had major injuries to his head, left hand and left leg.

He has recovered his sight after being wounded just above the right eye

Discussing that horrific injury, PC Marques said: “He’d hit me so hard that my right eye went lights out straight away. I just went blind.”

He believes the fight, in which he was set upon by all three attackers, lasted for up to 90 seconds.

“The second one and the third one, I was basically fighting left to right,” he said, “because I only had one eye so I’m moving left to right, left to right.”

At that stage the first attacker stabbed him in the leg.

“I’m thinking, ‘s***, there’s a knife in my leg while I’m fighting the second one and the third one,”‘ he said.

After he’d been stabbed in the hand he remembered little except “swinging (my baton) all over the place”.

Regarding his injuries, PC Marques said he “didn’t realise how badly I was hurt”.

“The adrenaline,” he added, “the fighting, all of that, I could feel what they were doing to me but I couldn’t feel it at the same time.

“I could just feel that I’d been cut and hurt.”

“That black cloud starts to come to your vision and starts closing in and closing in and I pretty much knew time was up.”

As he prepared to die, he asked a colleague to pass on his last messages to his parents, partner and the rest of his family.

“That was it,” he said. “Time was up. It’s hard to explain what you kind of think and feel at the time.”

After waking up in hospital, he says he felt a mixture of relief, shock and surprise.

All three attackers were shot dead by police