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A soldier was saved from a Taliban sniper - by his boot laces.

Lance Corporal Michael Davies, 31, bent down to tie up his laces a split-second before he was fired on.

The dad-of-one said: "I bent down in the nick of time. The bullet was centimetres away from my head. I could feel it go past, like a draught.

"The sergeant said if I hadn't bent down, I would have been gone."

Territorial Army soldier L Cpl Davies, from Swansea, South Wales, was on patrol in Afghanistan when he came under attack.