Soldier amputee told to repay MoD compensation guardian.co.uk

A soldier who lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan has attacked the Ministry of Defence's "disgusting" treatment of his compensation case after it insisted he repay £48,392 that it deposited in his account in error.

Carl Clowes, 23, a former private in the Royal Engineers whose legs were shattered when his vehicle hit a mine in Helmand province in July 2007, used the money to clear his mortgage on his house, before offering to pay it back at the rate of £120 a month over 23 years.

The Service Personnel and Veterans Agency refused his terms this week, cancelled his £14,300 medical discharge award and said it would cut his pension from £920 to £620 a month. It wants to take £10,000 of his £13,000 savings.

In an escalating dispute, Clowes, who has a prosthetic left leg and suffers pain if he walks more than a few yards, plans to keep the money, which he believes is reasonable compensation for 17 other injuries, including serious injuries to his right leg. The government agency has warned him not to go public about the dispute, which has made him even angrier.

"They are talking to me about money I owe to them as if they were a bank manager and I had robbed the bank," Clowes said. "I have fought for my country and I have been injured severely and I think I am entitled to that money.

"My country seems to be saying to me, 'Cheers for going to war, now live on £620 a month'. What a joke."

On Tuesday, an official at the Veterans Agency wrote to Clowes stating: "As this over-issue was made to you from public funds, and you were advised almost immediately that this was money paid in error to which you are not entitled, I am obliged to seek recovery."

A spokeswoman for the MoD said the payment was "an administrative error and not related to his armed forces compensation scheme claim".

The row is likely to intensify pressure on the government to reform compensation for injured soldiers, which works on a tariff system and pays only for three injuries.

Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, brought forward a review of the existing scheme after public anger erupted at the MoD's attempt to reduce payments to two other veterans.

"I don't know how they can speak to people like they do," said Clowes. "They said, in one letter, 'However, you have no entitlement to the monies paid'. This is coming from a civilian woman who has never seen me in her life, doesn't know what I am going through in my life and she is talking to me like that.

"She will go home to her husband and her kids and live a normal life. I will still be Carl Clowes who has got to live this horrific life, and she can tell me that I am not entitled to that money. I would love to see her face to face and have her tell me that. It would be different if it were her son."

Clowes joined the Royal Engineers when he was 19 after working as a joiner and was assigned to protect resupply convoys leaving Camp Bastion. His duty was to man a machine gun as "top cover" and he won the 2007 soldier of the year award from the Worshipful Company of Carmen of London.

"It were good, it were intense," he said. "You had to be alert 24/7. People were attacking your camp, getting shot at and mortared. But every time you did a mission and there were no casualties it was good.

"When something did go wrong, when friends went over mines or we were attacked it was scary. But when we got through it, and we always did, it were good.

"Shopfitting's different to being attacked by the Taliban. I enjoyed it 110% when I was out there."

Six months into his tour of duty, he set off on a routine mission in a lightly armoured vehicle, protecting a convoy.

"We didn't have much sleep and we set off before sunlight," he said. "We were on route one, the only road in Afghanistan. There was a chance of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and you had to be careful going through towns, but everything seemed to be going smoothly.

"We came off the road to cross the desert and were crossing a wadi, a dried-up river bank. All the convoy went in the same direction over the wadi and we were the only vehicle on the left, so it was just Russian roulette. You just go where you think is safe. Unfortunately for us we picked the wrong route.

"We went down the wadi and we had to do hard right, and the driver must have missed the mine by inches. When he straightened up again, we hit the mine. The vehicle turned 180 degrees and flipped on its side. I was knocked out for three or four seconds.

"I didn't hear the mine go off but I woke up when the vehicle was on its side. From my waist down, I was in the vehicle's turret and from the waist up I was on the ground. I was feeling hot. My body was throbbing just like a heartbeat. I took my body armour off and my helmet off and I still couldn't lift myself up.

"I didn't know if my legs were still there. My mate pushed me up and I could see that my legs were really bad. They were kind of straight apart from the breaks.

"My ankles were facing the opposite way. I thought to myself, they are only breaks, they'll be all right but I could feel a constant beat in my boots and I didn't understand why.

"At that point I didn't realise that my shin bones had gone through the bottom of my feet … I could feel my jaw was broken and I could feel blood dripping, obviously from when my head hit the floor. Later I found out it was shattered in seven pieces."

Legs throbbing and adrenalin pumping he was transported on the bonnet of a Land Rover and taken to a waiting helicopter, which evacuated him to Bastion's emergency hospital.

"I remember seeing the needle that was going to sedate me and that was the last thing I remember in Afghanistan."

Four days later, he came round in the military wing of Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham, his sister and his mother by his side.

"I had a tube in my nose, a tracheotomy in my neck, I had my jaw wired shut, I had a massive burn on my back, I had vacuums coming out of my feet sucking away the bad blood from the massive holes I had in my feet, the size of a fist," he said. "I was bedridden, big time."

He drank soup and protein shakes through a straw and lost two and a half stone before he was transferred to the defence medical rehabilitation centre at Headley Court, where he spent 14 weeks.

When he started trying to walk again he realised that his left leg would not survive and the decision was made to amputate it beneath the knee.

"It was pretty weird waking up," he said. "There's waking up with scars and then there's waking up without a foot."

His right leg survived despite the blast, which dislocated his knee, ruptured three of his four knee ligaments, broke his leg, dislocated and broke his ankle and drove his shin bone through the bottom of his foot.

Clowes now fears it too may have to be amputated and is upset that he has received compensation for only three of his injuries.

"The most common injuries in Afghanistan are caused by IEDs or mines," he said. "How many people only suffer three injuries from these? It is impossible. Even a tank gets destroyed by a mine.

"To add insult to injury, the armed forces give you 100% for the first injury, 30% for the second and 15% for third. I think you should get 100% for every injury. I know that would cost the government an absolute fortune, but that's tough. They have cost us our lives.

"There are soldiers who have lost their lives and have paid the maximum price. We soldiers who are still alive are paying the maximum price for being alive.

"I have to live with this, and the other soldiers who are worse than me, for the rest of our lives. If the government think it is going to cost them too much they should bring us home."