Our Best: Lance Corporal Sally Clarke
Lance Corporal Sally Clarke
Lance Corporal Sally Clarke, 22, of Cheltenham, overcame intense pain to deliver care to the other soldiers and refused to leave her patrol for treatment of her injuries.
She and her colleagues from the 2nd Battalion the Rifles were on patrol south of Sangin, Helmand province, when one discovered an anti-tank mine.
While they waited for experts to deal with the mine, they came under fire from insurgents, who shot a rocket-propelled grenade over a wall.
It struck one of the soldiers on the back of his rucksack before landing in the middle of the patrol. The soldiers dived for cover as the device exploded three times.
When L/Cpl Clarke got up, she realised that shrapnel from the grenade had become lodged in her back and shoulder.
However, she saw that seven other soldiers had been injured and immediately began working. She later said: “I couldn’t leave them when they didn’t have any spare medics, and my injuries weren’t that bad.”
An army medic from Cheltenham gave medical care to soldiers injured in a Taliban ambush, despite having shrapnel embedded in her back.
Lance Corporal Sally Clarke, 22, was on patrol with the 2nd Battalion the Rifles in Helmand province when one of her colleagues found an old Russian-style anti-tank mine.
The patrol stopped and Sally and the rest of the group took defensive positions while they waited for experts to deal with the device.
While they waited, opportunistic insurgents fired a rocket propelled grenade over the wall, which hit a soldier on the back of his rucksack, bouncing off and landing in the middle of the patrol.
Lance Corporal Sally Clarke
She said: “I ran to the most seriously injured first. Cpl Mather had taken wounds to his left bicep and had very bad shrapnel wounds across the lower part of his body – one of the pieces had torn a fist-sized hole through his skin.”
L/Cpl Clarke applied field dressings and a tourniquet, and then waited for the emergency response team to arrive. The medic, who has served in the forces for three years, treated each soldier before helping to move them to the helicopter landing site so that they could be flown to Camp Bastion.
Despite being entitled to get on the flight she refused, insisting she would not leave the rest of the patrol without a medic. She said: “I didn’t feel like my injuries were bad enough to go back to the hospital, particularly as I was the only medic on the ground at the time.
“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 need it the most.”
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Sally Clarke
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Chuck,
Great story. Thank you for keeping the sacrifices of our military and its allies to the forefront.
Mike