How powerful are British soldiers?

I know a guy.

He joined the British Army when he was just a kid—barely old enough to grow facial hair or smoke. Raised by his grandfather, he had a love for fast cars and was more of a nerd than he’d ever admit. With his smarts, he could have been an officer, learned a trade, maybe even become a doctor. But he chose the infantry. No one stopped him.

He finished basic training, and a few months later, he was in Afghanistan, holding a rifle. Five thousand miles from home, where he could’ve been lying in a warm bed in Tamworth. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a soldier.

Two weeks in the desert. Two weeks without green grass, birds singing, or the smell of fish and chips. He was out on patrol, just outside the base, when he stepped on a patch of disturbed earth.

The blast sent him flying 30 feet into the air. His rifle was ripped from his shattered hand. One leg was gone, blown off at the thigh. The other was mangled, barely held together by torn scraps of his trousers. He hit the ground—alive, breathing, and fully conscious. His squad hit the dirt, bracing for more bombs or gunfire.

With his right arm, the only limb he had left, he managed to tighten tourniquets around both legs, stopping the bleeding. Then he injected himself with morphine.

What would you do in his place? They say in moments like that, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall back on your training. Could you expect a kid, who once only thought of war as a video game, to look at his shattered body and say, ‘Not today. I’m not dying here’?

My father was on the same flight home as him. It was the last time either of them went to war. But they knew each other long before that. He’d been to our house; my dad had known him since he was fourteen. He was my brother’s best friend.

Today, he’s still alive. He learned to walk again. And he will always be a true soldier.

How tough are British soldiers? I doubt there’s a test hard enough to truly measure it.