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When a British soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, he is publicly named so that proper tributes can be made.

But no one knows about the horrors of the wounded. They are not identified.

No official figures are released - indeed, we have no idea how many there are.

The closest estimate is that, in the past six years, there have been 5,500 emergency medical evacuations from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Brave: Rory MacKenzie with his girlfriend, Storm

Shamed by two conflicts that have no end in sight, the Government does not care to draw attention to these thousands who have returned from battlefields far away - many so horribly maimed and disfigured that even their own relatives have struggled to recognise them.

Nor does it afford them the level of care they might expect. Britain's last specialist military hospital - at Haslar, near Portsmouth - was closed at the beginning of the year.

In its place is an ordinary NHS hospital, Selly Oak in Birmingham, where a single military ward is dedicated to the care of wounded soldiers.


It has 14 beds. Yet in one month alone this year, 145 personnel were flown back from Iraq or Afghanistan requiring emergency treatment.


And what then?

The lucky ones will get a place at Headley Court Army rehabilitation centre in Surrey - a facility that offers wounded servicemen the best hope of coming to terms with their injuries, yet which one British soldier's young girlfriend, Nicola Curtis, describes bitterly as "the place no one wants us to know about".

She says: "The first time you see it, you feel sick with shock seeing all these wheelchairs and amputees and bandaged-up heads . . . all these terrible injuries, just hidden from the public."

Small wonder, then, that Forces charities and ex- officers have grown increasingly outraged about a breach of the "military covenant", which states that soldiers and their families should be properly looked after by the State in return for their sacrifices in the line of duty.

To discover the full scale of that breach, I have spoken to the families of some of those wounded in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Stories like theirs have remained hidden from the public, not least because injured soldiers who stay in the Army's employ are prohibited from speaking about their treatment.

But they deserve to be heard, for in the face of public indifference and political denial, their courage is as inspiring as it is shaming.


Ilai Derenalagi and his wife Anna are originally from Fiji, but moved to Britain with their daughter in 1999 so that he could join the Army.

"It was a dream for me to move to the Motherland and see Buckingham Palace," recalls Anna, smiling.

Then, in April this year, Ilai, 33, was posted to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty. He phoned his wife to say that it had become much more dangerous since his previous tour.

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Stoic: Ilai Derenalagi with his wife Anna

He was right.


Early one July morning, Ilai was accompanying his commanding officer to meet local leaders of Helmand when their Land Rover reversed over a landmine. Ilai took the full force of the blast.

He was hurled 20m into the air and landed on nearby rocks.


Ilai says: "I remember looking down at my shattered legs, and feeling my mouth full of blood because shrapnel had gone through my chin.

"My body was swollen up from the force of the blast.

"Then I could hear people shouting around me - they said 'We are going to pull you away, we will save you' but I saw the despair in their faces and the tears in their eyes.

"I said a prayer, confessed my sins and asked, 'Lord, give me life.'"

Ilai's friends say that although he was barely conscious, he called out two things.

First he wanted to know that his commanding officer was safe.

Second he wanted his Bible, which he always carried with him. (It was subsequently retrieved, unscathed, from the wreckage.)


After that, Ilai remembers being taken to the field hospital where surgeons amputated his leg. Attempts to save the other leg would also subsequently fail.


His pulse stopped and the doctor reported his death to the commanding officer.

Then, after the medical team pumped him with oxygen in a desperate attempt to save him, his breathing started again.


The next thing Ilai remembers is waking at Selly Oak hospital and seeing his wife and 17-yearold daughter crying.


During World War II, between 30 and 50 per cent of soldiers died from their injuries. In Iraq and Afghanistan it is nearer 10 per cent.

That is the good news for the wounded returning from the frontline today.

The bad news is that there are no dedicated military hospitals to care for them; still less a hero's welcome to lift their spirits in their lowest hours.

Most are left to fall back on the support of a relative or loved one, who will have to dedicate their own lives to care for the wounded, with minimal assistance from the State.


Ilia has his wife, Anna. Rory Mackenzie has his South African girlfriend, Storm. It was a medical miracle that Rory, 25, survived his injuries from the roadside bomb that ripped through the belly of his tank in Iraq in January.


No one believed that Rory could have survived the blast that tore through him and into the chest of the soldier opposite him, killing him instantly. But he did.

Rory says: "I remember lifting my head, trying to focus - it was broad daylight, but I couldn't see.

"Then I remember someone saying 'One dead, one traumatic amputation' - my leg had been severed in the blast.

"Then I remember holding the nurse's hand and not letting go.

"And I remember saying to the surgeon: 'Are my balls going to be OK?' Then I woke up in Selly Oak hospital a week later."

That's when the harsh reality of his new existence began to dawn. Rory had to endure seven separate amputations on his leg as infections spread up it.

Afterwards he remained in isolation at Selly Oak, where the only people he was allowed to mix with were elderly patients suffering from dementia on a non-military ward, because they carried the least risk of infecting him.


When Storm came to see him, she didn't know what to expect.


"I was so nervous," she says. "His face was all bruised, he looked like a yellow candle, he had had so many blood transfusions and there were tubes everywhere in his cheeks and his neck.

"But there were no tears, I was just so happy.

"I said: 'I am so glad you are alive and I am not going to leave your side.'"

Storm was in her first year of a fine arts degree, but she let her lecturer know that she would not be returning.

"I can do a degree anytime, Rory needs me now."

The reunion between a wounded soldier and his loved ones is unbearably poignant. The last time wives or girlfriends or mothers saw these men they were strong and capable.

Suddenly, they are helpless.


As Anna Derenalagi recalls: "When I first saw Ilai at Selly Oak, I just broke down in tears. He looked so vulnerable as he lay unconscious.


"I sat there with my daughter reading the Book of Psalms to him and then the Book of Proverbs and then singing songs from church. After about six days he began to twitch and he woke up slowly.


"The doctors had told me what to say. I had to repeat to him: "You have been in an explosion and your legs have been amputated."


"He looked at me and said that he knew about the explosion and that his legs were injured. Then he said: "Could you take off my shoes please, my legs feel very hot.

"I told him again that he had lost his legs but he thought I was just joking.

"In the end I took a picture with my camera and showed him, and then he asked: 'Is that really me? Well if that is it, then it must be God's purpose.'"

Ilai has shown a remarkable acceptance about his fate. His wife says that since July he has never once complained, or blamed anyone for what happened.


He has been in and out of Headley Court rehabilitation centre since August and doctors are astonished by his progress.

He is in a wheelchair now but hopes to progress to prosthetic legs.


He is already talking about training for the Paralympics of 2012, competing in the wheelchair rugby and the rowing.

In the meantime, he has become a youth pastor. He is a much-loved figure at Headley Court, where he comforts the frightened and the stricken.


For others, like Rory Mackenzie, the recovery is a much deeper struggle. Though so badly disfigured that his mother said he was only recognisable by his eyebrows, Rory looks back on his early days at Selly Oak as his most hopeful period.

Sedated by valium, he believed that he would overcome his injuries and resume an almost normal life.


As time passed, though, the realisation of what he had lost hit him hard. Because his leg has been amputated right up to the hip, it makes fitting a prosthetic limb very difficult and, at present, he has to rely on crutches.


He was a young, active man who will never run again. Jobs will not be open to him and if he stays with the Army, it will be in a deadend desk job.

The administration and paper work of his predicament also overwhelmed him. Scandalously, his insurance company would only acknowledge a loss of foot, which kept his payment down to ￡100,000.


While he was being treated at Headley Court, his mother and girlfriend had nowhere to live.

They were temporarily housed in a small property available to relatives next to Headley Court, which had no hot water, no fridge and no washing machine.


Storm shared the accommodation with the young wife and baby of a badly-injured soldier.

One day, the mother disappeared with her child and could not be traced. She simply could not cope with having a crippled husband.


Certainly, the strain on the families of the wounded is so great that many relationships do not survive.

Nicola Curtis, 26, from London, had been with her boyfriend for four years when he was posted to Iraq in 2004.

When his vehicle overturned in a convoy in Basra and his neck was fractured, she realised that the gregarious man with the wide grin and dark eyes whom she loved would return utterly changed.


He is still in excruciating pain from a titanium plate in his neck, three years later, and cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes.

He is afraid of crowds or attention and did not wish to be named or quoted for this article, but let us call him Jack.


Jack was shockingly slow to be treated on his return from Iraq.

After his initial operation at a specialist neurological unit, he was returned to Nicola's home and simply left there.

He wore his neck brace for six months because he did not know what else to do.

It was only thanks to Nicola's perseverance that she found out about Headley Court, and Jack was admitted and treated there for two-and-a-half years until his recent discharge.


Nicola, a pretty, outgoing young woman who had imagined a full, adventurous life ahead with her boyfriend, was told that there was nothing more that could be done for him.


The damage to his spinal cord is permanent and he remains partially paralysed and in constant pain.

What makes their burden even harder to shoulder is the inconsiderate attitude of so many of the public.


"Sometimes we are on the Tube and Jack is being pushed about I want to scream to the passengers: 'Do you know what this man did for his country?

"'These people go to fight, to risk their lives, and then when they return nobody wants to know.['"

Often people ask Nicola why she stays. She is young, she is not married, why should she assume the burden of care, bathing him, driving him to hospital appointments, leaving her mobile on all the time she is at work in case he needs her and she has to rush home?


She rubs her hand over her smooth forehead.

"When Jack was at Headley Court and came home for weekends, I couldn't wait to hand him back sometimes.

"And when I knew he was coming home for good, I was in a panic, full-scale tears.

"But then I think: this isn't his fault and I love him and if that is the way it is, then that is what we have to live with.


"But I gave him to the country as an able-bodied young man and he should not be treated like this."

At least Nicola and Jack now have a house provided by an exservicemen's charity.

Rory Mackenzie and Storm have no such security. When I met them recently, their attempt to buy a small house had fallen through.


A few weeks ago, Pippa Dannatt, wife of Sir Richard, the head of the British Army, lent them her house for a week.

They are now staying with a South African couple whom they have only recently met.


"I am embarrassed that we are staying with a civilian family who don't even really know us," says Storm.

Her polite manner masks terrible anxiety. "There was something Storm said last night," adds Rory.

"It was that everything in our lives is a worry."

But Storm has no intention of abandoning her boyfriend.

"I love this man dearly and I am not going to leave him at the very worst moment in his life," she says.

"We have been brought up in good homes and we have a good moral base, and we will see this through."

In America, men and women like Rory, Ilai and Jack would be treated with respect as the brave men that they are.

But in Britain, they are the forgotten ones: the war victims whose names will not be carved on any proud memorial in a country that prefers to look the other way.


The Armed Forces charities are now trying to raise money to house the relatives of the wounded near Selly Oak and at Headley Court, but it is in the face of public indifference that sometimes borders on outright hostility.


When Headley Court recently applied for planning permission to convert a house nearby for relatives to stay, local residents objected on the grounds that the presence of so many weeping and distressed visitors might affect the value of their houses.


Instead of being hailed as heroes, our war wounded are being treated as pariahs.

Yet these are men who do not like to complain - it is not in their nature. So it is left to others to plead on their behalf.


It's not just about money.

Anna Derenalagi calls simply for public recognition of the wounded.

"Let them know that they are worthy, celebrate them when they come home," she says, wiping a tissue across her eyes.

"This is a great Army, a great country."


She is far from alone in her distress.

Rory Mackenzie has been called a "f***ing cripple" and been jostled on the Tube by impatient passengers.


Yet this is someone who wanted to join the British Army since he was a small child and who was honoured to serve.


Nicola's boyfriend, Jack, hardly dares leave the house now, but when he read that his regiment was off to Afghanistan he turned to her, his face twisted with pain and said: "I would give anything to be with them."


Their wounds may make us flinch. Their wars may be unpopular.

But when men like these are being ignored and abandoned, we have no right to call ourselves a civilised nation.

? ARMY charities: SSAFA 0845 1300 975; Army Benevolent Fund 0845 241 4828; The Not Forgotten Association 020 7730 2400.

Fed up with crime, residents in Lynnwood Manor, Pretoria are taking no more chances. Oil drums line the roads leading in to the suburb to stop vehicles while security guards carrying two-way radios check the credentials of their occupants before they are allowed in.

"This is the final frontier. If we do not do this, more blood is going to be spilt," said community leader Dr Kevin Gast after armed thugs killed three people, seriously injured a three-year-old toddler and looted the homes of four residents - all during a four-day crime wave.

The barricades were erected as police on Thursday arrested two men wanted in connection with murder, rape and house robbery.




Inspector Klaas van der Kooi said flying squad members were patrolling Lynnwood when they arrested the men and seized an unlicensed Z88 pistol and two cars.

Police have arrested two men for murder, rape and robbery
The "checkpoints" have followed the torture, rape and murder of Cathy Odendaal (51) whose naked and battered body was found on Tuesday in herFarnham Street home.

Before her murder gunmen held up Farnham Street resident Musa Ebrahim on Saturday and shot his domestic worker's three-year-old toddler before fleeing with laptop computes and cellphones.

Only hours earlier, a Lynnwood Manor gardener was shot dead on the corner of Lynnwood Road and Camelia Streets and a resident gunned down in his Camelia Street driveway.

And only days before that, Gudrun Graf and Anna Pretorius were attacked in their Priory Street complex by men armed with a crowbar.

In August, musician Francois Viljoen (25) was killed at his home in Glenwood Street and Dawn Street resident Cilliers Snyman (68) was shot dead. Frans Jacobs was seriously injured in his Old Fort home.

Residents were in a heated stand-off with the Tshwane Metro Police
Gast and Lynnwood Manor residents were on Thursday involved in a heated stand-off with the Tshwane Metro Police who tried to remove the barricades. Gast has vowed that the barriers will not come down until the Tshwane Metro Council "guarantees" the safety of all residents.

"Until we know that blood will not be spilt and that the council will accept full responsibility for protecting our lives and property, these barriers will stay.

"We are tired of the murder and mayhem. We are telling the council that we are not going to wait another 10 years for it to deliberate on whether we can or cannot have a gated community," he said.

An urgent application has been made by the community to the Pretoria High Court to compel the council to allow them to "gate" their suburb.

Gast, referring to the makeshift access controls, said they were created "to stop the bloodshed".

"We are going to fight to keep them. We are doing whatever it takes to protect our lives and property. We have no other way of surviving."

He added that the barricades were not blockades but merely access control points. It was up to the guards to decide who entered the area.

"If a person does not have a disc then they will have to explain why they are there. If the guard is suspicious then the person will not be allowed in," he said.

The Freedom Front Plus, supporting the initiative, said it was encouraging Pretoria's residents to create security neighbourhoods to protect themselves - "with or without the approval of the Tshwane metro council".

FF+ councillor Conrad Beyers said: "The FF+ will assist communities with legal advice if the metro council wants to break down their security fences.

"From Lynnwood to Centurion, Eersterus to Mamelodi, there should be secure communities. Crime knows no colour and the moratorium on security neighbourhoods is a moratorium on the personal freedom and safety of all residents," Beyers added.

Metro police spokesperson Louise Brits said they were waiting to see legal documents before making decided whether the barricades would stay.


This article was originally published on page 4 of Pretoria News on October 19, 2007
It was a popcorn-can lid, a cake pan, a plastic disc called a Whirlo-Way and an even better plastic disc called a Pluto Platter.

But 50 years ago, Wham-O christened it the Frisbee, and an American icon was born. Since then, more than 200 million of the plastic discs have sold worldwide and the ranks of the Frisbee faithful have flourished.

"Hardly a person on this planet doesn't know what to do with these things," said Phil Kennedy, co-author of "Flat Flip Flies Straight: True Origins of the Frisbee."

"It's human nature to pick up something flat and round and throw it."

That's why Walter "Fred" Morrison tossed a popcorn-can lid on that fateful Thanksgiving in 1937. And when that got beat up, Morrison discovered that ordinary cake pans flew pretty well, too.

When a beach bum offered Morrison 25 cents for the 5-cent cake pan he was tossing at a beach, a bell went off.

"Fred saw the commercial potential for something people have been doing since the dawn of time," said Kennedy, who wrote "Flat Flip" with Morrison.

An Army pilot, Morrison used his aerodynamic know-how to create the first plastic disc and, later, a new and improved version.

In 1957, he sold the rights to Wham-O, whose execs renamed it "Frisbee." That's the nickname college kids in the Northeast had given the Pluto Platter, after the tossable pie tins from the now-defunct Frisbie Pie Co. of Connecticut.

Morrison was no fan of the new name.

But Morrison, now 87, became crazy rich off the royalties he continues to get for each Frisbee sold. A disc, some space and a will to fling have opened up a universe of activities, played not only in backyards and beaches but in national and international competitions.

Boulder, Colo., is home to the Ultimate Players Association, the governing body for Ultimate Frisbee. Created by high school students in Maplewood, N.J., in 1968, Ultimate marries soccer's pace with football's aerial acumen.

It now attracts nearly 900,000 U.S. players every year, according to the UPA. The group's youth membership has jumped 1,000 percent in the past four years, partly because of its fair-play philosophy, UPA spokesman Ryan John said. Central to Ultimate is the so-called "spirit of the game," by which players acknowledge their own fouls and settle disputes without referees. UPA's "spirit" guidelines call for players to be gracious and amicable toward everyone, particularly their opponents.

Ultimate players take the spirit of the game very seriously, John said, so much so that many consider it more important than winning.

"I come from a soccer background, which is very much about competing against other people," said Anna Schott, who plays for the nationally ranked Boulder, Colo., women's team, Rare Air. "You're held to a higher standard in Ultimate." (Visit upa.org for more information).

"Steady Ed" Headrick, the inventor of disc golf and considered the father of the modern Frisbee, said in a 2001 Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel story that the flight of the Frisbee gave it a spirit that could never be duplicated by a mere ball.

"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a Frisbee," psychiatrist and disc-golf great Stancil Johnson said in his book "Frisbee: A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise."

Headrick told the Sentinel that Frisbee goes beyond the physical to the spiritual, with devotees who could be called "Frisbyterians."

"When we die, we don't go to purgatory," he said. "We just land up on the roof and lie there."



GAMES ANY FRISBEE FREAK CAN PLAY

Here are some easy Frisbee games. For more ideas, go to frisbeedisc.com.


Bull's-Eye Accuracy: The goal is to land the disc as close to the bull's-eye as possible. Each contestant should have five discs at his throwing line. The total points scored on the five attempts constitute the contestant's score. The bull's-eye should consist of a low basin or basket at least a meter in diameter. Larger concentric circles should be drawn in line or rope. Discs must be entirely inside a circle in order to score.


Keepaway: Played like all monkey-in-the-middle games, except that in this case the monkey may be armed with a disc to knock down the other players' throws.


Bowlbee: A target (or targets) that can be knocked down is used, and players take turns trying to topple it.


ULTIMATE IN SEATTLE


DiscNW is the source authority for all things related to Ultimate Frisbee in the Seattle area.

It organizes and runs several leagues year-round, conducts skills clinics, provides coaches for school teams and beginner-level leagues, and runs Potlatch, billed as the largest mixed (co-ed) tournament in the world, as well as many smaller tournaments.