A Hull soldier who lost a leg has told how his little girl asked him: "Can we go back to Afghanistan to get your leg, Daddy?"
Sergeant Craig Gadd stepped on a hidden Taliban device in Helmand province in October 2010. Three months after the blast that cut short his six-month tour of duty and changed his life forever, partner Dolly Dalton gave birth to their daughter, Daisy, now two.Sergeant Gadd, 41, who lives with his family in Beverley Road, Hull, has recently been fitted with a Genium Bionic prosthetic leg, said to be worth £37,500. But the "all-singing, all-dancing" leg, as he calls it, has not quite impressed his youngest daughter.
Sergeant Gadd said: "Daisy likes it but the other day she asked me, 'Do you think we can go back to Afghanistan to get your real leg, Daddy?'
"I just laughed. Moments like that spur me on and bring me back to reality. To her, I'm just the same as any other daddy – I just happen to have a 'little leg' and a 'big leg', as Daisy likes to call them."
Sergeant Gadd, who has another daughter Katie, nine, from a previous relationship, says the new prosthetic limb, which is the closest science has come to natural walking, is making a huge difference to his daily life.
"There's a much better range of movement with this prosthetic," he said. "It bends a lot more and makes climbing stairs easier."
However, it has been a long journey both mentally and physically and there have been plenty of setbacks for Sergeant Gadd.
"Eight weeks after I was blown up, I was up and walking," he said. "At the time, I thought I would be done and dusted in a matter of a few months.
"But I'm still undergoing treatment more than three years on.
"Nobody knows how long it will take to complete therapy – it varies a lot from person to person."
In February, Sergeant Gadd underwent a four-hour operation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham to remove a growth from his stump, which made wearing a prosthetic limb uncomfortable.
"The surgeon was the same guy who first treated me at Camp Bastion's field hospital in Afghanistan," he said.
"He told me, 'You look better than you did last time I saw you. You won't recognise me, though. You were laid out on a table."
Sergeant Gadd, a member of TA Unit 299 (Parachute Squadron) Royal Engineers, expects to be medically discharged in the new year, just as British combat forces prepare to finally leave Afghanistan.
Despite having paid a heavy price for serving Queen and country, Sergeant Gadd, who also served in Iraq, displays no bitterness.
"No one ever expects it to happen to them," he said. "But what's happened has happened. You can't go back. I've no regrets."
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