stabbed in the head

The 10-year-old was stabbed when he tried to protect his father during a row with a male customer in his shop in Kandahar. The boy's father took him to a military base in Kandahar and pleaded with doctors to save him.

Medics there used a portable digital x-ray machine, which produced an image in two minutes, before flying him to Camp Bastion for the operation.

The boy, who has not been named, amazed medics by walking into the field hospital with the knife embedded in his head on July 14 last year. Surgeons of 212 Field Hospital operated before handing over to 208 Field Hospital, who administered the after care.

Major Stephen Gallacher, 49, senior A&E nurse of 208 Field Hospital, said: "It was a horrendous sight. I just didn't think he would survive. But he was soon off the life-support machine and was up and about within days. It was just amazing."

advertisementMaj Gallacher, a father of four from Caernarfon, North Wales, added: "The knife had come in at an angle and gone down behind his eye and had penetrated the front of his brain. To have simply pulled the knife out would have been a disaster."