Aftermath

The bow of our canoe slid up against the bank underneath Triunfo Village. The sound of excited chatter and gasps made their way down to us from above as the sight of two blood-soaked foreigners came into view for the villagers. Men, women and children huddled together looking shocked and sympathetic. Behind them, square wooden buildings on stilts with corrugated iron roofs, rose from the hard packed earth.

The two men who had brought us ashore gestured for us to follow them into the village so Yan hauled me to my feet and helped me up the slippery 10 or so meters to the harder ground above. Despite the gunshot wound to my leg, I was relieved to be able to walk but half of my mind was on our equipment that was left behind in the hull of the boat. Prior to getting to the shore, we had agreed to leave the pistol in the bottom of the boat and not touch it again. We tried to explain in broken Spanish that the weapon was not ours but the equipment was important but by now we were mere passengers in the middle of a crowd, being led at their mercy to a large building within the village.

I made it up a wooden staircase into the building with the help of two women. The sympathy in their eyes and friendly gestures put me at ease and I relaxed, enjoying their concerned smiles. The doorway opened into a large room, dim but for the pale morning light, seeping through cracks in the walls. I was led to a hammock that hung in the far-right corner and lowered into it by the same women that had helped me up the stairs. Yan was right behind me, attempting to explain the situation whilst staying by my side. Neither of us wanted to be separated.

Over the next few minutes, Yan and the two women helped me take off my trousers and shirt and inspected my wounds properly. As my trousers came off, I heard a quiet knock on the wooden floor and looked down to see a perfectly undamaged 9mm slug. The round had entered into my right thigh muscle, just above the knee and travelled the length of the muscle, finally exiting my body just beneath my hip. There were two bloody holes that looked like exit wounds before the actual exit wound. My guess is that the round had travelled in a snake like manner, attempted to exit my leg twice begore finally exiting. This was the second shot and had happened whilst I was fully submerged in the Amazon water. The water and density of my body had slowed it down so much that it didn’t have the power to penetrate my trousers on its way out. My leg was throbbing but there was very little pain. My shoulder was completely numb. We examined my shirt and there was a hole in the front and back. This had been the first shot that hit me, whilst I was above the water. The round had travelled through my body almost directly above the fold where my pectoral muscle meets the top of my bicep and had exited at the meeting of my latissimus dorsi and triceps brachii (above the back of my armpit). That round had probably gone on to travel a few hundred meters before sinking into the depths of the murky Amazonian water. I examined the round in disbelief. I’d been handling ammunition for the last 9 years of my life during my time in the marines, but this was a new appreciation of their deadly purpose, when holding one in my hand that had passed through my body.

The bleeding had slowed considerably, and I think at this point Yan and I both breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing that the life-threatening period had passed. Fresh bandages were brought and applied tightly around my shoulder and leg and the strong painkillers that Yan had given me out on the water had kicked in. I was now in an elated state, chatting and laughing with the friendly women who were tending me and thanking them for their help. Feeling utterly blessed to be alive and enjoying the fuzzy brain fog that was brought on by the dihydrocodeine. They brought me a tea of local leaves and sugar that was without doubt the nicest tea that I had ever tasted. Every couple of seconds Yan and I would look at each other and just smile and sigh and say something like. “Mate you’re an absolute legend!”

After not too long, we felt safe enough that Yan left me to go back to the boats to secure some kit and maintain communication with Garmin’s emergency team. Yan’s phone hadn’t survived the attack and the signal from our Garmin satellite communicator was blocked by the corrugated iron roof, so he spent a good part of the next few hours outside with my phone, trying to arrange our extraction. Various friends, including Fernando and Joe in Iquitos were by now liaising with the Peruvian Navy whilst concurrently, some of the villagers had taken to the water, intending to reach Pebas and the local police there. Back in the UK, my brother Ben and Yan’s girlfriend Cara were having conversations with each other and the British Consulate in Colombia. They had been contacted by Garmin’s emergency response team because they were our emergency Next of Kin contacts. They were asked if Yan and I were known to be in the Amazon, but due to the serious nature of what had happened, they could only be told that there had been a medical emergency and both Yan and I were involved. Over the next twelve hours Ben and Cara had the incredibly stressful job of relaying information to our family members whilst staying calm. At this point, we were only able to communicate by text to the emergency team meaning that the information that made its way to the UK was vague and limited. I found out the following day how good a job they had done in keeping our family members calm but informed, with the limited information they had. Over a year later, I still regret not being able to reassure everyone sooner during what must have been an incredibly stressful time.

Yan came in regularly to give me updates about our extraction. Whilst he had been outside, I had began to fear the worst. Despite being sure that we had only acted in self-defence, I had been involved in a firearms incident where I had shot someone, and I didn’t know if my attacker was alive or dead. My limited Spanish would mean that it’d be difficult to explain to police why we had arrived in Triunfo with an illegal firearm. Due to the drugs trade in the area, we could easily be mistaken for amateur traffickers. Through communication with Fernando in Iquitos, Yan had found out that there was a joint exercise taking place involving the Peruvian, Columbian and Brazilian Navy within 50km of our location. Fernando and Joe were arranging our extraction through the Navy and initially, their plan was to send a plane from Iquitos that would land on the water and bring us back to the hospital there. However, once it was established that I was in a stable condition, the plan changed, and we were told to await a hospital ship arriving in approximately 4 hours. As mentioned in previous posts, we had met the Capitania de Puerto, Captain Burneo in Iquitos. He had provided us with locations where we could rely on support from the Peruvian Navy along our route. We had created a bond with them and the news that our naval friends were on the way, rather than local police, was comforting. The women taking care of me and providing tea and mothering smiles were also very comforting but despite them, I began to feel increasingly exposed. There were three young lads sitting on benches on the other side of the dark room glaring at me. I nodded at them in a friendly manner but made sure I didn’t look away until they did first. In my mind, the incident wasn’t fully over and I didn’t want to appear meek. They seemed to me to be roughly the same age as our attackers and because of the sparsely populated area that we were in, there was a high chance that they knew them.

My mind twisted and turned between, relief, elation and anxiety for an hour or so. Yan had brough in some of our food from the canoes and we shared out sweets with the kids who were doing summersaults and cartwheels around the hammock. Suddenly, the shadows of two police officers wearing black helmets and body armor darkened the entrance to the room. From my horizontal position they seemed to stand a head and shoulders above everyone else, imposing with assault rifles slung in front of them and stern expressions on their faces. The leader strode over to me, his black jungle boots clunking on the wooden floor, and gestured for me to get up. He explained that I was to go with them and Yan would be left here. We immediately refused, explaining that I was in no condition to be taken for a 3-hour peke-peke ride to the police station in Pebas and there was a hospital ship on its way. Thankfully, they agreed and left after a brief interview, taking the pistol with them. We found out later that two men from the village had immediately begun travelling up river to Pebas to inform the police. By coincidence, they had come across two police officers that were in the area, heading to another village for a funeral. They diverted and came straight to us, then headed back onto the river to look for the two assailants. Both were found alive, floating down stream, clinging to their half sunk peke-peke.

After the brief meeting with the police, I decided that I wanted to be outside in the sun. The women were doing a great job of keeping me comfortable but despite that, I felt claustrophobic. I sat in a far less comfortable chair but enjoyed the change of scenery. For the next few hours, Yan and I had a good laugh with a some of the older men and shared out some peanut butter and bread that we had bought in Iquitos. The vibe was warm and after not too long most of the villagers went back to their daily business.

Soon there was excited chatter and the crowd gathered again so I stood up to find out what was going on. On the other side of a grassy area, four Peruvian Navy Seals swaggered towards us in what looked like a slow motion scene from a movie. They were all in green camouflage, wearing tactical helmets with their faces covered and holding their rifles like men who had plenty experience using them. Yan and I greeted them warmly as they politely and professionally made an exclusion zone around us so that the medics could get to work. We made brief introductions before I was plonked back down in my chair and stripped of my bandages for another inspection.

Soon, more personnel arrived, and I was moved from the chair to a stretcher on the ground. My view from there consisted of lots of bare and booted feet, but Yan described to me what was going on in the river. A Brazilian hospital ship named Meirelles had arrived and was flanked by Peruvian and Colombian patrol boats. The seals had arrived ahead of the fleet in fast boats that were now stationed on the banks ready to whisk us away. Thanks to Garmin and our friends Fernando and Joe in Iquitos, our call for help had been heard and we were supported by an Armada within 4 hours in an extremely remote part of the world. The Armada that came to our aid were the most hospitable and professional joint military force that I have ever encountered, and I say that as a former Royal Marine Commando. I was overwhelmed and slightly embarrassed by their level of support for us and I will forever be in their debt, especially the Peruvian lads that were first on scene.

So, there I am strapped in a stretcher wearing a lovely pair of loose trousers that Yan had given me to keep the sand flies and mosquitos off.  The medics had the scissors out in a flash, and after watching his trousers be cut from ankle to hip, he was then given the unceremonious job of tucking my dick out of the way so that they could clean my leg wound and wrap a fresh bandage high on my thigh. Strapping me to a stretcher was the way that they could safely transfer me from land to small boat to hospital ship, however I did initially protest considering I was standing and shaking hands when they first arrived. I understood that they had my best interests at heart though. Unfortunately for Yan, now that I didn’t have use of my hands due to the stretcher straps, he was called into action again to scratch the mosquitos and horse flies from my back because they were driving me crazy. We were both laughing as I attempted to direct him to the itchy areas. Soon I was being carried out of the village, with a medic holding a drip that fed into my left arm above the stretcher. I laughed when one of the men put a cap over my face, imagining that it looked like they were transferring a dead body.

A short boat ride was followed by an impressive stretcher haul up the side of the hospital ship. Before long, I was laying in a clean infirmary bed speaking with a Brazilian medical officer in perfect English. They kept me for an hour, assessing my condition and generously provided antibiotics and fresh bandages before transferring me to BAP Castilla, a 350 ton Clavero-Class Patrol Boat under the command of Lt Alvaro Chavez. Unfortunately, during our time on The Meirelles, the 9mm round that had made its way through my leg was confiscated, this is normal protocol in a military environment like this.

Alvaro and his crew had the job of taking Yan and I all the way back to Iquitos, a 48 hour round trip that would seriously impacted their involvement in the joint exercise. Before we left Triunfo, the crew also disassembled The Laura Joyce and brought our two canoes and the equipment aboard which was another great gesture of kindness. A special thanks goes to Lt Alvaro Chaves for providing us all hospitality on his boat and to Jose Ticona Monago and Rafael Alexander Tapullima, the two infirmary medics who took care of me for the whole trip back to Iquitos. Unfortunately, I don’t have the names of the seals who were first on scene and any of the villagers, but their kindness will never be forgotten by either Yan or I. Thank you to everyone that was involved in the rescue.

P.S Despite cringing at uploading some of these selfie videos where I was spaced out on painkillers and emotion, I think it's important to include all of our content because so many people have put so much into this expedition.

Thanks again to everyone involved.

YouTube:

Good Morning Britain Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc4ZfjO1mBM&t=104s

Rock and Rumble Radio Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9W1vjoMK6U

BBC Radio Scotland Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8gjhqSQ2uE&t=9s

BBC News Report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TTpAgQT-HA&t=79s