Mark Dryden attended a Help for Heroes dinner at Elizabeth College on Saturday evening. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 0668847)

MARK DRYDEN was nervous when he left for Iraq in 2005.

‘I felt something was going to happen when I went back the second time. I even re-wrote my will before I left,’ he said.

Mr Dryden served in the army for 11 years, including tours of duty in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, before being posted to Iraq in 2003 and again two years later.

In 2005, he was supposed to be there for six months but was injured five-and-a-half weeks into the tour.

‘You don’t think it will happen to you. You feel invincible when you’ve already been to war and survived,’ said Mr Dryden.

He said over 15 years he has experienced the deaths of family and friends in the services. He felt let down by the Ministry of Defence, who failed to get in touch for nine months after he was discharged from Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

They finally offered him care at Headley Court, a rehabilitation centre in Surrey, where he was given a prosthetic arm but never shown how to use it.