Adam Douglas, left, who was horrifically injured on the front line in Basra in 2003, has joined the battle to extend compensation rules.
Currently only servicemen hurt in combat after April 2005 qualify for payments under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.

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But Mr Douglas is backing the campaign 'Lives on the Line' which urges the Government to extend it to the start of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2001.

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Former Commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp launched the campaign last week supported by Leeds law firm Stewarts Law.

Mr Douglas, 42, of Seacroft, was forced to retire as a result of his injuries but he only qualifies for a war pension of up to £150 a week.
If he had been injured after the current scheme was introduced in 2005, he would have qualified for a lump sum payment of up to £570,000.

He would also have received ongoing, tax-free Guaranteed Income Payments to compensate for loss of earnings, based on what he could have earned and medical care costs.

Mr Douglas was a regular soldier for 15 years with the Royal Dragoons Guards before he left in 1997, joining the Territorial Army in 2001.

He was deployed to Iraq in 2003, fighting on the front line in Basra with the Fusiliers.

Two months later he was blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade during fighting in Basra.

"My spine was fractured top and bottom, my bowels and bladder ripped apart, I suffered heart and neurological damage and was told I would not walk again," he said.

The impact was devastating.

"My wife Maria had to give up her job to care for me and my two young daughters. We were denied benefits, including a carer's allowance for my wife, even though I was and still am rated at 70 per cent disabled.

"We fought for two years to get to an appeal where they took just five minutes to find in our favour.

"We got no help at all," said Mr Douglas. "Just trying to survive practically bankrupted us."

Over the past seven years, he has undergone 29 operations – the most recent in December.

But through his determination and support from his family, Maria, 43, Jessica, 12 and Sophie, 10, he can now walk with the aid of two sticks.
Mr Douglas is also now able to work and is employed in palliative equipment care management for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

He has also founded charity The Forgotten Heroes for the carers of wounded and injured ex-servicemen and women.

"We are the forgotten heroes," he said. "We went to Iraq and Afghanistan, we have fought the same battles, shed the same blood and been on the same operations, why don't we deserve the same compensation?"

Daniel Herman, a catastrophic injury specialist at Stewarts Law in Leeds, said it was stories like Adam's which inspired the firm to back the Lives on the Line campaign.

He said: "Mr Douglas and many others have been woefully undercompensated, purely due to the dates they were injured. It is clearly unfair to penalise men and women who sustain such catastrophic injuries in the service of their country because of an arbitrary cut-off date."

Mrs Douglas said the battle for financial support has been ongoing ever since her husband was injured in 2003.

"You see people who can't be bothered to work and they get everything, or stories about people getting compensation for silly little things and when this happened to Adam we didn't get a penny. We luckily had some savings which we had to live on," she said.

"It is very frustrating. Adam and many others, all these men and women who fought for their country and they just don't care about them."
Several MPs have already started an Early Day Motion to get the law changed.