SOLDIER James Hedditch from Bridport is home for Christmas after being wounded while serving in Afghanistan.

The 25-year-old agricultural worker is in the Territorial Army and was on a six-month tour of duty with the 6th Battalion the Rifles when he was shot.

The bullet that ripped through his leg means he may limp for the rest of his life but he said that he has no regrets about fighting in Afghanistan.

Rifleman James said the tour of duty was certainly memorable and despite being wounded he says it was a good experience.

Former Woodroffe School pupil James added: “It is one I will never forget.”

It was four months into the tour when James was involved in an operation to cordon off a compound to let engineers build a bridge.

He said: “We saw the enemy move in and kept our eyes on them.”

They could see about 20 Taliban but then James was hit.

He said: “It was a pretty bad day.

“I took a gunshot wound which went in half way between my ankle and knee and down through the fibula bone and exited just on the ankle.

“At the time I was thinking ‘no I am not going to die, this doesn’t happen to me’. But it does happen out there and you have just got to prepare yourself as much as you can. I just accepted it.

“I shuffled and fell off the roof.”

He was given a field dressing there and then by army medics and within 20 minutes was on his way back to Camp Bastion for medical treatment before being flown home for specialist care.

James might have ‘only’ been a TA soldier but he and the other reservists were as involved as the regular army.

They were on strike operations and events, according to James, were getting ‘quite tasty’ before he was shot.

He was able to ring his parents from his hospital bed to tell them what happened.

He said: “I think it was better coming from me because they realised I was all right.

“I am probably going to have a limp for the rest of my life and arthritis from now on in my right leg.

“I should get back to nearly full fitness.

“It is just something you have got to accept and just crack on. I don’t regret it at all. It has been a great experience. It was a once in a lifetime thing I was going to do.

“I would say if you want to do it, follow your dream and do it.”

James and the 11 other soldiers from 6 Rifles were serving alongside their regular counterparts from Edinburgh’s 3 Rifles on a mission called Herrick 16.

With the pre-mobilisation training most of the TAs have spent the best part of a year away from work and family.

Staff at James’s old school said they were proud of him. Woodroffe School headteacher Richard Steward said: “It obviously makes us proud when we hear stories like this about one of our former pupils. “James Hedditch, and TA soldiers like him, is a credit to himself, his school, his parents and his country.”