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During those early days in rehabilitation, I got to put a face to Snafu, whose angry, distressed voice had echoed round my nights in the high dependency ward. Everyone adored Snafu – male and female patients, nurses, physiotherapists, his mum, his sisters, his Army mates, his five thousand ex-girlfriends: he was a tough, outrageous, larger-than-life character, as wild as a semi-domesticated polecat, as sharp as any stand-up comedian, as mature as he was vulnerable. Then nineteen, he had been shot in Helmand, Afghanistan, when a sniper’s bullet sneaked into the sleeve hole of his body armour, hit his shoulder blade and ricocheted through his spine at the top of his chest. He reckoned the Afghan was a rubbish shot.

‘If he was any good I’d be dead, wouldn’t I?’

As he lay on the ground, fully conscious, he remembers bantering with his fellow soldiers. He thought he was dying, but decided he might as well go with a smile on his face. His mates told him what soldiers always tell their dying comrades – that he’d be all right; that he’d be in the pub in no time. He was helicoptered to Camp Bastion, thence to Birmingham, and soon to the spinal injuries unit in Glasgow, to be nearer his family. The six-foot-four, fifteen-stone soldier morphed into a skinny, laconic, blue-eyed tetraplegic playboy, soon well enough to dance around the gym on the back wheels of his wheelchair like a trick cyclist, chatting up all the girls, amusing everyone with his antics. Either that, or he indulged in a soldier’s favourite game of mooching, fag in hand, at the door, trading profane insults with anyone brave enough to take him on.