Bullet in leg of war hero for 40 years retrieved by docs
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Doctors at a UK hospital retrieved a bullet that had been lodged in the leg of a war hero for 40 years, of which he was unaware until a routine groin operation.
Former Royal Navy Commando Robert Mitchell, 63, was injured in two separate battles in the Far East during the 1970s.
He was later awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for bravery but continued to feel pain in his groin.
Surgeons at Torbay Hospital in Devon pulled the inch-long bullet out of Mitchell's leg during the procedure, the Daily Mail reported.
The grandfather-of-four, who now wears the lucky steel cartridge around his neck, said: "I could not believe it, it never occurred to me that I could have a bullet still inside my leg. I had no idea that it was there and I was very surprised. The surgeon told me I had a lot to answer for because I had ruined one of his scalpels," he added in a lighter vein.
"I now wear it around my neck, which is better than where it was. I decided to put it on a chain because it has already been with me for all these years," Mitchell said.
Mitchell, from Dartmouth, Devon, joined the Royal Navy in 1967 when he was just a teenager before signing up with the Royal Navy Commandos in 1969. In 1970 he was serving on HMS Fife when he did a diving course, but burst his eardrum and ended up stranded in hospital in Singapore after his ship sailed without him.
He was then sent to the Thailand/Malaya border with British Army and RAF Regiment forces, tackling drug runners and terrorist insurgents for five months.
But the brave soldier was involved in a fire-fight and hit in both legs. The two bullets went straight through him, but he said there was always the chance that a third round had struck without him realising.
However, Mitchell reckons the rogue bullet may have been fired into his groin during a top-secret raid into Vietnam in 1971, when he was just 22.
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