Walking with the Wounded: Simon Daglish

You’re one of the founders of Walking with the Wounded. What made you start up the foundation?

Ed and I met up at Sandhurst a number of years ago. We both come from military backgrounds. We were discussing going to the North Pole anyway and thought we may as well do it for a cause, and the first thing we thought of was wounded servicemen. While we were planning it Ed’s nephew was blown up in Afghanistan. He gave me a call while I was on holidays in Greece and said, “Look, Harry’s been blown up and lost part of both his legs and part of his hand. He’s been very badly injured. It then occurred to me how interesting it would it be, if we wanted to raise awareness and we wanted to raise money for wounded soldiers, if they became part of the team that came to the North Pole.

How is your foundation different from others like Help for Heroes? Is it because it has the involvement of these soldiers?

Part of the thing we wanted to prove here and show to the world and other soldiers who are injured is that, tragic as it is losing an arm or a leg or an eye and being wounded, that’s not the end of life. There is so much more you can do. In many ways, I think what the four wounded guys did on this trip was turn a negative into a positive. I don’t think any of them would have thought about going to the North Pole if they hadn’t been injured. Because of their injuries and what happened to them, they took it upon themselves to prove to everybody, and to prove to themselves that they could still do extraordinary things.

How much can training prepare you for a challenge like this?

As long as you’re physically fit, very physically fit, you could do the North Pole. The challenge to any of these extreme environments is not whether you’re physically fit. That just makes it easier. It’s whether you have the mental strength to do it. The difficult part of being in a hostile environment is just generally living. Getting up. Putting your shoes on in -20. When you wake up in the morning your sleeping bag is frozen solid around you and you’ve got to get out of it. You’re walking into a huge, freezing wind. Every part of your body aches and your hands are in agony because of the cold. It takes four hours to boil water to make food that is too disgusting to eat anyway. The complete buggerance of life in those circumstances. It’s only through huge mental strength that you can overcome them. Otherwise you’d just chuck the towel in and say this just isn’t for me.