Tom Tugendhat was wounded twice during a ten-hour firefight deep behind enemy lines when he and a small number of their special forces men called in a helicopter to evacuate them from northern Iraq.
When the Chinook finally arrived, in a hail of sand and flying bullets, it seemed that salvation was at hand. From the air, however, the young translator from the detachment below, dressed in the clothes of an Iraqi peasant, looked not like a Royal Marine but an enemy one. The gunner opened fire until someone realized the mistake.
If that shooter’s aim had been better, Tugendhat would be dead rather than this weekend making an unlikely but bravura bid to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister.
Tugendhat spent one year in Iraq and four years in Afghanistan
Instead,
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