A SOLDIER who survived a Taliban bullet during a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan has received his service medal from a civic leader.

Durham Mayor Grenville Holland yesterday presented Afghanistan Medals to ten TA soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which has drill halls in Bishop Auckland and Washington, Wearside.

Among those who served in Afghanistan was Rifleman Rozner Boyd, 26, of Hebburn, South Tyneside, who was shot while on patrol in Nad Ali, in Helmand Province.

He said: “We got ambushed from the left in a farmer’s field and I got shot in the right leg.

Initially I was treated on the ground. There was a tourniquet at first because there was a lot of blood, and morphine.

“The lads put me on a stretcher and carried me 1,800 metres. I was met by the quick reaction force and they got us back to control base, and a helicopter came for us and I was airlifted.”

Rfn Boyd, who is based in Washington, said the bullet fractured his tibia and damaged muscle, but has not been removed because it is so close to an artery.

He told his girlfriend, Danielle Kennedy, 27, and his mother, Eileen Lansdell, 53, by phone.

Miss Kennedy is due to give birth to their first child on the anniversary of the day Rfn Boyd was shot.

She said: “He rang me, it was just another call, and he said “don’t worry, I’ve been shot”.

Ms Lansdell praised the Army medics who treated her son at a hospital in Birmingham.

The other recipients were: Lieutenant Ben Clare, from Doncaster, Sergeant Kenneth McFarlane, from Bishop Auckland, Corporal David Charlton, from Doncaster, Cpl David Richardson, from Bishop Auckland, Lance Cpl Graeme Welsh, from Washington, Rfn Christopher Yorke, from Washington, Rfn Curtis Meads, from Washington, Rfn Malcolm Cutts, from Washington, and Rfn Theodore Pearson, from Doncaster.