A TEENAGE army hero joined his comrades on parade two months after a Taliban bomb left him fighting for life and without his legs.

Private Josh Campbell, 19, and fellow soldiers of 23 Pioneer Regiment received service medals and paraded through Bicester town centre on Saturday.

Pte Campbell was manning a heavy machine gun in the turret of a Mastiff armoured vehicle when it was blown up in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on September 17.

The force of the blast toppled the personnel carrier, mangling Pte Campbell’s legs in the gun mechanism.

He told the Oxford Mail: “The blast sent me upwards. I didn’t really feel it, I just heard it and remember all the dust coming up.The next thing I really remember was waking up in the netting of the turret, and being worried the rest of the guys inside had been hit.

“I got pulled out of the vehicle. They pulled me onto the ground and started giving me first aid.”

He joked: “I was screaming quite loudly, but in a manly way.”

Pte Campbell’s life was saved by fellow Pioneer Lance Corporal Jason Gordon, 34, who fashioned a tourniquet to stem the bleeding seconds after the explosion.

Lce Cpl Gordon said: “We were all having a laugh and talking with each other on the radio.

“The next minute, boom! We were going up into the air and the Mastiff toppled over on to its side.

“I was straight out of the vehicle. Josh was there with his head down but his legs sticking up.

There was blood everywhere. I froze for a second, then got to it.”

Pte Campbell was flown to Camp Bastion and then to Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham. During a week and a half while he was unconscious, surgeons were forced to amputate both his legs.

“I remember nothing at all apart from having some pretty good dreams – I was Ko in Kung Fu Panda at one point,” he said.

“The first thing I saw when I came to was my mum’s face. Once I saw her, I realised something had gone on.

“I asked my mum whether I had still got everything.

“She turned round and said they had to take my legs. That is not something she had ever wanted to say to her son.”

Pte Campbell, originally from Melksham, Wiltshire, is now based at the armed forces rehabilitation centre at Headley Court, Surrey, and is slowly becoming more mobile.

He said: “I want to get my strength back up, start walking again, and then get back to being a soldier.

“I have a simple motto: s*** happens. You’ve just got to get on with it.

“One of my main goals at Selly Oak and Headley Court has been to be back with the lads today, and it felt great.”

Commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Simon Wheelton said Pte Campbell was “an inspirational young soldier.”

“As soon as he came round, he was pressuring me to let him be at the medal parade.

“He nearly died a few weeks ago, and yet there he was today,” he said.