Proof of Merit

Four simple words, individually nothing spectacular. But, put together, a phrase so humiliating it has the power to transform life.

From boyhood, Andy Roper had just one obsession: he wanted nothing more than to be a soldier. He eagerly entered the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, at seventeen and three quarters, the youngest age possible, and seventeen years later was a hardened veteran officer in his beloved Royal Anglian Regiment. Then, while on patrol in Afghanistan, enemy fire tore off his leg and in a heartbeat annihilated the only life he ever wanted to lead.

Now, again a civilian, back at the family home in rural Norfolk, he is battling to adjust. But it's a battle he is losing. He refuses help, hating those that try and, worse, hating what he sees as his deformed self. Every day he sinks deeper into a dark pit of depression and self pity. Andy's parents are distraught, fearing the worst, desperately searching for something that can lure him out of the depths, something that may come even close to replacing the exciting life that had been taken from their son. But it's a seemingly impossible search.