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Strictly star honours 'unbelievable’ Royal Marines killed in Afghan blast that almost claimed his life

A BBC star admits “he should be in a box in the ground” after he was blown up by the Taliban whilst serving in Afghanistan.

JJ Chalmers needed 30 operations after the explosion, which left him in a coma and tragically claimed the lives of his two fellow Royal Marines.

Both Lieutenant Ollie Augustin and Marine Sam Alexander were killed in the devastating Helmand Province blast back in 2011.

Ahead of Remembrance Day, JJ has relived his horrific ordeal while honouring his fallen comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

“I know for a fact that the best soldiers there that day didn’t come off the battlefield,” he told the PRsonal podcast.

“I don’t want their legacy to ever be forgotten because they were unbelievable.”

That life-changing blast tore JJ’s body to bits. He broke his neck, lost two fingers and even had to have his arm temporarily ‘sewn’ onto his body.

Yet within three years of the explosion, he won cycling gold at the Invictus Games before presenting the Paralympics and appearing on Strictly Come Dancing.

However, reliving the explosion, JJ told PRsonal host Charlotte Nichols that onlookers said he looked like he had been “peeled” due to the graphic nature of his injuries.

“My clothes had just turned red – every single part of my body had sustained at least a graze,” he added.

“It was death by a thousand cuts.

“I remember just screaming to try and get the pain out of my body…but none of that did anything.”

It left him fighting for his life, with medics placing him in an induced coma as they worked to rebuild his broke frame which included holes in his legs, a shattered elbow and a crushed eye socket.

However, after eight weeks in hospital JJ was able to start the road to recovery – albeit with a permanent ‘shark bite’ scar around his torso.

And speaking ahead of Remembrance Day, he emphasised the need for the public to continue to honour those who lost their lives for Britain.

Among them, both Sam and Ollie, his two fallen comrades whose names he has passed to his children.

In recent years, he’s started to take his children to a local war memorial to drive home the importance of the sacrifice – but he is adamant that the silence of Remembrance Day isn’t the main point.

“The important thing to do is to live your day as normal,” he insists.

“Make sure you take a stop at 11am for two minutes (but) the whole point of that sacrifice that people made was so that you could live the day the way you want.

“Taking that moment is important but actually living your life is even more important.”

And as the nation once again remembers, JJ believes it will be “fascinating” to see how the next generation perceives WW1 and WW2 given the gulf in time between them.

However, he said that thanks to charities like Help for Heroes, the most recent generation of Brits to go to war are still being supported – and their contribution acknowledged.

And as fresh conflicts in Israel and Ukraine serve as sobering reminders to the world about the horror of war and the fragility of our freedom, JJ added: “We all, soldiers included, wished we lived in a world where we didn’t have conflicts and didn’t have to go to war – but that isn’t how it works.

“We need to have brave people willing to stand up when evil rears its head.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Harvey and Hugo .