in odessa, before being evacuated to the uk for surgery. since then, he s been recovering and training for his return, and emma vardy caught up with him as he prepared to rejoin his unit. move! a soldier may leave the war, they say, but the war never leaves a soldier. what we re going to do is go through the drills of. when shareef was evacuated from ukraine, he felt he had unfinished business. so we re just going to be covering fire bounding back. ..but the injuries that left him close to death would take months of recovery. i didn t know whether i d ever be able to operate as a soldier or humanitarian again, or if i d ever be able to make it back to ukraine and fulfill the promises. last october, shareef suffered horrific injuries when his unit came under fire from russian tanks. 0k. off for another operation. wish me luck. after undergoing surgeries to save his arm and leg in a military hospital in odesa, we met up as he was being flown back to the uk. last time i saw you, you were
in and give us everything they had. before we knew it, there were rounds coming down and it was just boom, boom, boom. he tried to shelter in a half dug trench with a ukrainian fighter alongside. and every time a round would come down, i would lean to the left, he would lean to the right and try and grab each other s helmets and. yeah. ..get as low as we could and it was only a matter of time and one of the rounds just sort of landed between our legs and blew upwards. i crawled out and then, that s when the russians opened up the small arm fire and took out my left arm. gunfire. what was going through your mind? i was positive that i was going to die. ijust thought, i m going to sufferfor an hour and then die . it is not like the british army, where we have got some helicopters to come and pick us up. yeah. we ve got no morphine it doesn t work like that out here. it is old school, second world war stuff. but their commander managed to get shareef out alive. he finally got a kozak
under tank fire, picked us up and drove us away. with two punctured lungs, and saw my hand hanging off. the right shoulder was split open, the top of the right arm was shot and the bone s been destroyed, the forearm has been blown apart, the form has been ripped out and the wrist is been taken apart. my stomach was torn open and put back together. what was it like recovering in that hospital? you re awake for these surgeries most of the time. it s time to continue the journey. speaks ukrainian. shareef s ukrainian fiancee is coming, too, and there s little time to lose. he s to be transferred to a safe hospital in bristol, where surgeons are going to try and save his hand. if he stays in ukraine, he s going to lose his hand. fighters aren t the only ones risking their lives
in this conflict. ewan and craig have been travelling to some of the worst hit areas. we ve been bringing people back across the border. i couldn t have sat at home and watched what was happening and not come out and actually take part. how do you fund this? a lot of personal money has gone into this and ultimately, we rely on donations. the team have organised a medical repatriation flight back to bristol. despite life changing injuries, shareef is still holding on to a determination to return to the frontline. i m going back. you still want to go back? there is nothing else in this world that i want more than to be there with my boys. you nearly died. if it means that much to you, then you re not going to start something you ain t gonna finish. it s an honour. but there ll be some road to recovery. well, this is the last leg of the journey and he s nearly home. they are bringing aden and they re getting us back. you re going to be missing him?
when we would run out and it literally was 150 people. and man, most of it was family and friends. it was incredible. it was a big time. my brother, shareef, he was here. he was like, how long have y all had that. it just wasn t enough people in here to make it sound off. i ll have the owls, a 14 seed, upsetting xavier. a three-seed in the first round of my bracket, brianna. they seem to have the type of magic that could make a little bit of a run this march madness. you like them. and you have the magic. what is the magic? are they good enough? what makes you think they might be? it has that elusive it that some teams have in sports. sometimes it comes from their fearless leaders. sometimes it comes from great leadership within the locker room. a great group of young men or women. stanford s running away. they have that magic it, my alma mater.