TWO medics have returned home to Bury after spending three months caring for soldiers injured in Afghanistan.

Nurse, Corporal Maxine Simpson, and Corporal David Sykes, a radiographer, were both deployed as members of the 207 Manchester Field Hospital.

They were based at the hospital on the British military base, Camp Bastion, and spent their days treating soldiers seriously injured in the battlefield.

Dubbed the world’s busiest accident and emergency department, they saw patients suffering from dental pain to gunshot wounds.

Many injuries were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and some soldiers had to have limbs amputated.

Cpl Sykes, who works at Fairfield General Hospital, said: “The nature of the field hospital is that patients have every injury under the sun. Not a day went by when I didn’t see a triple amputee or gunshot wounds. Soldiers caught by the IEDs didn’t just have one injury, they sometimes had seven or eight different injuries.”

The field hospital is packed with state-of-the-art equipment to ensure that injured soldiers are treated as quickly as possible.

Cpl Simpson dealt with casualties as soon as they arrived at the hospital and Cpl Sykes carried out full-body scans using a CT scanner, with the results put on monitors for the surgeons to see.

Cpl Simpson, aged 31, who lives in Radcliffe, said: “The first couple of weeks were really busy and we definitely had to hit the ground running. I learned different ways of doing things and used a lot of different equipment. The machines were first-class. Some of them were much better and faster than the ones used in hospitals here.”

The tour of duty was the first for Cpl Simpson, who is a nurse at Rochdale Infirmary. She signed up to the Territorial Army four years ago after seeing a brochure about a deployment to Iraq in 2004.

For 46-year-old Cpl Sykes, it was the second tour in Afghanistan after spending three months there in summer 2009.

He was a combat medical technician with the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1983 to 1986 and decided to return to the military in 2008.

Cpl Sykes, a former pupil at Bury CE High School, said: “I have a lot of experience in the NHS and have done everything it can throw at me. I really had to step up for the two tours. I had to think outside the box and adapt because each casualty was different. I loved working there.

“I was there for the British troops. They don’t know whether they will see the end of each day and they deserve the best care possible. Some of them will be scarred for life, but I know that I did my best for them.”

The deployment was not all hard work though as the medics were able to meet high-profile figures visiting from England.

Prince William went to Camp Bastion for a service on Remembrance Day and Prime Minister David Cameron also spent time at the base.

Cpl Sykes said: “It was massive for Prince William to come out and meet us, especially on Remembrance Day.”

Troops from the field hospital returned to the UK at the end of last month and are now settling back into life at home.

Cpl Sykes will return to work in April and Cpl Simpson will go back next month.

Cpl Simpson is spending lots of time with her partner, Paul Oliver, after only being able to contact him by phone and email while she was in Afghanistan. She said: “I wasn’t expecting to be as homesick as I was. I am glad to be home.”