Conservative backbencher Tom Tugendhat has pointed to his experience in the military and special forces while selling himself as the country’s next prime minister.
“I’m used to friendly fire,” the MP for Tonbridge and Malling said, recounting a near-death experience in Iraq in which a British helicopter mistakenly fired on him. “We were in a very, very small group. We had been fighting a nine, ten-hour running battle. I was shot through the chin and the top of the chest, but that hit the body armour so it was OK,” he told The Sunday Times.
His special forces unit called in a helicopter for evacuation, but when it arrived it mistook them for the enemy. He said if it was not for the gunner’s bad aim, he would have been killed.
