300 miles with a stretcher

10:36am Monday 1st September 2008

A FORMER Taunton student and his comrades in arms have completed a gruelling five-day march to raise money for a military charity.

L-Cpl Alec Purdie, 23, who went to Ladymead Community School, now works in the Royal Signals and was part of a Dorset-based team who carried a stretcher over 300 miles to raise awareness of those injured on current operations.

The event raised money for the Help for Heroes charity and symbolised all those service personnel injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The route took the team from Plymouth to the Tower of London.

The chosen route takes the soldiers along the old Admiralty Shutter telegraph route used over 200 years ago during the Napoleonic war. The 30 hilltops en route used to house the old shutter telegraph system. The stretcher was draped with a Union Flag and a scroll containing a roll of honour of injured personnel.