Reports say former Green Beret and UFC fighter Tim Kennedy was wounded last month in the Congo, taking multiple gunshot wounds while working a private security contract.
Accounts circulating on social media claim the hit happened in an ambush around mid-September, that a tourniquet stayed on for more than five hours during an evacuation that took about eight, and that the injuries were serious enough for him to be medevaced back to the United States, with one leg at risk.
Former New Zealand SAS soldier Justin Conaglen was reportedly killed in the same incident, and a third man was also said to be wounded. New Zealand has opened an investigation into Conaglen’s death.
Some of the accounts tie the work to an American private military firm associated with Erik Prince.
On the night of 9 February 2008, near Sangin in Helmand Province, Royal Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher was moving with a small recon team through a compound suspected of being used by the Taliban.
He felt a tripwire against his leg and realised he had triggered a grenade. With his comrades exposed and only seconds left, he threw himself onto it, pinning the grenade between his day sack and the ground and tucking his legs in.
The blast destroyed the pack, set a battery inside it on fire, and pitted his body armour and helmet, but he walked away with only minor injuries. His three teammates were largely unhurt.
Croucher refused immediate evacuation. The patrol stayed, ambushed the fighters who came to investigate the explosion, and he himself killed one of them.
He was awarded the George Cross, the highest British award for gallantry not in the face of the enemy, and received it from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on 30 October 2008.
He remains one of a very small number of living recipients.