Military personnel and refashioned hardware took centre stage at the London Paralympics closing ceremony Sunday, after Games in which wounded ex-servicemen and women have played a high-profile role.
British army captain Luke Sinnott, who lost both legs above the knee in a homemade bomb attack in restive Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, in 2009, climbed the flag pole to hang the British Union flag at the Olympic Stadium.
Another British soldier, Captain Tony Harris, who in 2009 lost a leg below the knee in a blast in Sangin province, southwest of the capital Kabul, drove Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son, Prince Edward, into the stadium.
Even the body of the custom-built “royal” limousine was partly made of a military vehicle once used in Afghanistan, stripped of its armour and bulletproofing.
Other specially made vehicles in the show’s “Truck Parade” included the “Hellcopter”, a former British Royal Navy helicopter transformed into a whale.
“The Beast from the East” used panels from Soviet MiG-21 fighter planes welded onto the chassis of an East German all-terrain army truck. “The Bug” meanwhile was fashioned from a wartime British army truck with wings from the moulds of submarine nose cones.
Eleven days ago, the Paralympic flame was brought down a zip wire from the nearby 115-metre (377-feet) high observation tower by a former Royal Marine commando, who lost his legs in a bomb attack in Afghanistan.
South African Rory Mackenzie, a lance corporal in the British army who lost a leg while on patrol in Basra, southern Iraq, and whose rehabilitation has been aided by the charity Help for Heroes, introduced the Paralympic athletes.
