A RIBBLE Valley war hero badly injured in Afghanistan has taken his first steps on prosthetic legs.

Sergeant Rick Clement lost his legs in a bomb blast in the country’s Helmand province in 2010.

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The 35-year-old former Chatburn resident said learning to walk again will be a long journey, but said he was up for the fight.

He walked for the first time on the legs, which cost around £50,000 each, using bars to keep him steady.

Rick said: “I’m taller than I was before – great start with the new knees but a long way to go yet.

“It’s the start of a journey. It wiped me out though, Friday night asleep on the sofa – I sound like my dad.”

Rick faces gruelling sessions at the Specialist Mobility Rehabilitation Centre in Preston on the road to recovery.

While leading a foot patrol in May 2010 with the 1st Battalion Duke of Lancasters regiment, Rick stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), a crude Taliban-made bomb, and was badly wounded.

As well as losing both his legs, the former Clitheroe Royal Grammar School student almost lost his right arm, and suffered appalling internal injuries, which mean he will never be able to become a dad.

Doctors told him he was lucky to be alive.

Rick said: “It’s a miracle I’m still here. I died twice on the aeroplane from Camp Bastion to England, I suffered two cardiac arrests and the medics had to resuscitate me.

“The surgeons said that if it had happened a year earlier I wouldn’t have survived because front-line surgery techniques have developed so much.”

Since then, Rick has been both married and divorce, retired from the Army after 16 years of service, and raised more than £100,000 through his own charity, A Soldier’s Journey.

He has also called for the ministry of defence to introduce a system allowing soldiers to provide sperm samples before going to war zones, so they are still able to have children should the worst happen.

Last month, Rick was chosen to be the cover star of the Big Issue magazine in the run-up to rocker-turned-photographer Bryan Adams’ Wounded: The Legacy of War exhibit in London, where he met Prince Harry.

Rick posed for a photoshoot with the star and was featured in his book, with the same title, released last year.

Speaking on Twitter, Bryan shared a picture of Rick on his new legs with his 466,000 followers, and said: “Way to go, Rick.”