FORMER Lance Corporal Dean Bailey has been through hell and somehow managed to come out the other side.

During a tour of Afghanistan in 2007, where the then 22-year-old was head of four man sniper unit, he was caught up in not one but two RPG blasts.

Feeling lucky to be alive, Dean has penned a book about the day, and his struggles afterwards.

It was just a routine patrol in their armoured vehicle before the team were suddenly ambushed by the Taliban.

Dean doesn’t remember much from that day, but he woke up in hospital two weeks later very lucky to be alive.

“I remember going up the hatch when we were attacked and facing left, then everything went black as I was hit and I started having dreams.

“They were like flashbacks about what had happened before. The next thing I remember I was on fire.”

Not giving up Dean rose to fire back, but another blast hit him.

He suffered a frontal brain haemorrhage, a punctured lung, a fractured jaw, severe arm injuries and his ears were ripped off.

Luckily one of his team, Oliver Ruecker, managed to pull him out of the vehicle.

In a fitting tribute, Dean named his two-year-old son after his close friend, who went on to receive the Military Cross for his heroics.

“I remember waking up at hospital where I had been in an induced coma for two weeks.

"I got up and pulled all the wires from the machines off of me — I still thought I was in that ambush.”

Just 22 at the time, Dean should have been dead, but through some kind of miracle or “stubbornness” as he calls it, he pulled through.

But the next few years were harder than anything he had faced in combat as he struggled to get his life back on track.

“I was in the army for two years after getting injured. I couldn’t hear anything for three or four years so I couldn’t even talk to people. I could not have a conversation with or hear my friends which was really tough for me.

“They told me that the rehabilitation was a slow process but that just isn’t me. Eventually I had to get out so I got myself discharged.”

Before that day in Afghanistan, Dean weighed 12.5 stone, by the time he left hospital he lost four.

His body shut down in a desperate attempt to save his life, but it wasn’t just physical trauma that Dean had to deal with.

“I was in a really bad place after I got back from Afghanistan. When you’re at war you have this intense adrenaline rush every day.

"When you come back to Civvy Street, with EastEnders on the telly every night, life does not have the same flavour as when you have been to war.

“You have to try and carve out a life again when you get back. It took me about five or six years to get back to anything like normality.”

He had gone from being an elite marksman in the 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment touring both Iraq and Afghanistan several times to living in the quiet market town of Great Dunmow, where he moved three years ago.

Dean said: “I cannot do a 9am to 5pm job, it just isn’t me. I need stimulation constantly which gets me into trouble at times.

“I was getting into buying and renting property but I got bored waiting for the houses to make a profit so I mortgaged one of them and bought a piece of land and I built a house from scratch — it really helped me and I enjoyed it.”

But Dean also had a desire to talk about his experience.

Crawling Out of Hell — The True Story of a British Sniper’s Great Battle is a book chronicling his story.

Whilst of course it deals with Dean’s time in the army, it is also a complex analysis of a much harder battle he has had to face since, adapting physically and mentally to life after war.

He said: “I am not bothered about it being a bestseller or making me any money. I want to try and help people.

“If someone who reads the book is going through a tough time and it helps them in some small way, then that will be an achievement. It had a positive affect me writing the book, it was a bit like therapy.

“I needed to dig myself out of the hole I was in and it really helped.”

His life was irreversibly changed whilst in Afghanistan and he experienced the brutal nature of war on the front lines but Dean, now 32, is immensely nostalgic of his time in the infantry.

“I was a nightmare as a kid and I needed a bit of discipline. Joining the army was daunting at first but once you put the hard work in you get back much more than you put in.

"I honestly have nothing but good memories.

“At the end of the day when these things end you always remember the good and not the bad.

"It is like a family, these are people that are going through the same things as you and you live and breathe through everything together.”

Crawling Out of Hell is available from the likes of Amazon.