St Mary’s student to compete in the Invictus Games
St Mary’s student to compete in the Invictus Games
Veteran and PhD student at St Mary’s Twickenham, Christopher Bryde, tells us his story…
Christopher Bryde, a PHD student at St Mary’s Twickenham, is an athlete with an incredible story. After surviving an IED explosion during his deployment in Afghanistan, he underwent years of recovery, eventually becoming a double amputee. Despite these challenges, he has thrived – earning five medals at the Marine Corps Trials and becoming a vocal advocate for veterans and mental health awareness.
Thanks to his performance in the Marine Corps Trials, he has been selected to take part in this year’s Invictus Games, the international multi-sport event for wounded, injured and sick service men and women. This year the games are taking place in Vancouver, running from the 8th to the 16th February.
Christopher is competing in four sports: the biathlon, rowing, swimming and wheelchair rugby. He worked incredibly hard to reach this goal, as he explains to me over a mid-training Zoom call:
“It’s been quite a few years of work. I applied multiple times at first and got turned down, so it’s been a lot of effort – especially working alongside my Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD. It’s a lot of sacrifice.”
Christopher’s journey towards the games wasn’t always easy:
“I started training for the games the year I moved to London to start my education at St Mary’s. I competed in the Marine Corps Trials, and had hoped to compete one of the subsequent years, but then the Coronavirus hit. A lot of us sat around, got out of shape and it was difficult to travel, so I kind of gave up on it that year.”
His fortune changed when he tried out the pool at the Lensbury in Teddington. “As it’s a private club, you don’t have to worry about leaving your prosthetic legs on the side – because you often read about people stealing legs. So in the context of the club, I didn’t have to worry about that.”
Since then, he’s been training at the Lensbury regularly, using the rowing machines, the ski ERG and the pool. When it’s not high water, he also goes out rowing on the Thames.
I ask him to talk me through a day of training for him: “When we get off the call, I’m going to do some rowing, and them some ski and bench press, and later on in the evening I’ll go back and swim as well. My wife is a professional swim coach, and the Lensbury gave her a free membership, so she’ll be training me.”
What motivates him to keep going is the chance he gets to inspire others like him, especially his fellow service members and Marines. “When someone tells me that something I did inspired them to do something or to look at life a little differently, that’s why I do this.”
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The Lensbury exterior and pool
Christopher is a dedicated advocate for veterans’ mental health, having his own experiences with depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 2020 he helped produce ‘The Forgotten Battalion,’ a documentary following a group of veterans helping each other recover in the aftermath of war.
“When we starting making it, none of us really wanted to do it,” he explains. “It felt uncomfortable, talking about our experiences and our mental health – but we had to be quite honest if we wanted to get anything done. The point of it was to encourage guys like us, to say, ‘hey, you can talk about this, and this is what your fellow marines are going through.’ I think sometimes you have to be little public with stuff in order to encourage others. You need to talk about it a little bit.”
Christopher has also written a novel, Upgunner, about his experiences, of which all proceeds went to fund retreats and reunions for veterans suffering similar experiences.
“It was difficult to write a book about my own experiences. It took nearly 16 years to be able to do that. But I recommend it to anyone: writing can be so therapeutic, and if you can take a really negative part of your life and turn it into a positive thing, it’s amazing.”
He is currently working on a follow-up novel, a fiction book based on his experiences in Afghanistan in a military hospital.
As for the future, he hopes to use his creative writing degree to develop a therapy programme for veterans involving writing. He also hopes to compete in the games a second time – all athletes are able to compete in the games twice, and if all goes to plan Christopher will be at the next one in two years, which is set to take place in Birmingham.
What’s his advice to any veterans looking to follow in his own inspiring footsteps?
“I think just try to build a little consistency. I’m dyslexic, and so the fact I’m doing a PhD in English is unusual. But I just built a consistent pattern of spending time in the library, spending time reading, spending time writing. And eventually I passed a lot of my classmates, and got the best dissertation grade St Mary’s has ever given for creative writing for my Bachelor’s. It’s because I spent just a little bit at a time building that consistency. I think that’s applicable to almost anything. You don’t have to be the smartest person, just the most consistent.”
Christopher is flying out early before the games, where he will be running a reunion for disabled Marines before one last week of training camp.
