A teenager left with horrific facial injuries after being mauled by a polar bear on a school expedition to the Arctic has told how he believed he was going to die during the attack.
Patrick Flinders defended himself by lashing out at the animal as it rampaged through a camp of young British explorers trekking across the Norwegian island of Svalbard
last year.
The 16-year-old’s friend Horatio Chapple was killed during the attack, while three others were seriously injured.
Flinders and his 13-strong group from the British Schools Exploring Society were asleep in tents on the remote Von Postbreen glacier near Longyearbyen when the 250kg polar bear entered the camp at around 7.30am on 5 August.
He said he heard a scratching outside his tent before it suddenly collapsed.
Flinders told the Sunday Mirror: “The fabric of the tent hit my face. I pulled my sleeping bag over my head crumpled into a ball and shut my eyes. I was screaming ‘I don’t want to be here any more.’
“I saw the bear dragging one of the leaders along by his head in the middle of the circle of six tents. I wanted to hide but there was nowhere to go. Then the bear came towards us.”
Flinders, from Jersey, added: “I looked up and saw its huge mouth snapping. All around its nose was blood. At that moment I thought I might die. It hit me with its paw and my arm came out of my sleeping bag. Then I felt its teeth around my elbow, biting down on the bone.
“Suddenly it had my head in its jaws and I could feel it crunching my skull … I could hear it crack. I heard a growl which was deafening because I was so close up.”
“All of a sudden, it just dropped me. I think it had seen Scott run from the tent and was going after him.
“I heard a gunshot, shortly afterwards, and the bear was dead.”
Norwegian surgeons removed fragments of bear tooth from his skull and secured it with 20 metal staples before he was flown back to the UK.
A year later, Patrick’s face is healed, though he remains scarred. But the stoical 17-year-old student says it’s a small price to pay.
Speaking from his home at St Helier, Jersey, he says: “I’ve had two operations since, one to straighten my left eye and one to remove skin from in front of my eardrum.
“My left eye leans in slightly but it’s fine. I’m just grateful to be alive. I hope I won’t need more operations.
“My right arm, where the bear grabbed me, is still scarred and swollen. Apart from that I’m fine.”
Patrick says: “My family and friends have helped me take my mind off things. They’ve been there for me all the time.”
Girlfriend Laura McQueen, 17, tended to him as he recovered from his horrific injuries.
Patrick says: “She’s stood by me all this time and supported me.
“She’s great. I spend most of my time with her. She has been an enormous help.”
He says the attack has changed his life for the better in some ways. “I just take every day as it come.
“I just like living, really. It has brought me closer to my family and friends,” he says.
But he jokes: “If dad calls me Quasimodo again, he knows what to expect.”
Ex-supermarket worker dad says: “He’s been through a hell of a lot in the last year.
“But I’ve seen him grow from being a boy to becoming a proper bloke.
“We’ve always been close, but we are closer know having cared for each other.
