FRANK GARDNER: Your gunshot injuries were not as serious as mine… but the scale of the trauma you still face is far greater

YOU don’t expect death to greet you with a smile, but the young man who walked towards me wore one as if we were long lost relations. As Security Correspondent for BBC News, I had been reporting from Saudi Arabia with cameraman Simon Cumbers and escorted by Saudi government minders.

We were filming in a residential district of the capital Riyadh in June 2004 when a car pulled up.

The young man who climbed out and approached us offered a friendly greeting in Arabic.

I returned the pleasantry, at which point he pulled out a pistol from a concealed pocket.

My smiling stranger was an Al Qaeda gunman set upon ambushing and murdering two Western journalists who had been working in a deeply conservative part of the city in what was a strictly Islamic country.

Former US President Trump speaking to the crowd shortly before he was shot at in Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13

On social media the Republican candidate claimed the bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear – one person in attendance at the rally was killed

I have relived the scene a few times since, but last weekend’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been yet another reminder – as if I needed one.

The obvious failure of the US Secret Service in protecting Trump has been laid painfully bare for the world to see.

But, as someone who shares the grim experience of having been shot, I cannot help but see the human story that lies behind the global event.

When shot, Trump swatted his ear as if stung by an insect.

If he was scared, he didn’t show it. But that is not entirely surprising because such incidents happen at warp speed.

As I faced my would-be assassin, I could only marvel at how ancient the pistol in his hand looked, and if it even worked.

Then the adrenaline kicked in and I took off, sprinting for my life.

There was a loud bang from behind me and I felt a searing pain in my right shoulder.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the gunman’s 9mm bullet had passed straight through my shoulder, something trauma surgeons call ‘a through-and-through’.

The political figure quickly dove behind his podium as terrifying bullet sounds were heard (pictured) 

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures as he is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is taken from the stage with blood on his face

I kept running. But as my eyes darted from left to right, looking for cover, I could see there was no place to hide.

A van overtook me with a sliding door that was open and there were people inside: more gunmen.

Another shot rang out and I fell to the ground – the femur bone in my right thigh had been shattered by a bullet.

Helpless, a sense of injustice erupted inside me – what a cowardly, uneven fight this is, targeting an unarmed civilian.

While I lay face down, a gunman stood over me. I could not believe this was really happening, as he emptied his weapon into me at point-blank range.

Every bullet thumped into my torso, as if a giant hand was picking me up and slamming me back down to earth.

I didn’t know it then but I had been hit by six bullets.

Some had gone in one part of the body and then out, and then re-entered another part, like a leg, thigh or buttock. I had 11 bullet holes in all.

Since the shooting, former President Trump was seen with a bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday (pictured)

Thomas Matthew Crooks was identified by the FBI as the shooter during the assassination attempt on Donald Trump

The buildings adjacent to the Butler Farm Show – the site of the campaign rally that fateful day

With the magazine emptied, the gunmen drove off, leaving me to wonder how I was still alive.

At this stage, there was so much adrenaline pumping through my veins, and so many thoughts in my head, that the pain had yet to kick in. But I knew it was coming.

By the time the police turned up, holding back a small crowd of onlookers, I was screaming the place down as a constant slow-motion explosion was going off inside my abdomen.

I was told later by Peter Bautz, the surgeon who would save my life, that I was losing so much blood that I probably had around two hours left to live. While my recovery was gruelling – 14 operations, seven months in hospital, and emerging with a wheelchair – I, at least, was alive.

My colleague Simon died at the scene. His killer – who was my would-be killer – was eventually captured and executed by the Saudi regime.

Clearly, Trump’s injuries are rather less serious.

But, in some ways, the scale of what he now faces, at least psychologically, is much greater.

Surely, no amount of after-the-event investigations, reviews and promises of beefing up security will entirely remove that niggling doubt in the back of his head: what if it happens again?

Trump supporters gathered at various rallies across the country following the attempt on Trump’s life (pictured in Palm Beach Florida)

Droves of his supporters gathered in Simi Valley California on July 14 to show their support of injured politician (pictured)

Trump has thrown himself straight back into the election campaign. If he wins the presidency, he’ll face four more years of intense public exposure.

He has long been a controversial figure, loved by some, loathed and feared by others.

But now his near-death experience will have rammed it home to him: someone, for whatever reason, hated you so much they were prepared to risk their own life to take yours.

Perhaps Trump will be untroubled by such anxiety.

In private, he will be offered the best counselling money can buy, but, as I found out, flashbacks can become painfully familiar.

As I sat in my new wheelchair in a tiny garden at the back of a London hospital, a man appeared. He walked towards me, reaching into his breast pocket as he did so. The innocent movement was unnervingly reminiscent of that of the gunman, and my heart raced with panic – until he pulled out a mobile phone, not a pistol.

It took a long time – nine years – before I was ready to go back to Saudi Arabia.

There I revisited the hospital where I so nearly died.

‘You were the colour of my white coat,’ recalled one surgeon, wryly. ‘As fast as we filled you up with blood, it was coming out through the bullet holes. It was like filling a bath with the plug out.

Trump delivering a speech at the ‘People’s Convention’ of Turning Point Action in Detroit on June 15 

Donald Trump waving his finger in the sky as he arrives at Trump Tower in New York City on May 30, 2024

‘Still,’ he said, patting me on my now long-repaired shoulder, ‘we’re glad you made it. I hope you don’t have nightmares.’

Talking and writing about the attack helped to lance the trauma, as did keeping busy.

For his part, Trump is back on the election trail, while being surprisingly open in talking about the attack, saying: ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ Both should stand him in good stead for the psychological recovery to come.

l Frank Gardner is the BBC’s Security Correspondent. His latest novel is Invasion.

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