A Derbyshire schoolboy saved the life of his 2-year-old brother, using first-aid skills gained at army cadets.
Fifteen-year-old Cdt LCpl Lewis Butler and his family had begun enjoying their evening meal together when his 2-year-old brother, Lyndon, went silent, red-faced and began to shake. He was beginning to choke on a piece of food lodged in his throat.
“We all sat down for dinner as we normally do,” Lewis explains, “and about halfway into dinner we were just talking as a family as we normally do. I just looked to my right – I didn’t hear anything, I just looked at my little brother and I noticed he was red and his hands were, like, shaking, like he was flapping his arms as if something was up.
“So I’m a bit curious, wondering what’s going on, and then I saw that he wasn’t breathing.
Obviously nothing bad had happened because he was still conscious, but he wasn’t breathing and I know because of my cadet training and my first aid lessons I’ve done within the cadet force, I knew what was up straight away: I knew he was choking.
“So I didn’t even think much of it at the time, I just sort of stood up, picked my little brother up, faced him down as you’re meant to, and gave him, I think it was three or five palm strikes to the centre of his back, and then it dislodged.
“It happened pretty quick after doing that, it just all came, spat out on his plate. I was so relieved at that last moment, thinking ‘he’s fine now’.
It could have been something terrible but he’s fine. Then he just gave me a massive hug and started crying, and I was thinking in my head how the situation could have been so different if I hadn’t done my cadet training. So I’m really thankful to the cadet force and the volunteers for teaching me everything I know to do with first aid.”
Sergeant major instructor Julie Smith from Spondon Army Cadets shared the story with the adult instructors of D Company, who teach the cadets lifesaving first aid skills.
“I felt so proud of Lewis,” she says. “When his mum told me what he’d done, when I saw him again at cadets on the following Monday, I said to him, well done Lewis and hope you and your brother are OK.”
Lewis is dismissive of the idea that his actions were heroic. “Silly as it sounds I didn’t really think of it as anything serious at the time,” he says. “In the moment so obviously my mum was panicking so she went to dislodge the thing in my little brother’s throat with her hands and I was just telling her you can’t do that, that’s not how you’re supposed to do it because it could cause further lodging deeper in the throat, which is a lot harder to get out. Or it can possibly cause throwing up and then that’s just going to clog up the throat even more, so I just said to mum ‘Don’t do it, don’t worry, I know what I’m doing’.
“I tend to not panic because that makes the situation a hundred times worse than it needs to be. But it’s something we will all of us will definitely remember for a very long time, and as soon as Lyndon gets a bit older we will probably tell him because right now he’s as he’s only two – he does not have a clue what happened!”
Hear our full interview with North Derbyshire Radio’s Senior News Editor Matt Hewitt
