About Me / Background

Staff Sergeant Billy Baxter had been in the Army for 21 years with the First Regiment Royal Horse Artillery. He’d been in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles, served with the NATO forces in Germany during the Cold War, and seen in his own words; “cruel acts of mankind at his most evil” while conducting a peacekeeping role in Bosnia.

But his biggest fight was yet to come. A rare virus had been eating away at optic nerves in both his eyes, and he awoke one day to find he couldn’t see his wife laying next to him. He battled with his sight for three years, losing it about four times from 1997 to 2000, when it finally simply didn’t come back.

Married to Karen, with a young family dependent on him, you can’t really imagine how you would motivate yourself to build a new life. But Billy shows that not only can you build a new life – it can be a better one. “On yer bike” never rang so true; amongst many other things, Billy got back on his and in August 2003 broke the Land Blind Motorbike Record at 165mph.

Losing my sight once and then gaining it back was scary. But four times and then never regaining it was scary as hell. I thought my life was finished completely. I tore my family to bits, but we pulled through. My life was turned around by my wife reading about a charity called St Dunstans who claimed to help blind soldiers like me. I was a broken man before I went to St Dunstans.