A former Cambridge Evening News photographer who went on assignment in Afghanistan has told how he is lucky to be alive after coming under fire from the Taliban.

Andrew Parsons, who spent four years working on the News in the 1990s, was embedded with the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment in Afghanistan when they came under attack.

He had been following 21-year-old Private Davey Graham for three weeks, and Andrew and the platoon were just a few hundred metres from a British outpost when Taliban fighters opened fire with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades, sparking a fierce gun battle which lasted for up to an hour.

Andrew said: "The ground was being sprayed by machine gun fire and as I was crawling along bullets were landing everywhere.

"I was just thinking 'please don't let my legs get blown off'.

"You just want to find a soldier that has a gun. All I had was a camera, not a gun."

At one point they were pinned down in a ditch a few metres away from the Taliban.

As British reinforcements moved in to hold back the insurgents, specialists operating several miles away outside the Green Zone fired hundreds of mortar rounds. Apache Helicopters also moved in overhead.

During the attack Pte Graham was shot in the abdomen, and pictures of him being rescued have now been published in many of the nationals as well as the Cambridge Evening News.

Andrew said: "The soldier asked me to take the photos of him as we had built up a close relationship over the time I was there. But it is not something I will ever forget."

The former News snapper now lives in London and works for the Press Association. He has been to Afghanistan four times and also Iraq, covering the conflicts there, and Bosnia.