Former Royal Navy Commando Robert Mitchell went into hospital for a hernia operation – and came out with a bullet which had been lodged inside him for more than 40 years.

The 63-year-old Dartmouth veteran did not even know he had been hit by the inch-long steel round which the surgeons found as they attempted to operate on him.

And even more remarkably he believes he probably received the wound while fighting alongside US forces in Vietnam, engaged in covert operations against the North Vietnamese in 1971.

At the time he was hit in the shoulder and the face after an attack on a North Vietnamese ammunition dump went wrong.

He received the Distinguished Service Medal for his part in the action – at the insistence of the US forces.

But he was left 'out of it' for days after he was evacuated to a US field medical centre and eventually flown out to a hospital in Singapore.

For the last 10 years he has suffered from pain in the area of his upper leg and groin and doctors believed he had a hernia.

But when the surgeons operated at Torbay Hospital they ended up cutting out the bullet he never knew he had.

'When I came around after the operation the surgeon was there and he told me I had a lot to answer for because I had ruined his scalpels,' said Mr Mitchell who lives in Britannia Avenue, Dartmouth. 'Then he showed me the bullet, said they had taken it out of me and that's my problem. He said they would clean it up for me and send it to me – which they did.

'I had no idea that it was there and I was very surprised.'

Mr Mitchell joined the Royal Navy in 1967 and then signed up with the Royal Naval Commandos in 1969.

In 1970 he was serving on HMS Fife when he did a diving course, burst his eardrum and ended up stranded in hospital in Singapore after his ship sailed without him

He ended up being sent to the Thailand/Malaya border with British Army and RAF Regiment forces, tackling drug runners and terrorist insurgents for five months before he was involved in a firefight and hit in both legs.

The two bullets went straight through but he said there was always the chance that the bullet had struck him then without him realising.

But he reckons it was more likely the Vietnam action that left him with the bullet legacy.

After recovering in hospital in Singapore, he found himself aboard Australia/New Zealand gunboats ordered upriver into Cambodia and Vietnam where he ended up serving with US forces on the North/South Vietnamese border.There he spent six months fighting with the US forces, making hit-and-run raids across the border to attack supply lines, ammunition dumps and bridges.

It was during one of these operations, against a Vietnamese-held village, that he was hit again when the US forces' mortar team ended up dropping rounds among their own troops as the attack commenced.

'I knew I was hit but I didn't think it was bad. I was carrying bodies back to the helicopters when one of my own guys stabbed me with morphine and threw me into the back of the helicopter.'

The operations proved to be Mr Mitchell's last adventure.

He ended up back in Dartmouth and was eventually invalided out of the navy because of his injuries.

He had unknowingly carried the bullet around with him ever since.

Mr Mitchell was a member of the Dartmouth St John Ambulance for five years from 1987 and was Dartmouth superintendent and then area support officer. He is also secretary of the local Royal Naval Association.

Now Mr Mitchell carries the bullet on a chain around his neck, along with a crucifix.

'I've carried it with me all these years and now I am carrying it around my neck, which is better than where it was,' he said.