Watch as police drone finds British man trapped in marshland

Peter Pugh's family says the 75-year-old man is lucky to be alive after he became stranded in marshland during an evening walk over the weekend. 

Pugh spent 20 hours lost in the marsh, located near Brancaster in the United Kingdom, before he was spotted by a police drone flying overhead. He is now being treated for hypothermia. 

His wife, Felicity Pugh, spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about the Father's Day rescue while her husband was recovering in hospital. Here is part of their conversation. 

Felicity, how is your husband Peter doing today?

Remarkably well. In fact, he's sleeping a lot which is wonderful. And he's cleared his brain, which took 24 hours to do at least. He's quite happy to stay in hospital, which makes me realize how shattered he is. 

Take us back to Saturday evening, around five o'clock. What were you and your family doing at that point?  

We were going to have a walk before we went out to dinner. So we walked down to the beach and Peter said, "I'd like to go and see the seals," and I said, "I don't want to go so far," so we just walked along the beach a bit.

And Peter said, "Look, I'll carry on and I'll meet you back at home." We saw him disappearing off towards the seals at nearly 5:30 p.m. And that was the last time we saw him until later in the afternoon on Sunday. 

As the hours dragged on — you went for a brief walk, he carries on, you're waiting for him to return — those hours, what was that like? 

I knew quite soon that something was wrong and got into my car at about 7:00 p.m. to drive 'round to where I thought he might be trying to come out on a particular road, and he wasn't there. And my brother came with me and we went down to the beach to see if he'd had a stroke or a heart attack or something. Then I rang my son who lives ten miles away and he was with us in a flash, and he said, 'We must ring the police,' because he could see that there was potential for a problem. 

And so we rang the police and it went on from there. 

Did you have any idea where he might have gone? 

He does crazy things at times — he's not going to do it anymore — so I thought he might have tried to take a shortcut and got a bit muddled... which is exactly, really, what happened. 

And what are those marshes like? 

You could easily go up to your neck in water. At this time of year the reeds are very verdant and green and upright and sharp. It's very difficult for me to know exactly... but I don't think he actually knew exactly where he was. It took my sons quite a long time to establish where he actually was found. And I couldn't bring myself to watch the video from the drone. 

I've seen it. It's quite dramatic how this drone finds him. 

It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And my reasoning for talking to the media was that I want to say thank you for the way Peter was found and how many people were involved in finding him. But the potential for help with a drone is so absolutely remarkable. The helicopter had been here from about 9:00 p.m. onward on Saturday night as it went dark and finally left at about 2:00 a.m... and they couldn't find him.

It transpired that one person saw him and knew he was wearing this deep pink polo shirt. This person heard something on the radio, and they remembered having seen him and they phoned the police... and that gradually helped them narrow down where he might be. But people couldn't believe he was there because the helicopter had done such a careful search. 

The policeman who was masterminding the whole thing with his team, he said [that] without the drone they would never have picked him up. And the fact he was wearing pink was his saving grace. 

What were the conditions he was in? 

Thank God it was a little bit warmer... It was wet. Two big tides came in. It wasn't too cold, but of course he just had a polo shirt and shorts on. It's gradually coming out that he was sort of thrashing around — trying to stay upright but couldn't. And the reeds were cutting him, so he's actually a bit like raw meat at the moment. 

We had a police liaison officer with us here... so we assumed they had found him, but never imagined he might be alive. And this wonderful young policeman came in and said, "We have found him. He is alive. He's communicating with us, but we haven't got him out yet and we need to get him out quickly. He's not out of the woods." And of course he had hypothermia. 

What have you been able to say to Peter since he's been rescued? 

Funnily enough, when he was talking to the BBC this morning he became really lucid about it all. And he said, "My wife hasn't been cross with me yet, but she will be." But I mean, what's the point at the moment? It's shaking him that he's got complete memory loss... because he has no recollection of being winched into the helicopter, or put into the air ambulance, or then being taken out at the hospital. 

We saw him about half an hour after he got to the hospital and the first thing he said to me was, "I'm sorry I didn't phone you." 

Written by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.