The campaigner dubbed the Angel of Mostar has paid tribute to the tragic Army officer who saved her leg.

Major William Foxton killed himself last week after his savings in the Madoff pyramid scheme scandal in the USA.

Sally Becker praised Major Foxton for battling to save her after she had been wounded while trying to help refugees.

Ms Becker, from Peacehaven, came to prominence in 1993 by saving 170 wounded children from an orphanage in Bosnia.

The mercy mission made news around the world and earned her the nickname of the Angel of Mostar.

She went on to help children and mothers escape from Mostar, bringing some to Brighton for urgent medical treatment.

In 1998 she was shot in the leg while trying to evacuate 60 war-wounded refugees in Albania.

Ms Becker, 47, said: “When the nurses left, there was no one around to perform the minor surgical procedure necessary for my leg wound to heal. So Bill, who was trained in field medicine, took over.

“Five or six times a day, I gritted my teeth while he dug away at the wound.

“He patiently removed the blue cotton threads that were blasted through my leg on the point of the bullet. He also had to snip away dead tissue to avoid the gangrene.

“I have no doubt that without his help I would have lost my leg.”

She also recalled how Major Foxton, 65, who had lost a limb in combat in 1976, crawled across a minefield to rescue a boy in the region.

The decorated officer, who headed a monitoring mission in the Balkan war, lost up to £1 million in Bernard Madoff's alleged £35 billion investment fraud.

Facing bankruptcy, he shot himself in the head as he sat on a park bench near his home in Southampton last week.

He had left a suicide note which said all his savings had been lost to the scam.

She added: “I hadn't seen Bill for several years but I knew he was in Afghanistan recently. So when I heard the tragic news, I immediately assumed he had been killed by a stray bullet or bomb.

“I was profoundly shocked to hear that he died alone on a park bench in Southampton.”