LONDON, March 5: The face of the sole survivor of the car crash that killed Princess Diana was shattered so badly that doctors reconstructed it from his wedding photos, The Mirror reported on Wednesday."They had the whole wedding album, and studied each picture of me at different angles to reconstruct my features," the newspaper quoted the 29-year-old bodyguard as saying. Trevor Rees-Jones also told the newspaper that most of his face was smashed and broken - his skull was fractured and jaw dislocated.It was his first interview since the August 31 crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul. The Mirror, which published the interview in instalments this week, said Rees-Jones had not been paid for it.Rees-Jones, who was employed as Dodi Fayed's guard, said his right wrist and a vertebra in hisas well. He said he drifted in and out of consciousness during the 10 or 11 days he spent heavily sedated."I was hardly conscious for the first twoweeks so didn't see how badly injured I looked," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "It was more difficult for my mother who was sitting in my hospital room looking at someone she must have barely recognised as her son." In a 10-hour operation on September 4, surgeons began to rebuild his face and body. He uttered his first words two weeks after the accident, the paper said.As the only survivor, his recollections could be an important source for French investigating magistrates examining the crash.Rees-Jones, a former soldier, remembered little initially but under psychiatric treatment has begun to have flashbacks. He now says he believes that Princess Diana was conscious after the accident and called out for Dodi. Rees-Jones said he was "80 per cent fit" but had been receiving physical therapy two or three times a week.
