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A TEENAGE adventurer left with horrific facial injuries after being mauled by a killer polar bear on a school expedition to the Arctic has spoken publicly of his ordeal for the first time and told how he thought he was going to die.

Patrick Flinders, 16, defended himself by lashing out at the animal as it rampaged through a camp of young British explorers trekking across the Norwegian island of Svalbard this month.

His friend Horatio Chapple was killed during the savage attack, while three other explorers were seriously wounded.

The 13-strong group from the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) were asleep in their tents on the remote Von Postbreen glacier near Longyearbyen when the 250kg (40st) bear struck at about 7:30am on 5 August.

Patrick said he first heard a scratching outside his tent before it suddenly collapsed. He said: “The fabric of the tent hit my face. I pulled my sleeping bag over my head crumpled into a ball and shut my eyes. I was screaming, ‘I don’t want to be here any more!’

“I saw the bear dragging one of the leaders along by his head in the middle of the circle of six tents. I wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Then the bear came towards us.”

Patrick, from Jersey, went on: “I looked up and saw its huge mouth snapping. All around its nose was blood. At that moment, I thought I might die. It hit me with its paw and my arm came out of my sleeping bag. Then I felt its teeth around my elbow, biting down on the bone.

“Then, suddenly, it had my head in its jaws and I could feel it crunching my skull … I could hear it crack. I heard a growl which was deafening because I was so close up.”

Patrick, who was left with fragments of the bear’s teeth lodged in his head, was sharing a tent with 17-year-old Eton schoolboy Horatio and Scott Bennell-Smith, from Cornwall.

He said: “I lashed out and waved my arm up to punch the bear in the head, again and again to get it off me. Scott must have decided to run, because it suddenly dropped me and ran after him. Scott screamed. Then I heard one shot.”

One of the leaders of the BSES expedition, Michael “Spike” Reid, 29, managed to shoot the bear dead but only after his rifle had failed four times. He suffered head and face injuries during the rampage.

Fellow expedition leader Andy Ruck, 27, from Aberdeen, was also badly mauled by the bear, which killed aspiring medical student Horatio and left Scott with serious injuries, including a fractured jaw.

Patrick refused to accept he was a hero after punching the animal to scare it away.

“I’m not a hero,” he said. “I punched the polar bear because I was fighting for my life, not because I wanted to fight it.”

Speaking about his friend’s death, Patrick, who needed 20 staples in his head, said: “Horatio had been lying one side of me, Scott on the other.

“If I had slept where he was, I would be dead. I feel guilty it was him and not me.”