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Nothing was going to stop rookie PC John Nash getting his first arrest – even when a stick horrifically skewered his eye.

As he was chasing the suspect, John fell into a bush and the six-inch piece of wood pierced right through his face to his brain.

But he bravely ignored the pain, raced after the man and nabbed him as he tried to leap over a fence.

It was only when the suspect turned and said, “Mate, you’ve got to go to hospital” that he realised the extent of his bloody injury.

Doctors told the 25-year-old officer he was lucky to be alive.

PC Nash, who had been in the force for only six days, told how he slipped on a muddy lawn and slid head-first into a bush.

He added: “I was really motoring and I slid into a shrub and I had a ringing in my left ear.

“I thought I’d hit my baton as I fell. He was still trying to get over the fence and I grabbed his ankle. He kept referring to my face and I said, ‘That doesn’t matter’. I thought I’d given myself a black eye. I looked across with my right eye and that’s when I noticed a stick in my left one.”

PC Nash’s shocked colleagues took him to hospital after the accident in Rochdale, Lancs.

He had a tricky three-hour operation to remove the stick. It had pierced his eyelid, smashed a cheek bone, and gone underneath his eyeball before resting on his brain.

Surgeon Annaswami Vijaykumar said: “If it had entered a couple of millimetres differently, the eye would have been permanently damaged. The op was complicated. He is lucky to be able to see again.”

PC Nash was discharged three days later. The suspect was released without charge.