By Richard SmithTWO boys were rescued by an RAF crew and flown to hospital suffering from mild hypothermia after they were soaked by freezing water on marshes.

By Richard Smith

TWO boys were rescued by an RAF crew and flown to hospital suffering from mild hypothermia after they were soaked by freezing water on marshes.

The two boys, aged about 13 to 14, were among a group of six youngsters who were walking on Trimley Marshes, near Felixstowe.

The teenagers fell into difficulties when they walked through the icy cold water in the isolated area close to the River Orwell. They took shelter in a bird hide and used a mobile phone to call for help.

A RAF rescue helicopter from Wattisham Airfield and the coastguard team from Felixstowe joined forces to rescue the stranded group and two boys were found to require immediate hospital treatment to stop their hypothermia becoming worse.

The emergency happened just before 3pm on Saturday - and both the coastguard and the helicopter crew praised the young people for calling for help.

A spokesman for the Thames Coastguard said the teenagers had made the right decision to request assistance.

"It can be a bit remote out there. It seems they got into a bird-watching hide, waited there and phoned for assistance. If they had walked home in the condition they were in, wet through, they would have been in more severe danger of hypothermia," he added.

Flight Lieutenant Olly Padbury, of the Wattisham air sea and rescue team, said his crew had been launching to go to Bawdsey for a training session when they had been alerted by the coastguard that a group of teenagers were in trouble.

"We landed in a meadow nearby and our winchman, Sgt Lee Clark, is a paramedic and he saw what condition they were in," he added.

"Two of them were very cold and they started to feel a bit numb in the extremities and they needed to get checked over. They were cold enough to warrant going to hospital and so we took them.

"The kids did exactly the right thing by going to find shelter. They went to a bird hide and they called the emergency services - they did not shy away from calling for help. They needed assistance and they asked for it."

It took the helicopter crew less then five minutes to fly from Trimley to Ipswich Hospital and then they went off to start their training.

richard.smith@eadt.co.uk