EVERY time she looks in the mirror Jodie Byrne is reminded of the terrifying moment she was viciously attacked at the pub where she worked.

Seven months after a drinker smashed a pint glass into her face, Jodie, 22, still bears the scars of the injury that started a nightmare that left her just days from death.

Complications – in the shape of a bacterial infection – mean she still suffers from occasional deafness, headaches and ringing in her ears.

Only now that her attacker – soldier James Pickering – has been jailed for 30 months does she feel able to talk about the moment that changed her life.

She shudders as she recalls the night of Friday, August 13 last year and the unprovoked attack that has left her disfigured and afraid to go out.

“I had a feeling something bad was going to happen that night but I never expected it would be this,” says Jodie, who had been working as a barmaid at The Lord Nelson pub in Hythe for a year.

“I was supervising the door at closing time when I saw a guy approaching. When I told him he couldn’t come in, he moved to the side but didn’t leave. Then he picked up a pint and was about to walk off with it. I told him he wasn’t allowed to take glasses away and that’s when he became aggressive, shouting and swearing at me.

“I asked for his glass again but this time he threw his drink over me. Then he ran at me and slammed the bottom of his glass hard into my face. I remember the pain and stumbling backwards. Then it all went black as I hit the floor.

“My whole body was shaking. People were looking and crowding around and I remember feeling claustrophobic.

“I could see a lot of blood on my clothes and it was all over my face and in my eyes.

There was a puddle of blood on the floor. I knew it must be bad because of the shock on people’s faces.”

A concerned customer took Jodie, who was still bleeding heavily, to Southampton General Hospital.

“Half my face was hanging off. The glass had severed through skin, muscle and nerve and you could see the white of the bone,”

she recalled.

Jodie needed 14 stitches to repair the gaping wound in her forehead – just inches from her right eye – before being sent home to recover.

But instead of feeling better she began to experience hotness, nausea and shivering.

Two days after the attack, Jodie awoke to find her face severely swollen and her right eye sealed shut.

“I looked in the mirror and it looked like I had a football in my head.”

Back at the hospital, doctors confirmed she had an infection and prescribed antibiotics.

But the swelling continued to worsen, spreading to Jodie’s neck and chest.

Numerous hospital visits followed in which Jodie was given more drugs, sometimes requiring her to be hooked to a drip for days at a time.

By this stage the swelling in her face and neck was so bad it was affecting her hearing.

“I was finding it hard to breathe and feeling very tired all the time.

Doctors couldn’t even prise my eye open to examine it and they weren’t sure if the deafness in one ear was caused by damage from the attack or a result of the swelling.

“I was still in intense pain. It hurt so much I thought I was dying, and at that point it felt like that would have been a relief.”

But what happened next came as a complete shock.

“A week or so later I went back to the General for a check-up and the surgeon took one look at me and said I needed to go in for surgery immediately.

“I was panicked. I thought I was there for a routine appointment and the next thing I know I was being prepped for surgery and rushed into theatre to scrape the infection out.”

Jodie was suffering from facial cellulitus, a bacterial infection which, if left untreated, can lead to serious complications.

“They said if I’d left it a week longer I could have died,” says Jodie, who is now facing more surgery to correct nerve damage above her eye.

“As it is I will be scarred for life.

Even now my head is still tender and I have some numbness where the nerve was severed. My eyelid was drooped but that’s improved and the bald patches are growing back.”

Jodie has also given up her job at the pub. “I just couldn’t face going in there. I used to be really bubbly and outgoing but I’ve hardly been out since the attack. I feel panicked in crowds of people. I’m scared that he’s going to come back and get me.

“I can’t even go to the shops on my own in case I see him. I did once, and was so scared I ran out before he saw me. I used to be out every weekend but now I feel like I’m living the life of an elderly lady instead of a 22-yearold.

“It’s effected my relationships because friends get fed up of me refusing to come out.”

Her confidence has also taken a battering.

“I feel ugly. When I first tried to put make-up on after the attack I was in tears. My boyfriend Justin has been amazing and says my scar doesn’t matter but I don’t feel attractive anymore and it’s made me push him away physically.

“Any anger towards the person who did this has gone. I used to be quite a passionate person but all that passion has gone and any anger with it. It’s been replaced by fear and nervousness.”

After attending court to see Pickering sentenced to two and a half years, she said it had brought closure.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been trapped in a cage and if he hadn’t been sent to prison I would have felt trapped for the rest of my life. I would have felt like a nervous wreck if I knew he was still out there,” she said.

She also spoke of her sympathy with the plight facing Pickering’s wife and children. “I feel sorry for them. It’s not just me who has been the victim here. They are totally innocent of what happened.”

A career that’s now in tatters

LANCE Corporal James Pickering, 35, is today behind bars with his career in tatters.

The soldier, who had completed two tours of Iraq, will be sacked from the Army and faces deportation to his native Fiji and the possible breakup of his family.

Described as a devout Christian, Southampton Crown Court heard he rarely drank and had lost his temper in a split-second after Jodie Byrne had politely refused to let him back into the garden of The Lord Nelson because it was closing time.

The soldier, stationed with the Royal Logistic Corps at Marchwood, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Jailing the father-of-two, of Mulberry Road, Marchwood, Judge Gary Burrell QC said: “What you did to this attractive woman is to destroy her life. You have destroyed your own life and you have destroyed the life of your wife.

“She was just doing her job, doing it well and being polite and calm.

There was no provocation and your drunken temper did the rest. She will carry the scars, physically and metaphorically, what you did to her for the rest of her life.”

In mitigation, David Richards said the glassing was not premeditated and by pleading guilty Pickering had saved her from the stress and anxiety of waiting for a trial.

He added that Pickering had been in the Army for eight years and a prison sentence would result in his dismissal from the Forces.

“It will result in considerable uncertainty for their future and if he is deported, it is possible it will split them up,” he told the court.