“MAGGIES WAR.”
by Tony McNally.
At 10 45 Hrs on Friday the 2nd April 1982, me and the rest of my mates in (T Air Defence Battery Sha Shuja’s Troop) of 12 Air Defence Regiment Royal Artillery had our Easter beer drinking leave cancelled because some Argentineans had invaded an Island of the coast of Scotland, our so we thought.
I was19 year old a Rapier missile operator who loved the army and had been a soldier since the age of 16 and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, I was soon to find out and nearly 20 years later it seems like it only happened yesterday.
In this article I am not going to tell you everything that happened to me on the Falkland Islands, the main point of my writing this is to explain how going to war in 1982 has had a dramatic affect on my life and led to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and before any of you older veterans from WW2 dismiss this condition as modern day affliction motivated by compensation let me tell you this condition was around in WW1 only it was known as Shell shockand I'm not naive enough to believe that there were no deserters in the Great War, but I do believe that several hundred brave soldiers were shot at dawn for the crime of being psychological casualties.
The British Army do not shoot their psychological casualties anymore, but metaphorically speaking they have pulled the trigger on the many veterans who could no longer face another day of suffering and thought that having feelings like they have made them less of a man, especially if they were from elite units such as the Parasand Royal Marinesand even the Special Air Service, at the end of the day we are all human beings, it’s not the rifle that kills the enemy it’s the soldier pulling the trigger.
After coming home from the Falklands war I was not the care free happy young Gunner who went, and neither were my mates, we had all dramatically changed, but we did not realise it. The MoD new we were all likely to suffer from PTSD because they were warned about it from the American involvement in Vietnam were 58 thousand serviceman were killed and more alarmingly it is estimated that up to 200 thousand Vietnam veterans had committed suicide. This prompted the US government to set up the Veterans Administration to care for and process disability pensions.
The MoD chose not to head their warning we were British `Stiff upper lip ` and all that, nice cup of tea is all you need after bayoneting a young Argentinean through the eye ball to kill him as his winter coat was to thick.
I killed two Argentineans not with a bayonet but with Rapier missiles and I was dam glad when I did it as they were trying to kill me and my fellow soldiers, to me at the time they were not human beings but weapons of war as they were flying fast jets with enormous capability to destroy, it was only when I returned home did it start to sink in, the enormity of what I had been through and the fact that I had come close to death as a teenager.
I witnessed British soldiers mutilating corpses and blowing the bodies up with grenades and to my utter disgust I joined in with it all and thought it was one big joke. After seeing the Galahad troop ship destroyed as I was the Rapier missile operator tracking the enemy aircraft and the large loss of life, that I wrongly blamed myself for later on, I unknowingly became a casualty of war myself in the psychological sense, and instead of having a cup of tea I preceded to try to drink myself into oblivion. At no time were any Falklands veterans debriefed or told by the MO that they may experience flash backs or disturbed sleep, they were just left to get on with it some with fatal consequences.
I left the Army in 1988 with according to the MoD a clean bill of health and an exemplary record and an undiagnosed and untreated condition of PTSD. It wasn’t till seven years later that a civilian doctor diagnosed me with PTSD, as it was not in the news every week then I had never heard of the condition and I disputed the fact as like many I though I was being told I was a coward of something. I lost my marriage my home my job and narrowly escaped prison, I was clinically depressed and considered suicide, my ex wife was pregnant with my boy Aiden who is now 7 years old and I think that is what stopped me.
I was sent for counseling and just clammed up and could not talk about my problems I found them to painful to recount, so my councilor told me to go away and write my thoughts and feelings down, that took me two years in the shape of my now published book Cloudpuncher, when I flick through the pages now I seem to be reading about a total stranger but a stranger I know only to well.
I have now got a web site where I have a forum for sufferers of PTSD they can come an chat to others in the same boat and can remain anonymous if they choose, the government with all it’s millions hold servicemen with PTSD in contempt and even deny that the condition exists, as there is no VA in this country and you have to go through your local GP and he may or may not diagnose you with PTSD probably depression it covers a lot of maladies, I just hope my web site will stop one serviceman or woman from taking their own lives, the human cost is incalculable as the stigma and family depression passes on to the next generations.
Let me just say that I am not against war unfortunately sometimes mankind has to take a stand and it will always be the youth of our proud nation that bears the heaviest toll, those kids hanging around the street corner shouting and swearing and causing trouble could soon find themselves in the line of fire in Iraq or Macedonia, even my boy Aiden may one day take the Queens Shilling and I would be a proud Father, I just pray the armchair Generals will treat him to the compassion and decency any human being deserves.
Tony McNally.
