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CAN YOU HELP?
Posted by South East Correspondent on October 21st, 2007
Hello and good day,
My name is Michael Walker and I live in Oxford, I am an ex-
Unfortunately I have been fighting for my war pension for over six years, and I have compiled three applications. One was refused point blank, one was lost in the system, and the third, which took twenty months and an appeal was refused; “even though this time they accept I am ill”.
There are thousands of us who have served our country who are being neglected, and many more who are probably going to suffer the hands of neglect after doing their duty for Blighty.
I have been sent to combat stress, NHS psychi units, an NHS pain clinic, and many GP’s. I have been apologised to for four accounts of neglect and forgotten about, diagnosed with Gulf War Syndrome, PTSD, a personality disorder, chronic widespread pain, and chronic fatigue. The tribunal services now accept that I was under stress in the Gulf, but it did not affect me enough to cause my illnesses.
The pain clinic at the Churchill hospital in Oxford now refuses to help me, and the consultant (Professor ******) has told me that I will not receive any further help in Oxford, or anywhere else in the UK.
The patients’ liaison clinic now wants me to go on the medical assessment program at St Thomas’s hospital in London, which is run by the MoD, who are preventing Gulf veterans medical and financial help.
I am currently on benefits (DLA middle-
I know I am ill, and would like independent medical support from a source that believes
in our country getting strong; at least by our service and ex-
I am a member of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (UK), there are a few thousand of us who are being denied, and this affects our families too. Some guys have died, some are dieing, and our parents, partners, and children have to watch while we struggle and keep being denied true and unbiased medical help.
It has been made apparent that Gulf Veterans cannot be given group medical tests, but can as individuals. Now the NHS is channelling us back through the Mod, who is trying to prove that there is nothing wrong, or whatever is wrong with an individuals health is not their doing.
I have been along many roads trying to find reasons why the world is like it is since I have been out of the services, and have discovered that immigrants bring their national issues to our shores. It feels like we have been invaded on a huge and politically legal level, this in turn is draining our nation’s resources! This in turn is affecting everybody, including those who have committed themselves to this countries security.
Regards, Mick
Dear Sir,
> Recently there has been some media coverage about the level of civilian
> indifference
and apathy regarding British soldiers serving in
> Afghanistan and Iraq, culminating
in pictures of troops returning from
> Iraq and having the streets to themselves in
Abingdon on their
> homecoming parade with no civilians other than their families
turning
> out to welcome them home, cheer them, and show pride in them. As a
> civilian
may I say through your website that each and every soldier IS
> precious to us, we
DO value their skills as soldiers, their bravery and
> courage in what they do, and
OF COURSE we are happy and relieved when
> their tour of duty ends and they return
to the UK and are re-
> their families -
> father lost or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> The point
I want to make is that it is not the soldiers we don't
> support; far from it. We
are proud of their bearing and uprightness;
> they are men, as opposed to the dross
we see so frequently in our
> streets. It is the policies of politicians that people
have the problem
> with, not the Poor Bloody Infantry who have to carry out orders
and sort
> out the mess. It is the politicians who caused the illegal invasion with
>
its resulting pain, heartache, and loss of life with a pack of lies
> designed to
glorify themselves that have the contempt and apathy of
> civilians. Not the troops
themselves.
> Maybe other homecoming parades could be given more publicity so
> civilians
will know they are to take place and will support them, but I
> just hope that some
of the soldiers who felt they were of no importance
> or consequence will read this
and see that it is definitely not the case
> at all.
> Yours sincerely, Geraldine Pewtress.
Dear Arthur,
I have been hospitalised with cancer over the last 13 months and I am still suffering. Also applied for an increase in my war pension for the several injuries (arm, shoulder ribs etc all broken and several fused) I sustained while serving. Also my jaws smashed and teeth knocked out. In hospital four months plus PTCSD. Unfortunately I was turned down along with thousands more similar to myself. ‘What a government we have ’the police can get large compensations and a big pension for life, for having seen a dead body or two’, and all we get is a miserly sum for life.
Come November and they will all trail out to the Cenotaph weeping crocodile tears in tribute to the heroes, then come the next day and they will all be forgotten again, I am sorry for this letter but I am really depressed about this pension business.
Yours Leslie Whittle / Hull
Dear Arthur
Recent bereavement has left me short of memory, words etc I can not measure. Yes my six medals as I got at times took to bring the unexpected realities as you know. Recently also this compensation culture is so often a sickly pathetic demonstration of devolved facts of life and history.
But life goes on, we learn or succumb to patterns of distortion, complexes of powerful and advanced technology and so it shall be in our last page at 84, and our great countries administrations, have belittled set aside its valued recognitions. NESA and often i/e November 11th do express as needed the character etc to our way of life. Alas the future we’ll see as the changes are revealed.
As usual voters will be encouraged swayed and enticed, and my recent £5.00 weekly addition to my £71.00 Retirement pension etc, and o yes especially my 25 pence for attaining the age of 80, bears the futility and pattern of whatever service as a regular from 1934 similar to others we’d do our bit again, no change of course and life goes on.
But we stand firm, and NESA echoes the reality our last post. We did serve with honour and lived so.
Yours sincerely
Arthur Dennison / Newcastle
PTSD
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
OR
GNFRS
General Need for Revenge Syndrome.
There will always be those people who feel that a debt is owed to them for one reason or other.
Young men and women feel a desire to join the services for various reasons. Having listened to the exciting stories related by friends or relatives who have served in the Forces, or films which they have watched portraying an adventurous and exciting life .
Enlisting into one of the branches of the service, they eventually find that service life is not all that they had anticipated, but they soldier on, (as the saying goes), until the time comes for release from their contract.
To most the experience is put down to just that, an experience. Others finding themselves free from institutionalised discipline are completely at a loss. After the gloss of their return home has worn of and they have spent whatever awards or savings they had accumulated and now there is no one to direct them.
Many of those who served under active service conditions can not come to terms immediately with the sudden cease of the adrenaline flow. They have no particular venue for their experience in whatever work is available to them in Civvy Street. A feeling of being let down, takes over with a wish to be able to avenge themselves against the time which they feel has been wasted in the services.
They search for any reason at all. Even several years later, to try and obtain some sort of revenge. Many apply for a service pension for injuries or illness, which occurred during their days in the services.
In other instances Females who knowingly make themselves unfit for duty by producing a child, are ordered to take their retirement. Their immediate response is to seek revenge, not because they have lost a career, but because they feel that in some way the system has let them down.
In all cases there is that feeling of revenge. Both men and women want to hit out at someone, but there is no one individual they can hit. In many instances however even if they could find someone to hit, they prefer instead the safer route in the provision of a solicitor and legal aid to sue the British taxpayer. There are hundreds of compensation cases brought before the courts, which in fact are acts of revenge.
As a prisoner of war in Singapore, because I carried a bugle, I was one of those
who the Japanese sent out immediately after the cease-
Our job was to bury the Allied dead and help cremate the civilians. The Japanese dead were taken reverently away for cremation outside the Ford factory. After the completion of the railway in Thailand, along with several others I was sent to a Tamil workers camp where we were required to dispose of more than 1500 men women and children who had been left to die from various causes. Also during this time I had sounded the last post over the graves of more than 3000 comrades and friends, and at one period had killed a Japanese guard.
When I came home after the war, I still had my service to complete before returning to Civvy Street. Similar to thousands of others, within weeks of my return to civilian life I felt alone and useless, Should anyone touch me, even just a touch on the shoulder, I would lash out. In two instances I actually punched the person concerned and was arrested, many times I was punched back. I often went missing from home, and was invariably found in one of the local cemeteries.
We had no debriefing or counselling and my discharge book had the entry "Ceasing to fulfil Army physical requirements. I too wanted to hit out at the system. I applied for a pension and was awarded two shillings and sixpence a week, because I had suffered from malaria, which to me was an insult and I refused it. It was not until 1987 that with the help of a psychiatrist. I was awarded a twenty per cent disability pension (around £28.00 per month, based on my original application, Innumerable bouts of Malaria, malnutrition and other debilitating factors. Trauma and stress disorder was never mentioned, but I had won, I had finally hit out at the system and won, even though it was only a token achievement, I had beaten the system.
I still suffer the occasional nightmare, and a feeling of panic, which I control by writing down the dates and names of those people I had known in the past. I occasionally wonder if the award of £330,000 would help clear the nightmares, but I think not, in my mind the award would be my revenge on life for robbing me of those four years of my youth. I don’t think I would have the Gaul to expect that kind of payment for doing a job which I had contracted to do, a job which included helping those of my comrades less fortunate than I, and offering to lay down my life for my country.
The Government are the biggest employer in the country, yet they take very little interest in their ex employees. Every person who enters H,M Forces should immediately have an account set up in their name (Not an insurance, a deposit account into which immaterial of the amount the service man or woman earns) , the government should subscribe a fixed amount, with interest accruing. So, that on leaving the forces enough money has been built up to take them back into civilian life. All former Allied governments after the Second World War, gave their returning service men grants of cash or land, or assisted them in setting up a business. The UK Government did nothing apart from sending out a stereotyped letter purported to have come from the King saying well done, or words to that effect.
Service men and women and people in all walks of life are aware of what is happening in other countries. They see vast amounts of money being obtained by slick lawyers for what is referred to as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
We read of occasions when a child falls into a pond, which has been there for decades, and the local council is sued for large sums of money. Other instances where a child walks onto the railway line and is killed by a train. The immediate response is to seek revenge. The same applies concerning certain charges of racial prejudices. It seems that the only alternative is to hit them in the pocket. Not from the pocket of an individual I might add, but from the pocket of the British Tax Payer. There is a need for revenge on someone, and the only satisfaction after physical revenge is money. It will not cure the nightmares or heal the mental scars. It will not bring the child back, nor will it ever take the place of the child, but it is a wonderful feeling to have struck out at the system and won something.
This is just a personal view
Arthur Lane
Stay Alive
