Brought forward from Thursday, August 31, 2006.
ABANDONED HEROES
FIGHTING AND
DYING ON £2 AN HOUR–IRAQ –
* ABANDONED HEROES
HOW I SEE IT
by Robert Hardman * Daily Mail Thursday, August 31, 2006.
JUST STANDING UP causes Dave Corrigan MUCH PAIN.
Injured in Three years on, his leg is getting worse. And the worse part of it? Officialdom doesn’t want to know. Like numerous ex-soldiers, his only ally these days is a charity, which has been quietly tending the unsung casualties of every Army deployment since World War II. But it has never faced a crisis like this. The problem is a simple one: our generosity appears to be drying up.
Much as we salute the heroism of our
forces when the bands strike up on the big anniversaries, we have become
increasingly reluctant to help our service charities since the invasion
of ‘I am afraid that the sums speak for themselves,’ says Major General Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter, controller of the Army Benevolent Fund (ABF)
‘if a cause captures the public’s
imagination, the money follows. After the
‘After the first Gulf War, which lasted
100 hours, the British people donated £3.5 million. More than three
years after the [illegal] invasion of
Some will return to active duty or busy lives elsewhere. Many, though, will have lasting problems. When these soldiers and their families need those things that make a real difference – the new wheelchair, the new plastic limb, the therapy sessions, the stair lift, the educational grant to help the difficult teenager whose Dad is never coming home – they won’t get them from the Government. They will turn to organisations like the ARMY BENEVOLENT FUND.
The Fund needs to raise £5 million a year to cope with existing demands. It is about to receive many more calls on its resources from those affected not just by Iraq but also events in Afghanistan (with the latest death –bringing the total to 14 and no doubt many casualties to be cared for). But if we are not prepared to top up the pot, then that £5,000,000 is going to have to be spread far wider.
Hence the urgent need for funding events such as next month’s Music On Fire!,
a spectacular
concert of music and several tons of fireworks (sponsored by the
Daily Mail), which will explode above September 23,23 and 24th. Certainly, without charities like the ABF, life would be very much worse for Dave Corrigan, 46, a married father-of-one. A former lance Corporal in the Parachute Regiment, he became an ambulance driver in civilian life but remained a devoted member of the Paras’ Territorial Army wing. In 2003, the part-time soldier was ordered to war with 16 Air Assault Brigade as an ambulance field commander.
‘I was very proud to go out to
In March 2003, he damaged his knee
falling out of a speeding ambulance in a nasty battle near Adalya.
Medics diagnosed a serious trauma to the knee and ordered him back, the
But on arrival at RAF Halton in
Buckinghamshire he was told to see a GP and sent on his way in the
middle of the night without so much as a travel warrant. He hitched a
lift all the way back to Eventually, he received two botched operations in a military hospital before being medically discharged in 2004. The Army had washed its hands of Corporal Corrigan, even though he was anything but mended. The pain in his leg was so severe he feared for his job as an ambulance driver. He had no joy with his local MP – a certain Tony Blair – but his case was raised in the Commons by a Tory. Eventually, a junior Defence Minister apologised for the way he had been treated. But, by now, he could barely walk. With a six-month wait for an operation, Mr Corrigan had no alternative but to go private – except that his savings were not enough to cover the £4,000 cost of the operation. In desperation, he turned to the ABF, who investigated his case and quickly agreed to foot the bill. ‘They were fantastic – both with their advice and their funding,’ he says. When you are this low, it means a lot to have an organisation like the ABF with you.
Darren Swift, 40, is equally indebted.
In 1991, an IRA bomb in ‘The regiment were great, but I needed a new direction,’ he says. He met Al Hodgson, another ex-soldier who had also last his legs to terrorists, and the pair wanted to
prove themselves with a daring canoe
expedition down a treacherous
With renewed confidence the two men took
up skydiving and ended up as national champions. Mr Swift’s other
achievements include wheeling himself across
Married with a young daughter, he is
irrepressible. We meet in a wind tunnel, of all places. It is called
Airfix, a gravity-defying tube in This remarkable man is eternally grateful to the ABF, as is David Loftus. ‘They have seen it all before’ says the chaplain of the Royal Military School of Music as he speeds about its Twickenham HQ in his electric wheelchair. His cheerful enthusiasm makes ‘the padre’ one of the most popular figures round here but he wasn’t always so upbeat.
Back in 1980, Mr Swift was playing the
tuba in the band of the Queen’s Own Hussars, stationed in A quick check-up suggested that he was fine and he resumed his duties until a few weeks later when his legs gave way. The military hospital checked him out and came back with a grim diagnosis. ‘They said: “Your knee joints are cooked.” His days in the band were over. He left the Army for a job with a charity but, by 1996, he could barely walk with a stick. A knee replacement failed and following a deep infection and a pulmonary embolism, there was no alternative to an amputation in 2000. ‘That brought a whole new set of problems. It wasn’t a life. It was an existence. But he didn’t give up He and his wife, Ros, a secretary, set out to raise the £68,000 needed to alter their Middlesex home. When a council grant and their savings fell £10,000 short, he turned to the ABF. ‘We were in a very vulnerable position but they knew these problems instantly and their advice and funding sorted everything out.’ As a result, Mr Loftus is now determined to ‘put something back’, working with a youth band and part-time as chaplain at the school. ‘The Army is like a family. You never really leave it and it never leaves you,’ he says. Like all families, though, it has its breaking point. Right now, it needs the rest of us. But if we are going to send it off to fight our wars, charge it with war crimes when we don’t like the results and turn our backs on it when the injured stagger home, then we should not be surprised if ,one day, there is no one to protect us at all.
* * *
Please Help Us To Continue Our Vital Help –NOW!
Music On Fire! (Music and Fireworks) For Three Days
September 22, 23 and 24. For tickets, contact 0870 606 3473 or www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Donations to the Army Benevolent Fund,
41 Queen’s Gate,
* * * [There can be no question that we should all do what we can to alleviate the pain and suffering of members of our Armed Forces whatever the foreign policy of the Government.
Many people rightly are very angry to put it mildly about the Government’s willingness to take our country to war in circumstances where the legality of that war is questioned particularly as the Attorney-General at the time on first finding the war unlawful later changes his opinion to fit the Government’s intentions.
We believe there is a case for the Prerogative (‘such powers as are exercisable by the Executive Government without express authority from Parliament’) of the Prime Minister in declaring war should in future be a matter for a Select Committee of the House of Common s chaired by Ambassadors’ and others of integrity in the Intelligence Services and Security Services. We can no longer permit the question of War and Peace to be left the sole prerogative of an individual with power to override all opinion.
With regard to the Care of our Armed Forces during and in the aftermath of a war there should be the subject of a Bill passed through Parliament for the sole purpose of insuring that no member of our Fighting Services should have to rely on CHARITY for the vital necessities which each of us would wish to obtain if we were in the plight of the individuals as detailed in the above narrative who are no doubt a few of many thousands of ex-servicemen and women who have NOT received the Care and Attention from a Government with an annual budget of £9000,000,000,000 -the 4th richest country in the world.
Our soldiers are fighting and dying for £2 an hour-D.Mail-11/9/06.
The truth is that MONEY appears to be the criteria on which the Ministry of Defence decides many important decisions with regard the LIFE and DEATH of our brave servicemen and women. Of course there will always be a place for charitable giving which would provide further help for those in need after their just needs have been met by the department that sent them to war.
Our purpose is to insure that in future it should be a right for our Armed Forces in the event of injury to expect exemplary treatment from the MoD and NOT as at present a question of cost. If a Government decides to go to war and ONLY if our country or our friends abroad are in danger then the question of COST must be put aside for the duration of the conflict and in the aftercare how ever long it may be required.
WE believe that a new Bill under the title :
Care and Treatment of our Armed Forces Bill -should be introduced in Parliament.
s with the Terrance Rattigan play of the cadet who was falsely accused and punished for cashing a cheque in
‘The Winslow Boy’
We expect that a member of the House of Commons should take it on his or her shoulders to contest with the MoD the injustice to the members of our Armed Forces by the actions and inactions of that department.
As in the ‘Winslow Boy’ we and we are sure millions of people are with us for a Fiat A ‘PETITION OF RIGHT’
TO ‘LET RIGHT BE DONE’
The Attorney-General whose place it is to
agree the Fiat will after all be able to redress for the future
the damage done by the illegal war in
The Bill should be named:
The Care and Treatment of our Armed Forces Bill * * * [Font altered –bolding & underlining used –comments in brackets.] AUGUST/06
ADDED NOV 1-2015
* REISSUED - OCTOBER 5,2021 B484/2154/B |