It’s the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War and I can still remember my thoughts at the moment I saw the islands for the first time.

As horizontal sleet blinded me on the forecastle of HMS Brilliant, braced against the howling wind and packed in multi-layers of clothing under my full foul weather gear, I thought;

“My God, they all died for this bloody place”.

The official conflict was long declared over by then time I arrived but the Falklands War was to have repercussions long after the final shots were fired.

Since 1982 more British servicemen who served in the Falklands conflict have committed suicide than were killed on the battlefields or in the ships anchored in bomb alley. Like the long civil conflict in Northern Ireland its events triggered mental illness and trauma that was to manifest itself years later. SSAFA Forces Help is still dealing with veterans from the Falklands War today. Often clients are still struggling with mental illness and the debilitating effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Tragically, you will find many Falklands veterans in prison where the violent mood swings caused by PTSD lands them in trouble with the criminal justice system.

Though the price that was paid for the recapturing of these remote and forbidding islands was high, for many veterans, the Falkland’s still represented the good old days of military conflicts. These were the days before Bosnia and Iraq when the UK armed forces were deployed to defend sovereign territory from foreign aggressors.

Now it seems they are deployed largely in defence of US foreign policy than British sovereignty.

In 1982, the Falklands conflict won the full support of the military top brass, the local population, the press and the vast majority of the general public. We all understood why those forces were going, what they were trying to achieve and when they had achieved it. It some senses it was a simple conflict.

It is hard to imagine Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse asking Mrs Thatcher to confirm for him that the effort to retain the Falkland Islands was legal, as defined by international law. The wily Admiral did not need to and no doubt would rather have been keel hauled than bring it up.

The real price of these less simple and dirty conflicts in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq has not yet been paid. The deaths and physical casualties are horrific enough but the mental casualties cannot be fully counted for many years yet.

Many of these casualties will turn to local caseworkers of charities like SSAFA Forces Help. Their volunteers give up their time and are unpaid. They claim only direct expenses for mileage, postage and telephone calls to clients. Even so, at local branch levels the money often looks like running out and caseworkers have to give up more of their days not to help clients but to rattle tins outside Tesco. They will never moan. They are not that sort. It’s not an exercise that makes them feel very highly valued though, I can tell you.

No doubt the 30th anniversary of the Falklands will be an excuse for the media to re-visit past glories and a few controversies. The heroes of that conflict deserve all the attention lavished upon them but I wonder how much airtime will be given to those veterans in prison. Or those condemned to a troubled life on medication with only charities to help out?

A former naval hero now in prison for rape and GBH or a commando leader who committed suicide in back- alley leaving his family bereft doesn’t fit the popular story angle.

Or will anyone contrast the moral case for the Falkland’s with the current crop of questionable military excursions into Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Popular myths are by their nature more attractive than reality but please remember the work of SSAFA Forces Help on this important anniversary.

Thirty years after the Falklands war ended they are still picking up the pieces.

His personal statement in the House of Commons sounded like the pompous Oscar acceptance speech from the Director of a cheap porn movie.

Found guilty of clear breaches of the Ministerial Code by his own civil servants, Dr Fox took the opportunity to ooze thanks to  his wife, the Prime Minister and even his constituents.

If I was one of Dr Fox's unfortunate constitituents, I might resent being thanked for my part in his flagrant abuse of an office of state. He used the position of the Secretary of State for Defence, not to further the cause of the over- stretched men and women of the armed forces fighting in Afghanistan or the neglected veterans struggling to cope in Civvy Street. He was too focused on the priority of doing his old chum a favour.

Does it makes you wonder what stone we turn over to find these people?

We elect them and pay for them and they see fit to neglect their serious duty in favour of getting stuck in to some serious spivving. If it happened on the battlefield I would hope he would have been shot.

And may I be the first to remind Dr Fox that on 17th October, while he was fighting and squirming to protect his tarnished reputation with well rehearsed media appearances, a young Gurkha soldier lost his life in the course of his duty.

Rifeman Vijay Rai of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Gurkha Rifles was killed while protecting a checkpoint in Afghanistan. He was 21 years old.

It's a great shame the same could not be said for the Secretary of State.

I met Corporal Peter Buchanan last Sunday on Armed Forces week-end.

Peter was shot during the 5 SCOTS recent deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

The wound is a little complicated because the bullet severed a nerve in the knee joint and he is still undergoing intensive treatment at the MOD rehabilitation centre at Headley Court in Surrey. Peter was at home for the week-end enjoying some time with his son Callum.  He is still walking awkwardly with the aid of a stick some three months after the incident.

Despite this Peter was still supporting his wife Katherine organise the SSAFA Summer Boot Fair at Howe Barracks to raise money for SSAFA Forces Help.  The charity had provided free accommodation at Norton House in Birmingham for her and young Callum while they visited Peter in hospital.

“Peter and I are both very grateful to SSAFA” Katherine told me. "Without them it would not have been possible to stay near the hospital with Callum so Peter would not have been able to see his son.”

Katherine had done a brilliant job organising the event. There was a car boot sale, huge bouncy slide, stalls manned by the families of the 5 SCOTS, ice-creams and a former member of SSAFA turned up with an authentic 25 pounder Field Gun. Katherine had even got someone to donate portable toilets.

The KM and other local media had all helped me to promote the event and Katherine and Peter’s story was in all the local papers the week before. She even got interviewed on BBC Radio Kent .

On the Sunday morning the clouds cleared and it was a perfect warm day for a charity summer fair.

And no-one came.

Oh, SSAFA people came and so did their friends and families. The families from the barracks came and supported the cause. Peter came to support his wife with the aid of his walking stick but virtually nobody else could be bothered.

“Oh it’s the big car boot sale at Wincheap” said one disapppointed car boot trader. “They will all be over there”.

The thought that Canterbury’s public had elected to spend their Sunday morning rummaging through other peoples rubbish in a car park outside Morrison’s rather than support the wife of a wounded soldier made me feel very sad indeed.

In the course of ten years the British public have understandably lost interest in the Afghanistan mission.  Many have reached compassion fatigue. Others are just plainly confused about how British soldiers training young boys and drug addicts in a rocky desert wilderness in southern Asia will keep the streets of Canterbury and Maidstone safe from terrorism.

But if they have any decency they should just spare a thought for the young people and their families still charged by our idiot politicians with this hopeless mission.

You might be bored or disinterested but please don’t forget that  three hundred and seventy four young, fit, athletic, motivated and much loved sons & daughters in their prime of life are never  coming back home to their families. Spare a thought for the one thousand, seven hundred and twelve young people officially wounded in action whose legs and arms will not be growing back. Pause to consider the countless thousands who will just wake up one day in a terrifying cold sweat condemned to be mentally traumatised by their combat experience in Afghanistan for the rest of their lives.  

Write to your MP demanding an update on our policy in Afghanistan. Support your armed forces charities. Watch the excellent BBC documentary on Afghanistan on Wednesday nights at 9pm. Take an interest. Form an opinion. Get involved. This could be your son or daughter, your nephew, your neighbour’s niece.

If nothing else please just spend a few minutes quietly reading some of the official tributes to the 374 who have already died in Afghanistan on the MOD website.

At the very least, I think they deserve that.

Being a former Navy man I had never even heard of the military covenant until a few years ago, so I was fascinated to learn this week that it may be enshrined by parliament into English law.

Top brass in the Army and Royal British Legion are already heralding this announcement as a significant victory. Others are just grateful for any news that might make the plight of over-stretched service personnel and their families a little easier.

Many of those at SSAFA Forces Help on the front line of Kent’s Home Front are a little more sceptical and will wait and see what practical difference this makes to the real lives of service families and veterans across the county.

For those not familiar with the concept, the so called military covenant is all about Britain’s “duty of care” to its armed forces. It began as an informal pact between the army and society dating back to Tudor times and was formally codified as a formal covenant in 2000.

The current written code only refers to the army and amounts to little more than a lot of sugary good intentions and now this ill defined waffle is to be put into law.

Politicians are experts at saying a lot and doing little, particularly when it comes to the treatment of its armed forces and this announcement could represent a master stroke on their part.

Is this truly a sincere move to support the armed services and their families or just more cheap legislative public relations at its most cynical?

You might be surprised to learn how former service men and women are currently prioritised by the NHS, local authority housing officers, home office officials and local education authority jobsworths.

In short, they are not prioritised at all.

Indeed, in far too many cases, serving and former members of the armed forces feel they are being treated like second class citizens, regardless of their service records.

There was the case of a Gurkha veteran in Canterbury desperate for a kidney donor but the UK Border Authority refused to allow his sister a temporary visa on medical grounds, even with letters of support from SSAFA.

There was the case of the Northern Ireland veteran from Ashford who had been diagnosed with PTSD and OCD being made homeless with his wife and baby. He was told by his local housing officer he was not a priority.

There are the hundreds of veterans whose lives are being torn to pieces by the impact of PTSD waiting more than 6 months for their first appointment at Combat Stress. No wonder Kent’s prisons are stuffed full of mentally ill ex-soldiers.  

Only today I spoke to a young army Mum who urgently needed schooling for her children on arrival in Kent from Germany, while her husband was away serving in Afghanistan. Did she get any special help?

She didn’t get any help. Indeed, the LEA even admitted verbally that they had ignored their own school entry procedures.

The list goes on and on and it is hard to see how these real life examples across Kent will change overnight just because the government passes a law.

Will service families who are treated shoddily be able to sue the taxpayer for damages?

Will they flash their ID cards and jump the housing queue in front of single parents, refugees or the disabled?

I think not.

If the government is serious about its duty of care to the armed forces it could start by equipping them properly in the field or ceasing casual military intervention in questionable conflicts or even cancelling cuts of front line assets like HMS Ark Royal and the Sea Harriers.

It could try adequate funding of Combat Stress, which supports the growing number of veterans with combat related mental illness.

Please don’t insult the intelligence of the armed forces community with yet more gesture politics.

As one highly decorated former SAS Warrant Officer once told me, having fought for more than 3 years to obtain a war pension from the MOD;

“I don’t want any special favours. I just want what I am entitled to. Nothing more. Nothing less”.

As our politicians engage us in another questionable conflict in an oil rich Arab state, we are reminded once again about the direct consequences of these decisions on those men and women who actually do the fighting bit rather than just the talking bit.  

Congratulations should go to Prince Harry for using his royal celebrity status to grab media attention for wounded veterans by taking part in the Arctic trek being undertaken by servicemen injured in Afghanistan. They all did the fighting bit and as Prince Harry eloquently put it on BBC News “their arms and legs do not grow back”.

Back in 1943 in the distant days when wars were very reluctantly engaged in as a last resort, when all other diplomatic options had been exhausted and there was a direct threat to our nation, a 16 year boy from Ashford joined the Royal Marines.

Harry Hodges trained in the highlands of Scotland and earned his much coveted Green Beret signifying his qualification as a Royal Marine Commando. Anyone who has served with the Royal Marines will tell you that they have a rather special relationship with their green beret. Only a very brave or stupid person would try and part a “bootneck” from his green beret.

Shortly after training, young Harry took part in a sabotage raid on an enemy radar installation in Norway. His corporal was killed outright by a mortar blast and Harry was left with shrapnel injuries to his legs. He also saw service on D Day and later in Egypt.

Last year, Harry approached SSAFA Forces help not for money or sympathy but because his beloved green beret was destroyed in a house fire a few years ago and he could not bear to be without it.  Volunteer Caseworker for SSAFA Forces Help, Michael Holdsworth, is a former Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy so needed no explanation about how important this was to the veteran of WW2.

After much work and some clever bargaining Michael managed to source a replacement beret for Harry and it was presented to him in a private ceremony on March 17 this year by Ashford Royal Marine Cadets; Sergeant Ryan Roper and Sergeant George Sladden.

Harry is now 84 years old and was delighted to have his green beret once more and wears it with pride once again.

The MOD reports that since 1 January 2006, 362 British forces personnel or MOD civilians have died and 1,642 UK personnel were admitted to UK Field Hospitals in Afghanistan and categorised as Wounded in Action.  This tragic tally includes young Royal Marines proudly wearing their green berets just like Harry Hodges did back in 1943.  

There was only one Christmas present for Gordon last year.

It was the one I gave him almost as an afterthought.  A box of chocolate sweets; Heroes aptly enough, a tin of Farmers’ market soup from Sainsbury’s, some dates and  a few other bits and pieces. My wife helped me put them all in an improvised gift box decorated with some tinsel left over from the tree.

He didn’t seem that elated when I handed over the box the day before Christmas Eve. I don’t think he eats very much. His house is so damp and mouldy from the leaking roof that it is difficult to breathe without gagging on the thick warm air heated by the electric bar heater he can hardly afford to keep going.

He makes a curious site with layer upon layer of clothing and an ancient woollen cap which covers his ears. He shuffles around in between increasingly eccentric monologues.

“My wife, she was a beautiful woman. Nine years I cared for her and never received any help. The first time I saw her, I say to myself, yes, I am going to marry that woman”.

He is a little over obsessed with genealogy and believes that I am of Norman descent so insists on calling me the Frenchman.

“I knew you were a French man the first time I see you” he tells me proudly as though revealing my membership of a secret society.

I am trying to help him get his roof fixed so we can stop the leaking and start to dry the place out. Not that easy after heavy snow and when the cheapest quote is over £20,000.

“My wife tells me to never take out loans from anyone” he explains to me as I make another suggestion to try and find a solution to the problem. I’m seriously worried about his health in this vile environment and Gordon does not have much faith in doctors or the capabilities of the NHS.

“Those pills they give me are just bloody rubbish” he tells me every time I visit. Gordon is a firm believer in the restorative powers of Vick, Holy Water, Bovril and devout prayer. Anything else is unlikely to cut the mustard as far as he is concerned, particularly if prescribed by a mere doctor.

“Her animals are buried in the garden. They will never take this house away from me”.

I try and assure him that the SSAFA Forces Help are not in the business of evicting ex-servicemen from their homes.

“Oh yes, the services and Her Majesty the Queen are the only people you can trust” he says.

Gordon has written lengthy hand written letters in a distinctive spidery scrawl to the Queen and the Pope explaining his plight. He was not keen on the representative from Department of Work and Pensions who came to advise him on benefits.

“I don’t trust him one bit .Very wrong body language if you know what I mean”

There is something curiously resilient, or at least defiant about Gordon. Isolated and trapped by his memories in what once must have been an attractive sun filled bungalow. His damp home now falling down around his years.  Musty and green with mould.  Neglected in the ceaseless nine year effort to keep his late wife well.

“I was so strong when I was in the army. I could get on that roof and do it myself”

But none of us are as strong as we used to be and Gordon doesn’t get much help except from his local church. He thinks the neighbours are stealing his garden plants and says he receives racial abuse from local yobs who call him a “paki”.

“That was my only Christmas present you know. God bless you Frenchman. No-one else will help me” he says fiddling with a carrier bag and a half empty bottle of sherry to reciprocate.

 As I leave, dodging the stream of cold water pouring from what is left of his rotting porch roof Gordon calls after me  “I will say some prayers for you Frenchman”.

And you know what. I think he will.

For the purposes of client privacy, names and some key details of this blog have been changed.

One of the few frustrating things about working for SSAFA Forces Help is that so few people realise what the organisation is or what it does.

Its a bit like working for MI5 except the people are a lot nicer and they probably do a lot more good.

Last Friday afternoon, about 20 volunteer caseworkers seated themselves quietly around a large conference table at the St Peters Methodist Church Hall in Canterbury for a meeting of the Canterbury and Ashford division of SSAFA headed by Major Gerry Bartlett.

Gerry as always, is ably assisted by his trusty lieutenant, former RAF officer and coal miner Alan Thomas and veteran caseworker Blue Cooper provides the tea and biscuits.

It is the best opportunity you might get to discover what these volunteer caseworkers from SSAFA Forces Help are doing behind the scenes across the Canterbury and Ashford region and indeed across Kent and the rest of the UK.

Because, rather like the secret service, they prefer to keep things to themselves.

The head of the division’s special team for dealing with Gurkha welfare, William Platt, gave a brief overview of the 50 or so cases he and his three colleagues have handled over recent months.  On Saturday he and Jack Godley will hand over the keys to a rented house in Ashford for a 68 year old former Gurkha and his family who arrived from Nepal in August. Like most newly arrived Gurkhas taking advantage of the recent “Joanna Lumley” ruling they were homeless, penniless and largely clueless about how to get started with life in the UK.

William and his team were able to secure funding and a house for this desperate Gurkha family within 72 hours of the referral.

By the way, William also found time to give a personal briefing to Immigration Minister, Damien Green on the problems being caused by allowing former Gurkhas into the UK from Nepal but not putting in place any funding or infrastructure to help them when they arrive.

Treasurer, Graham Gregory-Smith, tells me that this division alone has already sourced £24,800 for local former Gurkhas this year alone, most of which comes from the Army Benevolent Fund.

William modestly admits that he is probably now spending over 20 hours a week on Gurkha cases.

It makes you wonder what might have happened to the 50 or so former Gurkhas and their families if William and his fellow caseworkers were not on hand to sort out emergency funding for their food and basic needs plus housing and other support?

And William is just one of the caseworkers in the division each handling anything up to 6 or 10 cases at any one time. From helping a depressed former soldier struggling with PTSD to sourcing a mobility scooter for a disabled WW2 veteran.

And you might be surprised to know how much William and his fellow case workers are paid for this vital work on the front line of welfare for former servicemen or women and their families?

Nothing.

In fact, even the travel expences that all caseworkers can claim (and many do not) has been suspended for the last few weeks because the division is so short of funds.

And they keep that a secret too.

The recent return to Folkestone of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles from Afghanistan serves as a timely reminder of the 340 young men and women already killed in action in Afghanistan since 2001.  

On Remembrance Sunday, quite rightly, many will choose to remember those that lost their lives in conflicts past and present.

But how many will pause to remember those veterans who lose their minds in the service of their country?

How many will think of those who are struggling daily with the mental wounds of war- what the Prince of Wales recently called the “enemy within”?

For caseworkers at SSAFA Forces Help, dealing with veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an everyday occurrence across Kent.  

The volunteer caseworkers at SSAFA receive no specialist training for doing this and cannot attempt to deal with any aspect of the complex symptoms. All they can do is to listen and offer some practical advice for the knock on effects of PTSD- marital breakdown, unemployment, housing, debt, alcoholism or obtaining a war pension.

“The problem seems to be getting bigger” says Major Gerry Bartlett who is Divisional Secretary of SSAFA Forces Help in Canterbury and Ashford.

And please do not think that mental wounds like PTSD are somehow less important than physical ones. It has been reported that 300 veterans of the Falklands War have committed suicide since 1982. That is more than died in combat during the entire conflict.

One of my first cases with SSAFA Forces Help in Kent was to try and assist a former SAS Warrant Officer who had completed too many undercover tours of Northern Ireland, during the height of the troubles. After leaving the army, his life just fell to pieces under the weight of PTSD. Despite his distinguished service record , the testimony from medical experts and personal references from senior Army officers, he still had to fight the MOD for over 4 years to finally win the war pension he was entitled to.

Another former Army parachute instructor greets me at his door with surgical gloves and his shoes wrapped in plastic bags because his PTSD has also manifested itself into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He is trying to bring up a young family but this former hero is usually too anxious to leave his own house.

Combat Stress is the UK's leading military charity specialising in the care of Veterans' mental health and has enormous expertise in treating PTSD.  They report a 66% increase in referrals over the last 5 years. and have a current caseload of over 4,300 veterans.  The oldest veteran on their books is 103. The youngest is only 20.

Tragically, many victims of PTSD find themselves in prison before they are able to obtain treatment. Alcoholism, family breakdown and violence are often associated with the condition and many once proud veterans find themselves reduced to common criminals. Estimates of the numbers of veterans in prison vary from 5,000 to 20,000 and many of these will be as a direct consequence of PTSD.

Every week, Frank Landa a caseworker with SSAFA Forces Help visits veterans in custody at the Sheppey Prison Cluster in Kent offering advice and support to veterans in prison on subjects  ranging from funding of  an Open University Course to support for a Remembrance Sunday Service. Frank estimates that about 10% of offenders are veterans and can see the pattern of PTSD in combination with drugs or alcohol causing violent offences.

“They need a culture of assistance after service” says Frank

This largely forgotten group hidden away with the invisible scares of battle are unlikely to be mentioned during the colourful Festival of Remembrance pageant on Sunday but if you are watching on the BBC just spare a thought for them all the same.

They did their bit too.

The views expressed are those of Stuart Heaver and not necessarily of SSAFA Forces Help or any other armed services or veteran's charity

Last week, I was deeply saddened to read the KM report on how former Gurkha, Sangdup Tamang, had tragically taken his own like by stabbing himself repeatedly with his regimental Khukiri near his home in Cheriton.

The KM reported that Mr Tamang was disappointed by failing to win a full army pension and was struggling to combat throat cancer and our thoughts are with his family and friends at this very sad time.

Earlier in the month, the Ministry of Defense proudly announced how General David Petraeus, commander of all international troops serving in Afghanistan had visited the 1^st Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles in southern Helmand.

In the very same month on the 13 October, the British High Court rejected an appeal led by the British Gurkha Welfare Society and so refused equal pension payments for Gurkha veterans who retired before July 1, 1997, when the Gurkha headquarters were moved from Hong Kong to Britain.

The ruling leaves some 36,000 veterans being paid a third of the pension that Gurkha veterans who retired after the 1997 cut-off date receive, which is on a par with that received by their British colleagues.

Mr. Tamang’s pension may have been a decent sum in rural Nepal but it would not have gone very far in downtown Cheriton.

I do not know the details of poor Sangdup Tamang's death and we should not jump to conclusions but these stories highlight how politicians are always much more eager to throw troops into dangerous conflicts than they are to look after them on their return

How sad and ironic that while the Gurkhas were being commended for defending British interests in one of the toughest combat zones on the planet, one of their proud veterans was taking his own life in a back alley in Kent.

Anyone in the ex-service community knows that there are only a few regiments sent to the most challenging combat zones. When you see that the Royal Marines, the Parachute Regiment and the Ghurkas are being used on a mission, the chances are that it is a pretty impossible one, with a fair chance of intensive fighting at close quarters.

About 200,000 Gurkhas fought for Britain in World Wars I and II, and more than 45,000 have died in British uniform. They served in Burma, Malaya, Cyprus, the Falklands, Iraq and around 3,500 now serve in the British Army; many of these are deployed in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately their bravery and sacrifice have never been adequately rewarded by the establishment. Indeed many would argue privately that the Gurkhas have been treated like rubbish and discriminated against for decades.

An immigration officer in the Home Office once confessed to me that he was under government pressure to single out Gurkha families in Kent for instant repatriation to meet government targets.  Apparently, unlike most illegal immigrants Gurkha families worked hard, paid taxes and had a fixed address so were easy to process for removal.

Most of us are familiar with the victory in the campaign led by Joanna Lumley to win all ex-Gurkhas the right to residency in the UK. How we enjoyed watching her run rings around that dreadful drip of a government minister, Phil Woolas, who many would have been happy to see expatriated in exchange for any ex Gurkha.  Most agree it was a victory for common sense and justice but few are aware of the secondary problems this victory created.

Charity workers and caseworkers on the ground working for organizations like SSAFA Forces Help have been privately worried about the Gurkha situation for some time now. Following the landmark victory by Joanna Lumley and her supporters last year, many retired Gurkha solders have been traveling from Nepal to the UK with their families to take advantage of their well earned right to residency. For them this was a chance to live in the streets paved with gold.

Mr. Tamang was probably one of these hopeful veterans who arrived in the UK in November last year.

The problem for Mr. Tamang and his comrades was that no one in government chose to address the problems which the right to residency ruling created. Often Gurkhas borrowed large sums of money for the air fares from loan sharks at home in Nepal. Often they have no English language, no money, nor a place to stay. Many (Like Mr. Tamang) had health problems or live in overcrowded conditions with their sponsors i.e. fellow Gurkha comrades that are already here. 

For the last few months armed forces charities have been rushed off their feet trying to assist these newly arrived Gurkhas with housing, welfare, health and debt issues because there was no one else to help. The Canterbury and Ashford division of SSAFA Forces Help felt it necessary to appoint a special Gurkha caseworker to specialise in this one area of welfare.

The Royal British Legion has been forced to issue food vouchers to newly arrived Ghurka families so they don’t starve to death.

Hardly the way to treat heroes.