A Pearoast
In my job with the Civil Service I often find myself at the Defence Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court in Surrey. For those of you who don't know about this place it is where injured soldiers are sent for rehabilitation after they leave hospital.

Some of these folks have some of the most horrific injuries I have ever seen ranging from horrific burns to single, double, and often triple amputees not mention some of the psychiatric problems that many of these soldiers need treatment for.

Without fail each and everyone of these people (outwardly at least) hold no bitterness, no hatred and no anger to anyone. To a man, each and every one of those soldiers says they would rather it have been them that was injured rather than a mate and that they would return to active duty would their injuries permit it.

The courage these people show in the face of such injuries and their determination to do the things that we all take for granted, such as wiping their own backsides or just being able to walk from the living room to the kitchen unaided is genuinely astonishing.

To this day I don't think I've laughed as I did during the wheelchair tennis tournament of 2012 during which a young Lance Corporal took an almighty swing at the ball with his adapted prosthetic arm. In doing so the tether that attached the limb to his body became detached resulting in the limb flying out of control (with the racquet still attached) across the net and striking the Umpire (an Army Doctor) right between the eyes. Knocking him bandy for about five minutes. Hearing the L/CPL bemoan the fact "me fuckin' arm just fell off" and collapsing into a fit of giggles can't fail to raise your spirits.

The rather rambling point I'm trying to make is we've uttered the immortal words about how that particular day at work could not have been worse.



Trust me. Yes it could have been.


EDIT: Not strictly speaking the emergency services but near enough as far as I'm concerned.
(kickstandrich last had sex with your mum/sister/wife/daughter on, Mon 20 May 2013, 15:21, 17 replies)

You're living in cloud cuckoo land
I wouldn't disagree that most if not all of these people should be respected for what they have given (politics aside), but to say they're all happy and fluffy is utter bollocks.

I know a lot of forces and ex forces people, and more than a few of them have been permanently and negatively affected by what they've seen and done.

You're probably seeing them before the adrenaline has worn off, and while they're still being intensively cared for.

Go back in a year when they've left the care system and see how they are. Even the ones that stay in the Army are rarely the same. Bitter, angry and hateful is pretty much the exact description.

Bear in mind a lot of them have wives and kids that bear the brunt of it, and you've got a fair few unhappy people.
(username failed moderation, Mon 20 May 2013, 16:22, closed)

You think they know pain?
My office has blocked access to facebook - if I couldn't go home and take it out on the missus, I swear I'd go mad.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 20 May 2013, 16:35, closed)

Yeah? Well, Costa didn't have any marshmallow toppers this morning.
FML
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Mon 20 May 2013, 16:41, closed)

I just hate how
big the lumps are in my crunchy nut clusters.

I sometimes have to hit them with a spoon.
(username failed moderation, Mon 20 May 2013, 17:04, closed)

You ought to be
locked up.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 21 May 2013, 9:49, closed)

......
I can only speak as I find. I don't doubt that many are angry and bitter but as I said in my post outwardly they don't display, or at least they don't to me. I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist so I have to take things the way they seem.
(kickstandrich last had sex with your mum/sister/wife/daughter on, Mon 20 May 2013, 18:53, closed)

Just because your experience is different from that of
the OP doesn't mean that his experience is invalid.
You weren't there man so you saw no bollocks.
Oh, and there's no requirement for you to type on behalf of ex-forces personnel.
The vast majority of us can still communicate effectively, that is without having to plant our own words in other people's sentences.
Happy and fluffy my arse.
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Mon 20 May 2013, 21:40, closed)

I'm not sure if we disagree or not
but he's obviously in contact with people who are being looked after, in the early stages of their recovery.

I'm talking for example about someone who did several tours in Bosnia, was not injured but was closely involved in the aftermath of some of the atrocities that happened there.

He has not been the same since he was there. He is perfectly functional, still in the Army, but is basically a horrible person most of the time. His wife and kids bear a lot of that.

Those are not the people this guy is talking about, and there are thousands of them.
(username failed moderation, Tue 21 May 2013, 11:28, closed)

I'm not sure if we agree or not.
It's not what happened to you, it's how you see what happened to you.
Your perception can change and of course perceptions of the same incident differ anyway. Care has improved but severe trauma is just as hard to deal with as shell shock was.
A very common "belief", even amongst dreadfully injured servicemen is that they should have died instead of their mates. That's a bastard to shift because it's all in the training.
Ongoing care is often needed but up until recently the army specialist hospitals would sign off a traumatised patient simply because his service had come to an end.
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Tue 21 May 2013, 16:58, closed)

OK.
My original point was: It is kind of naive to think a soldier you meet in the early stages of care after a war injury is happy about everything.

So I think we agree.
(username failed moderation, Tue 21 May 2013, 17:34, closed)

I don't

( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Tue 21 May 2013, 23:14, closed)

Ok, so I have no idea what you're saying,
but I'm not really interested anyway.
(username failed moderation, Wed 22 May 2013, 8:45, closed)

Malingers, shirkers and Nancy boys.
In my day a nip of brandy, 10 minutes of Canadian Air Force exercises and the threat of a visit from the MO was enough to get any man back on the line.

My good friend Captain Smyth was wounded 28 times, until all that was left of him was a head perched on a bucket of sand. He still managed to finish off over a hundred German brutes using nothing more than his mouth.

An example to us all!
(Brigadier an old boot sitting on a man's face - forever, Tue 21 May 2013, 9:51, closed)

pfft!

( da5id <YOUR SIG HERE>, Tue 21 May 2013, 15:26, closed)

Finished the German brutes with his mouth?
Was he Lionel Blair?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 21 May 2013, 16:13, closed)

Nooooo
Lionel would finish them off without using his mouth.
(Brigadier an old boot sitting on a man's face - forever, Tue 21 May 2013, 16:34, closed)

And then they cut his head off as well :(
But the bucket of sand still fought bravely on.
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Tue 21 May 2013, 17:00, closed)