'We have lived 1982 on a day to day basis'

Penguin News, May 2005

HMS Sheffield sailed from the United Kingdom on November 19, 1981 for a patrol in the Arabian Gulf. After participating in a major Mediterranean exercise, and four days before her planned return to Portsmouth, the ship was diverted to the South Atlantic on April 2, 1982, within hours of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.

On board was Mark Hiscutt, who, as a result of the Sheffield's diversion to the South Atlantic, was forced to write a short note to his fiance, Kirsty, telling her to cancel their wedding, planned for May 8, 1982. The couple eventually married a matter of weeks later - once Mark had returned from war - however, their future together was not to be anything like the happy scenario the young couple would have envisaged.

Just a few days before their original wedding date, Mark was in the gun bay of HMS Sheffield when she was hit by an Argentine Exocet. The missile did not explode but caught fire. Mark said he first saw the plumes of smoke when he got up onto the ship's forecastle. "It didn't register to me that people could be dead - that didn't register until later."

Mark is reluctant to talk in detail of what he witnessed on Sheffield. However, he admits he ventured back into the ship twice while she burned, protected only by a respirator, or gas mask. "At that time in the Navy - not like now - ships never had a lot of breathing apparatus and those we did have were being used by the people fighting the fire. The trouble with using respirators in a smoke filled compartment is that the filter clogs up quickly and you then start breathing in all sorts of rubbish."

Along with his friend 'Bones', Mark began to look for "Number One - our laundry man". Bones started to feel unwell and the two headed forward to climb a ladder out; while on the ladder, Bones, who was six foot six inches tall, collapsed, and Mark, who weighed a mere eight and a half stone at the time, held him up. "I started shouting for help but couldn't be heard through my respirator so I took if off and kept shouting."

Eventually help arrived and Bones was moved up on deck. He stopped breathing twice, however the ship's doctor managed to resuscitate him. Incredibly, after that scare, Mark returned into the ship once again to look for Number One. "I started feeling a bit funny this time - I didn't collapse but I had to get up for fresh air." After a quick rest he joined the fire fighting effort.

Sadly, the fire could not be contained and approximately four or five hours later, the ship's Captain, Sam Salt, gave the order to abandon ship. HMS Arrow came alongside and Sheffield's remaining crew clambered aboard. Mark recalled: "I think that was the scariest part - we had to jump over on to Arrow and if you missed, you'd end up between the two ships."

The next day they transferred to RFA Fort Austin and later moved north to Ascension Island aboard the tanker British Esk. Back at home in the UK, nineteen year old Kirsty was writing Mark a letter when she heard of the Sheffield's demise on the television news. She soon received a telegram from Mark to say he was alive and uninjured - at least physically. For, since those fateful events of May 4, Mark has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

He said he suffers terrible guilt after the death of a friend, Tony Marshall. During Sheffield's patrol in the Arabian Gulf, Tony had been looking forward to returning home to his wife who, Mark recalls, was expecting their first child. "But unfortunately he didn't come home. He's still down here and that's where my guilt comes from. He should have come home and I should still be here. He had a wife and baby to come home to. Kirsty was only nineteen, she could have gone off and found someone better than me."

Mark and Kirsty were finally able to tie the know on June 19, 1982 and they went on to have six children. Mark remained in the Royal Navy until 1988. He now works for oil giant BP and he lives daily with PTSD.

Kirsty summarised the situation: "He came back a changed person - he didn't come back the same person who went away," and the first change she noticed in her husband's behaviour was in his eating: "He became a compulsive eater. Something like a trip to the supermarket would become an ordeal for Mark because they are so crowded. By the time we'd come out, he would have started to eat the shopping." He also began to drink heavily and said, "It was easy to hid it in the Navy. I never became an alcoholic but I wasn't far from it."

Kirsty said she and mark "live 1982" on a daily basis and their marriage has been influenced irrevocably by the war. She admitted they have never "had fun together" and Mark's relationship with his children, particularly the elder two, has suffered from his PTSD. Mark admitted: "I enjoy the company of the children but I don't have any fun with them."

Kirsty said she "walked on eggshells" in her relationship with Mark and had to watch what she said. This took its toll on her and she developed depression and life-threatening anorexia. "My depression covered up Mark's problems. Over the years it didn't get better and eventually manifested into anorexia when I was thirty." As Kirsty slowly began to recover, Mark started to regress. Kirsty explained, "He didn't have to be this big strong person who had to cope for me. By 1999 I was as recovered as you can be from anorexia and he began to go down hill."

One morning in 1999 Mark crumbled. Kirsty recalled: "All of a sudden he came downstairs, sat on the stairs and burst into tears. I couldn't quite understand why all this had come to a head. I phoned his work to tell them he wouldn't come in. I spoke to his occupational health advisor and she said Mark had mentioned the Sheffield to her and she wondered if it could be related to that."

Mark contacted Combat Stress, a charity which specialises in helping those of all ranks from the Armed Forces and the Merchant Navy suffering from psychological disability as a result of their service. He now stays at a treatment centre two or three times a year and Kirsty attends a family support group. Mark described consultant psychiatrist Morgan O'Connell, the driving force behind Combat Stress, as "God" and added, "the man should be cloned before he dies."

With the support of the charity behind them, Mark and Kirsty felt able to make a visit to the Falklands this month. Kirsty said, until the visit, her outlook of the Falklands was "fairly confused. I had a grudge against these islands. I couldn't understand why people would want to live here and why they wouldn't just go and live somewhere else. I don't mean to be horrible but I was only nineteen years old at the time. 1982 has always been in our faces and always in our heads."

She said the return visit had been a "rollercoaster ride" but had given them a chance to discuss "what we couldn't discuss when Mark said home." She said, for the first time since 1982, she had been able to fully emphasise with Mark's pain. Mark added, "Now we have been able to get it into perspective and to see that the Islands are worth it. We've seen how peaceful and content the people here are. It will never justify the deaths of my mates but it justifies what we did."

He paid tribute to the actions of Islanders in 1982 and described the fight against Argentina as, "a joint effort - yes, we came as a task force but the Islanders did their bit too. It was a team effort that liberated the Islands and the Islanders played their part."

On May 4, the 23rd anniversary of the bombing of the Sheffield, Mark visited the memorial to the ship on Sea Lion Island. Beside the memorial he placed a plaque made of Portland Stone and steel, bearing an engraved poem by Steve 'Smudge' Smith, entitled 'The Bravest of the Brave'. Mark described the plaque as "a gift for my mates".

When asked whether she would recommend that other wives accompany their husbands on these personal pilgrimages to the Falklands, Kirsty chose her words carefully. She said, "It is something that mark and I had to do, needed to do. But I think some other wives are too bitter to be able to come."

Before travelling to the Islands this month Mark visited his friend, Dave Roberts, and his wife Anita. Dave also served in 1982 and Mark said his friend's life has been "screwed up" by PTSD. Mark asked Anita if she wanted him to take anything to the Falklands on her behalf. She asked for a yellow rose to be laid at the memorial on Sea Lion Island, something Mark and Kirsty duly did. When Mark asked if she wanted anything brought back from the Falklands, Anita's answer was short but heartbreaking. She said simply, "Yes, bring my David back."

First published in the Penguin News on 13 May 2005 and reproduced with the kind permission of the Editor

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