Veterans' Private Pilgrimage, 23 Years On

Penguin News, November 2005

Four men who served with the Parachute Regiment during the Falklands War made a journey back to the Islands this month, their visit planned to coincide with Remembrance Day. Mark Blain and Chris Hamill fought with 3 Para in the battle for Mount Longdon while Mark O'Neill and Karl Harper were with 2 Para at Goose Green.

Also travelling with them were Pat and Jean Higgs, mother and sister of Lance Corporal Peter Higgs, who was killed on Mount Longdon, and another veteran, Derek 'Smokey' Cole, a representative of the Falklands Veterans Foundation, who served on HMS Intrepid in 1982.

On the eve of the group's departure, Mark Blain spoke to Penguin News about his experience in 1982 and his life following the war.

Mark was 22 when he served with C Company 3 Para during the war. C Company were held as reserves for A and B Company during the battle for Longdon. "A few of us peeled off with whoever was next to us. I think I ended up with A Company - I'm not really sure because they weren't my lads. We were in the same battalion but you didn't know everyone."

During the battle, Mark said, he moved "all over the place - I was moving on my tod, moving from one place to another." A position he was trying to fight through was covered by machine gun fire so he moved back to find another route; as he headed back, he was hit by shrapnel from a 121 mortar.

He clearly recalls the incident: "It landed on my left hand side and it just felt like someone got a big blanket, dipped it in hot water and hit me with it. I just felt a hot blast. It sounds a bit awful to explain but I didn't feel myself het hit, there was just a warm blast of air - like when you open the oven door - and I just felt myself take off. It didn't hurt or anything."

When Mark's sergeant major later visited him on his hospital ship he recounted seeing Mark fly 15 to 20 feet up in the air and about 20 to 30 feet to his right.

"I remember hitting the floor and carrying on rolling for ages - mortars always fire more than one round and the blast of each one was just pushing me. I stopped and I remember lying there and thinking 'I must be dead now'. Then I heard another noise and I thought it was another machine gun shooting.

"I rolled myself over; I thought my arm had gone - it was stuck behind me but I thought it had blown off. I had had a bit of shrapnel across in the stomach so there was blood there, my sleeve was all tattered and battered. But the noise I heard wasn't a machine gun it was some of my mates coming to get me, it was the noise of their trousers as they ran."

To his relief, Mark discovered he had not lost his arm - "I thought, 'that's handy'" - and ran down the mountain with his section commander holding a vein from his arm wrapped round his finger, to stem the blood flow.

He was evacuated by Gazelle helicopter to the field hospital at Ajax Bay. After surgery he was moved to the hospital ship Uganda.

Mark returned to Britain via Montevideo and Ascension Island and then spent the best part of the next year in hospital, his army career effectively over. "While I was in hospital, my boss came in, and said chances were that I would have to leave - he said they could only offer me a job I wouldn't want to do, either in the stores or in an office. I had planned to make the Paras my career but when he said that, I knew I couldn't do those jobs for however many years. So I received a medical discharge."

He was unable to work for a number of years - "it took me a long time before I could use my arm enough to get by; sometimes if I was thinking too much, it just wouldn't work" - and employment has continued to prove difficult as "the arm has always ended up taking over".

In addition to this physical legacy of the war, Mark has also suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He was diagnosed in 1986 by Professor Gordon Turnbull, a consultant psychiatrist specialising in the assessment of patients suffering from the psychological after-effects of trauma.

"At the time I didn't know what PTSD was. When I went to see him, he said he would need to interview me for three days to see what level I was at. Within an hour he said, 'I want you to come back because you are one of the worst cases I've seen here.'"

Before this diagnosis, Mark said, he was prone to violent behaviour but, "I'd blame everybody else; as soon as I found someone looking at me, that was it, I'd go off on one."

He explained, "I think it was because I had lived so long with it that that was just the way I was. A lot of my mates said I used to just sit there staring at people and didn't know I was doing it. A lot of people, more so girls, would walk up to me and say 'you don't half scare me' and I never used to know why."

H recalled, "One night I smashed a pub to bits on my tod. I was wearing a 3 Para sweatshirt and a guy said something to me about it. He wouldn't come outside when I invited him to, so I just belted him. Then I smashed the place to bits. By the time the police arrived about fifteen minutes later, the place looked like a grenade had gone off in it. Many times I would end up fighting but the police, once they heard who I was, would let me go - they thought they were doing me a favour."

At the end of ten days under the eye of Dr Turnbull, Mark said, "I understood then what was going on. It would be soft things. Like I would be sitting in a pub or anywhere and if I found someone looking at me, in my head I'd be thinking 'What the hell's he looking at?' And then I'd start thinking about my mates that were killed and I'd think 'If he says anything about them, I'll kill him.' Those people didn't know anything about me and what I'd been through - it was just me.

"Once I understood things I learned how to stop myself. I know now that if I start losing my temper, my mouth goes dry. For years I would just have a drink and carry on but now I know it's telling me to get out."

Mark returned to Mount Longdon on Friday and again on Saturday night and Monday afternoon: "I just walked up and at there on my own, in my own little bubble."

Of his Saturday night excursion, he said, "When I got to the 'bowl', where a few of my friends were killed, it just went really peaceful and quiet. I just sat in there - I could have stayed there - I felt at peace and at ease."

He said his return to the Falklands further helped him come to term with the events of 1982; unlike a number of veterans, he has always believed the liberation of the Falklands was entirely worthwhile.

"I know there are some who think it was a waste of time but I don't think it was. I've always believed you live under our flag, you live under our law, you want to be our people, so that's that." He added, "When you're a soldier, if you're sent by your government to go and protect people who live under your government you don't moan about it because that's what you're there for."

He said this belief has been reinforced by Islanders' reception of him and his friends: "Everyone has been dead nice and friendly." Of the war, he said, "I'd do it again if I had to." He paused then added, "I think a lot of the lads who are bitter about the war, if they would just come back it would change their minds."

First printed in the Penguin News on 18 November 2005 and reproduced by kind permission of the Editor

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