Help for Heroes Launch Speech

Bryn Parry Launch Speech - 30st September 2007

Before I go any further let me make a couple of points.

Firstly, I am not a soldier.... I was a Rifleman 22 years ago and I am very proud of it. I have a son who is at Sandhurst and I am very proud of him too… but I am not a soldier. I am a civilian and as a cartoonist, this is way out of my normal life … so please make allowances for that. If I say soldiers I mean servicemen and women.

Secondly, this has nothing to do with politics. I’m not concerned about the rights and wrongs of policy. I’m concerned about the impact on the young people who get hurt doing their duty and carrying out that policy. Nor am I criticising what happens to them now by way of treatment. It’s very good, but I just think we can and should do better.

What is Help for Heroes all about? The answer is really very simple;… it’s about the blokes. I spent ten years in the army and that was the constant refrain. We were taught at Sandhurst that we were to Serve to Lead and at every level of the services that’s what it is all about. …Look after the blokes.

Soldiers serve their country; they are servicemen.  They get sent to wars and they fight, that’s their job and they do their job brilliantly. Sometimes they are killed while serving their country and when that happens it is a tragedy and we remember them with pride.

Sometimes they are wounded and when that happens we must care for them. These days our front line treatment and our medics are so good that our soldiers are surviving wounds that they would have died from 10 years ago. Some of those injuries are horrific, many are amputees and many are complex trauma cases. Nowadays they don’t die,… they survive and we must ensure that they go on to live good fulfilling lives.

These wounded soldiers are our boys and girls,…most of them are the same age as my children,… and they are our responsibility. We, the people of Great Britain are their parents, regardless of what we might think of the wars that they fight;…they are just ordinary people who we ask to do extraordinary things.. we ask them to risk their lives on our behalf. Which means doing our utmost to support them when things go wrong.

Today is a great day for me – it’s when H4H actually starts doing things instead of talking about doing them. For the last few weeks I’ve lived in a flurry of phone calls, meetings, e-mails, rushing around sorting out admin details. But now – today - H4H actually exists.

I admit it has all been a bit of rush. And it shouldn’t have been possible to do all this and get such an ambitious idea up and running so quickly. The fact that it now exists to me shows how necessary it was – and that other people share my feelings. I’ve had incredible offers of  help in the last few weeks; we have been given offices, given office kit, given half a million leaflets, we have volunteers, even General’s wives, manning the telephones and that is just the beginning.

To the media I say thank you for the great reception you’ve given our message. Now we need all the newspapers backing this appeal, all the TV and radio companies joining in. We want schools to raise money, we want sports teams, pubs and clubs all doing their bit to support our wounded.

Today is the expression of a wide felt, but so far unstated feeling that we need to do something. It’s struck a chord deep in the heart of the British people.

In my parents’ generation normal people got involved in war – horribly in many cases. They were bombed, shot at, torpedoed, invaded, made homeless and went short of food. We all knew the suffering of war. Then after WW11 war became, once again, a professional activity for a small number of dedicated people, often far from the public eye and mind. Iraq & Afghanistan have changed that. Large numbers of British forces have become involved in ferocious struggles far from home – and the result has been a steady stream of casualties coming home.

We have all seen them on TV. We may even know some of them. You have to see them in person, I think, to realise that we owe them something. When my wife Emma and I first went up to Selly Oak Hospital, we met courageous young people with awful wounds facing a difficult and uncertain future. But it was their cheerfulness that got to us and determined us to start Help for Heroes. They gave for us, time for us to give for them.

Emma and I accept that we can’t stop people getting hurt but we can do something to help them get better. We think that the vast majority of people in this country feel the same but do not have a way to express their support for our servicemen.

That’s where H4H comes in. H4H can become a focus for people to show that they really do care. H4H is an appeal,.. an appeal to the people of Great Britain to show that they support our wounded servicemen and to do that by raising a huge amount of money to give them the very best treatment facilities that money can buy.

Let me tell you some of the things we’ll spend the money on. Top of the list is a swimming pool at Headley Court, the marvellous treatment centre which deals with casualties after they come out of hospital. At the moment, they are being put in a minibus and taken to a public swimming pool miles away to do the exercises that are so vital to them regaining their strength. And they have to show their wounds off in public. I think we can do better than that.

Our soldiers should get the best; they give more, risk more, sacrifice more;… they should be given more…. We can give them more.

What is H4H all about? It’s about the blokes. It’s about Derri, a rugby player who has lost both his legs, it about Carl whose jaw is wired up so he has been drinking through a straw. It’s about Richard who was handed a mobile phone as he lay on the stretcher so he could say goodbye to his wife. It is about Ben and it’s about them all. They are just blokes but they are our blokes; they are our heroes. We want to help our heroes.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Please join me in a toast to our heroes…

Bryn Parry

Appeal Chairman

Help for Heroes