Messages of support

Keep up the (amazing) work! Believe me, after 12 years spent in marketing and PR and 20 years in general business, your website, image and success is far from anything amateur-ish. (With TRHs now giving you such a fantastic endorsement, what more could you possibly ask for!) The hardest steps are always the first and quite frankly, what you are providing is long overdue and puts our government to shame. Apart from the military, H4H will also strike a cord with a lot of (decent-minded) people in this country. So just go for it!

I met Bryn in the late 80s in Wolfenbuttel when he did some caricatures of mess members. I am very pleased to have an original. The charity is wonderful and as an old but still serving officer can I say that we are very very grateful for your support. The Help for Heroes theme has hit the mark in a way that others haven't . It has captured the imagination of the new generation to the extent that one of my young lads did the Belfast marathon in one of your shirts without getting shot at all!

best wishes and please keep up the good work.

i am writing to you from myself and my entire family (some of whom were servicemen in the 2 and 10 battalion of the parachute regiment) to say that we are proud that these men and women are willing to sacrifice everything to help their country and FINALLY there is something to help them back! I myself am an avid supporter of this charity and would like to wish all the team a huge thank you as without them the state of of troops would look somewhat different. If my dad or uncles (who served in the parachute regiment) lost part of their lives while in the army i would hope that they had something like this to help them. My father is extremely proud of his regiment and equally of this charity. so to end all we can say is thank you.

But the price is high – in the last 9 months the casualties in 2 battalions of The Rifles serving in Iraq include 7 killed on operations and 48 wounded. One of those who died recently was Major Paul Harding, a Winchester man, whose funeral took place here in the cathedral in July.  His Commanding Officer wrote this of him the day after he was killed:

“The Battalion has been hit hard by Paul’s death; the collective sense of grief is tangible. Paul embodied a life based on service to others; duty and self-sacrifice – the life of a soldier.  He chose this life and lived it with a passion; he died prematurely but he died doing what he loved.

We are not bowed or beaten by his loss.  Instead we stand a little taller today.  The resilience, determination, professionalism, decency and compassion, pride, good humour and fighting spirit that I see in the eyes of this Battalion, despite the losses we have suffered – these things are Paul’s legacy”

Whilst we can be confident of the wonderful medical treatment the wounded receive, somehow there is insufficient to go round for the numbers requiring certain treatments.  Help for Heroes is a fund just started to raise money to build an orthopaedic swimming pool at Headley Court, the Services main rehabilitation centre in the UK.  The initiative came from a former Green Jacket who, having visited some of the wounded and seen their suffering, their courage, their modesty and their cheerfulness wanted to help.  The motivation behind this will be recognisable to everyone here today who has ever had any kind of responsibility or authority over other people, on whatever scale – “it’s about the blokes” he said, it’s about the men and women who are doing the business.  We, as individuals in authority at any level, are nothing without them – the people for whom we have a caring responsibility.

Part of the Remembrance  Sunday sermon by Brigadier (Retired) David Innes in Winchester Cathedral

The following letter is an extract from a serving soldier to another’s mother. It says it all.

“I was shot down in a helicopter in 1978 and my two colleagues, including my CO, were killed.  I was unconscious for five weeks and managed to break my back, legs and elbow and suffer a number of internal injuries, but the support I received from the army was extraordinary.  I couldn't walk for about six months, and was unable to make any sensible conversation for many weeks, but I want to assure you, perhaps more than anything else, that I too had a visitors' book by my bed but I can still remember now the people who came to see me and the genuine affection that they were showing, and that I wanted to give back to them too.

My eyes pointed in all directions for nearly a year, which Stephen's don't, and I still have double-vision now, thirty years later, but I was able to get through it because, like Stephen, I was young (24 years), I was very fit and I couldn't have asked for better medical attention.

After seven months or so, as I was beginning to walk (hobble!) again, I was sent to Headley Court where I spent the rest of the year.  Headley Court is absolutely brilliant at bringing badly injured servicemen back into the military family and to introduce them to best remedial training there is in a calm and and highly professional way.  By the time I left in January 1979, I, who a year before was VSI for weeks, could run and beat the best of them.”

On a recent visit to the military wing of Sellyoak Hospital in Birmingham I met members of our local Regiment, the Rifles, who had been wounded in Iraq. It struck me that we in Britain are in danger of mirroring what happened in The USA at the time of Vietnam. At that time wounded servicemen returned to a country that was tired of the war, had forgotten what they were fighting for and did not want to be reminded of it.

Whatever people think of the deployment of our troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, the British people have always held our Armed Forces in the highest esteem. People rather pompously refer to it as the "covenant" between the Armed Forces and the British people. Some would now suggest that that covenant has been broken. I have proof that it has not.

On Friday I arranged a visit to Newbury races for around 20 wounded soldiers. They had all received serious injuries from bullets or shrapnel. The Racecourse management were superb and had laid on a VIP day out which was thoroughly enjoyed by all. At one point in the day the soldiers entered the parade ring and an announcement was made over the loud speaker as to who they were. Within and instant sustained and prolonged applause echoed around the Racecourse. I have every belief that the same would happen at Wembley or Lords.

What strikes me when I meet such people is how modest they are and how proud they are of the job they were doing when they were wounded. These men are modern day heroes. We cannot let them come to terms with their injuries behind closed doors. They have to know they are respected for being the best of the best and for the sacrifices they have made.

Richard Benyon
MP for Newbury