Case Studies~ continued

'Jeff - Feisty & Independent at 82

“Potty about aircraft” from his youth Jeff still clearly recalls the days he hung around at Blackpool Squires Gate airport trying to ‘”get some flying.” Persistence paid off and eventually the former Lancaster Royal Grammar School boy got his wish. He joined the RAF to start pilot training in 1944.

Jeff’s wartime tales of rides hitched in American Dakotas, his first sight of flying bombs in Piccadilly and the day he was arrested as a suspected spy make compelling listening as we sit in the Victoria offices of Veterans Aid where he was directed for help after returning to the UK from Gibraltar.

Wild hair and woolly hat belie a sharp mind and independent spirit; Jeff conforms to no stereotype of street homelessness and makes no bones about how distressed he was to arrive in the UK unable to access his bank account or find anywhere to stay.

“I spent a wobbly first night on a chair in St Thomas’s Hospital” he recalls. “I told them, I’m 82, I can’t face a night on the streets.”

In the morning he was directed to an organisation that gave him breakfast “in exchange for listening to a sermon” he explains wryly. A phone call to Veterans Aid soon followed.

“When I came here I was gobsmacked. I turned up and they knew all about me. I was broke and they gave me £70, put me in a decent hotel and for the first time I slept like a log.”

Jeff isn’t the only ex-Serviceman to reach out  to Veterans Aid from overseas; calls for help have come from Canada, Hawaii, Argentina, New Zealand and Thailand.

“Once you’re a member of the ex-service community, you’re a member for life,” says VA chief executive Hugh Milroy. “We may be London based, but our ethos of veteran helping veteran is applicable worldwide.”


'Ken' – Scrapheap Challenge

“I lived in a dustbin for four weeks – it was my home. Then I nearly got tipped into a bin wagon. I smelled, I had nowhere to go and I knew I had to do something.”

Advised by a former CO to “get his arse down to Buckingham Palace Road and Veterans Aid” the 37-year-old ex Fusilier and fine arts graduate did just that. Today he tells what happened to him with wonder and disbelief.

After 10 years service that included spells in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, Ken was medically discharged from the Army suffering from complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“After four months in psychiatric unit and a pat on the back I was on my own,” he says. “They didn’t understand, just put me on loads of drugs. I couldn’t keep a relationship together or a job.”

Injuries and incidents that he’d experienced in the Army preyed on his mind: “There was so much floating around in my head; I was out of the Army and I felt it had washed its hands of me. After I left the psychiatric unit I went into a hostel. It was depressing and I got in trouble with the law. I couldn’t keep my flat together and soon I ended up on the street.”

“I couldn’t look after myself; I drank the cheapest alcohol I could buy, but it wasn’t enough. Then I started using cocaine. I’d lost everything – and I still had PTSD. They were bad times – I had flashbacks, blackouts and then I got run over by a coach in Victoria and smashed up my face.”

Ken’s possessions at that time amounted to a sleeping bag and a plastic bag to put it in.
”My pension money went on drink and drugs and I lived like that for six months. My partner had tried to help me and still brought me food, but it was impossible.”

Just weeks after presenting himself at VA’s offices in Victoria - “stinking and desperate” - Ken is unrecognisable. ‘Clean and dry’ in every sense of the words he describes the charity as “an angel on my shoulder”.
“Drink and drugs were part of a coping strategy for me – but they didn’t work; just made me more aggressive. I was on such a short fuse that sometimes I just saw a red mist. I suffered from isolation, but sometimes I just wanted to be alone – which is how I ended up living in a bin for four weeks.”

Recalling the post deployment ‘decompression’ briefs he and his colleagues were given Ken says: “We were sat in a hall – all together. Whatever we felt, no-one would say anything in front of the other men. They have diary systems now, but when I left the bottom line was ‘go away and deal with it (PTSD)’. “
Ken’s nightmares only began to recede significantly after he came to Veterans Aid. “Because they are veterans helping veterans they know what you want. At the hostel there is real camaraderie and understanding. There is always someone you can talk to.” Today Ken is smart, well-dressed and painting again – with materials purchased by VA. He hopes to stage an exhibition to raise money for the charity so that it can help others like him. “They gave me a home and support – and not just for a short period; it goes on and on. I want to give something back. They are just brilliant.”