“I was living in a tent in Lyon. People used to bring me things like sandwiches, give me money… then a lady who worked for the French social services said, ‘William, we will send you anywhere in the world you want to go’ and at that point I decided to go back to London.”
William travelled by coach but during a short stop in Paris he lost his passport and money. The passport was recovered and sent on by another coach, but his cash had been taken.
He arrived in the capital penniless.
But William was unfazed. After nine years in the RAF and a lifetime of working, travelling and coping with the aftermath of a serious brain trauma he was both resilient and resourceful. “When I got to London I went to the library and looked up Veterans Aid… this was in the morning. Then I rang them and said ‘I’m in Victoria’ and they said ‘Come and see us’.”
That night the VA team booked William into a local hotel. Although homeless and without money he never spent a night on the streets. “Would you believe it!” he reflects.
“Veterans Aid also gave me a bit of money to keep me going and I got coupons to buy breakfast” recalls William nine months later. His arrival over the Christmas period, and benefits issues associated with long periods of living and working overseas, made it difficult to regularise his situation, but eventually he was admitted to VA’s New Belvedere House hostel.
“I’ll never forget, the first day I got to NBH, I was welcomed, given a coffee and everything I needed, but the next morning there was a bang at the door and the lads said, ‘Come on, we’re going for breakfast’. We walked to this place and we got a lovely breakfast. Gradually I got to know them and they turned out to be a great set of people at NBH. That was the great thing about it. I started going to the morning gym sessions – and I still go back, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – because Pat and the staff there told me to keep in contact. And I do, because as well as helping myself I might be able to help someone else.”
Through Veterans Aid William now has a home of his own. “I’ve got a flat in Camberwell. It was pristine to go into, but that wasn’t enough for Veterans Aid.
“It had just come onto the internet and Pat (NBH’s hostel manager) comes in early, so she saw it. I’m sure that by nine o’clock it would have gone. She got in there first and after an interview with Southern Housing, I was in. Veterans Aid helped me with furniture and everything.
“For a couple of weeks I was on tenterhooks, nibbling my fingernails and chocolate… but then suddenly it was there – and Veterans Aid came and put it all together, which was fantastic! They bought furniture for me and put it in, even put the beds together. It was marvellous. It’s a lovely flat. It doesn’t cost me a great deal and having it gives me a better chance of getting a job.”
William, whose father had been an Army sniper, opted to join the RAF and served from 1972-81; first in Air Traffic Control then on to what was to be the highlight of his service career in terms of excitement – a nine-month stint at RAF Gan in the Maldives, during the Vietnam war.
But the training that set him up for life was that gained at RAF Halton where he trained as a medical technician and worked on complement fixation testing – an immunological process to detect the presence of specific antibodies or antigens in serum. This highly specialised work introduced William to a lifetime of work in associated fields.
He moved to South Africa where he worked on vaccine production projects in Capetown, Johannesburg and a variety of other locations. William enjoyed this employment and it was well paid, but in 1988 life-threatening health condition brought everything to a sudden halt.
“I was losing focus and stability, it became difficult to think. I still had to work but I was very tired, as if I’d run a marathon. Anyway, MRI had come in and they found I had a blockage in my brain. They put a pump in my brain; it’s still here.”
Sadly as he was not a South African citizen and had no health insurance, William had to pay punishing medical bills. In 1989 his parents in Manchester paid for him to come back to the UK to convalesce. As an RAF veteran, and because he had kept his receipts, William was able to recoup some of his outlay, but was soon chafing at the bit to find work again. Jobs followed at Arborfied Garrison in the cookhouse, in various security roles and as a commissionaire at the BBC. In 1992 he suffered a mild stroke, in Cairo, and still has ‘dead spots’, but whatever life threw at William, he bounced back – teaching English in the Ukraine and undertaking community work in Belgium and France.
Today, just months after getting back on his feet in London, William is itching to be doing something useful.
“The quicker I get into work the better but there is no pressure on me now, and pressure is what can send everything into a downward spiral.
“What would I have done without Veterans Aid? I don’t know, I probably would have drifted, walked . . . I was effectively homeless when I arrived. I had no money and no prospects.
“When you are living on the streets you have this constant stress and now I don’t have that, I can relax. Things have worked out well. I went to the gym this morning and I did everything with ease. I don’t have the best co-ordination, perhaps because of the brain injury, but I’m getting stronger – and stronger inside.”
