Marine A’s wife should get a medal for courage
STANDING outside the High Court in the spring sunshine on Wednesday was a shy, unassuming woman clearly unused to the media spotlight. It was Claire Blackman, wife of Sergeant Alexander Blackman — and she was beaming with joy. Her husband, who had been in prison for more than three years, had just been cleared of murder.
In one of the cruellest miscarriages of justice, the proud Royal Marine had been convicted in 2013 of murdering a Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan.
After a heroic campaign started singlehandedly by Claire, and backed by the Mail, the charge has been reduced to manslaughter. New evidence proved this highly commended soldier was suffering from extreme combat stress, and had been shockingly let down by top brass and politicians who had left his unit isolated, ill-equipped and undermanned in highly dangerous Taliban country.
Much was said about Sgt Blackman’s courage, his leadership qualities, his dignity — and of the injustice of his treatment. Less has been told of Claire’s own bravery and tenacity in the colossal battle she fought to see the grotesque wrong against her husband put right.
Yet this daughter of a telephone engineer from Kent — who worked in communications in the NHS and had no understanding of the Armed Forces before she met her gentle giant ‘Al’ — took on a deeply hostile and powerful Establishment, and won. An Establish- ment prepared to allow a good man to rot in jail to cover up its own failures.
She cajoled, she begged, she met the great and the good — anything to try to help her husband. She launched a petition that led to a debate in Parliament and mobilised hundreds of former servicemen in support of Big Al’s cause.
Meanwhile, the Mail campaigned for a new trial and support swelled, with our readers raising more than £800,000 for his legal case. The rest is history and, hopefully, Big Al will be freed after his re-sentencing in the coming days.
There was never a scintilla of self-pity from Claire. Two years ago, she said: ‘I remind myself I am able to speak to him on the phone more than when he was in Afghanistan. He is not being shot at and won’t be coming home in a casket.’
HER QC, Jonathan Goldberg, said: ‘The heroine, of course, is Claire. Without her indefatigable efforts to keep the flame alive on behalf of her husband, none of this would have happened.’
After the decision she said: ‘Al and I cannot thank daily Mail readers enough. They helped us when we were down and without their support we would never have reached this moment.’
Claire was never in the front line, but she kept the home fires burning for her husband and soldiered on for justice. As the military said of our boys’ loved ones during World War II, ‘they also serve who only stand and wait’. Claire served with such gallantry she deserves a medal.