Trauma nurse’s tribute to lost soldier wins prince’s award for war poetry
IN her work helping traumatised war veterans, nurse Debbie Lawson has heard many harrowing stories.
But one touched her more than most. It came from a former member of a tank crew in Afghanistan, who saw his friends killed when their group was attacked.
He helped bring their bodies back to base. Now at home in the UK, having left the Army, he believes he ‘sees’ his dead comrades every day.
When Mrs Lawson, 63, read about a competition launched by Prince William to write a poem that reflects on ‘humankind’s ability to triumph over adversity’, it was to this soldier’s tale that she turned for inspiration.
She had not written a poem since her youth in the 1960s. But the words poured out so easily as she sat at her computer that her poignant poem, entitled One For The Team, was completed in ‘ten minutes’, she said.
There were more than 5,000 entries in the competition, A Poem To Remember, marking the opening of a £300million centre for wounded military personnel. And to her complete shock, Mrs Lawson was declared the winner.
The mother of two’s poem will be read by Prince William later this week at the new Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre (DNRC) at Stanford Hall, near Loughborough. Her words will also be installed there permanently, cementing her place as a modern-day wordsmith in the great tradition of First World War poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
Mrs Lawson, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has been a nurse for 42 years. As well as working in the A&E department at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, she is a trained counsellor, and
‘The unspoken, hidden enemy we all carry’
has volunteered for the past few years to help those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
After learning that her poem had won, she said: ‘I’m overwhelmed, this is such an honour. I haven’t written poetry since I was a teenager – probably when some boy left me! But I was very attracted by the subject and the cause behind the competition.
‘When these boys come home, the band plays and they are all lauded. But after that, and when the funerals of those who didn’t make it are over, some cannot move on.
‘I’ve carried with me for some time the tragic story of the man who inspired the poem. I was trying to say this person was a big, strong man who had a family and laughed and joked with his mates. Then this little group of friends went into a dustbowl of awfulness and he had to carry his friends home and tell their families. Now he says he sees his dead friends. I think it keeps them alive for him.
‘There’s something about the written word that keeps people’s memories alive too.
‘I have shared the poem with him and he is very moved by it, as he believes it will always help evoke the memories of his comrades. I will never reveal who he is, but he knows he inspired it. He told me that he felt very proud to have done so and he has shown it to the family of his best friend who was killed.’
Mrs Lawson feels so strongly about helping veterans due to her own military links. Her husband Alan, 60, spent 42 years in the RAF and for much of their marriage they have lived on or near military bases. Falklands veteran Mr Lawson, a flight sergeant, retired this month. An engineer, he installed weapons arming systems in aircraft and trained others how to do so.
Their daughter Caroline’s fiance, who cannot be named because of the nature of his work, has undertaken multiple tours in Afghanistan as a member of the Special Forces of the Australian military. After hearing Mrs Lawson’s poem had won, he texted her, saying: ‘Can I say thank you for choosing to write about the unspoken, hidden enemy that we all carry.’
Caroline, 28, a copywriter, lives with her fiance in Melbourne. The Lawsons’ other daughter Jenny, 29, is a recruitment manager and lives in Aylesbury.
Mrs Lawson’s paternal grandfather, Norman Wheeler, was a conscript in the First World War, while her maternal grandfather, Thomas Reynolds, was a major and fought in both world wars, once being held in a German prisoner of war camp.
And Mrs Lawson’s uncle, Mieczyslaw Adamek, was among many heroic Polish airmen who fought for the Allies after Poland was invaded by the Germans and Russians in 1939. The Spitfire pilot fought in the Battle of France and the Allied invasion of continental Europe, before being killed in May 1944 when his plane was shot down.
The DNRC project was largely funded by the sixth Duke of Westminster, who died in 2016. His son-in-law, broadcaster Dan Snow, chaired the poetry competition’s judging panel, which also included Stephen Fry. After they selected five finalists there was a public vote that Mrs Lawson, who will receive a £2,000 prize, won with 49 per cent.