My suicide bid after horror of war, by Marine A comrade
Commando ‘driven off the rails’ by combat stress
A FORMER commando who was with ‘Marine A’ Alexander Blackman when he shot a Taliban fighter has revealed he tried to kill himself.
Sam Deen, 31, said he had struggled with mental trauma since the incident in Afghanistan and took an overdose when he hit ‘rock bottom’.
Mr Deen, who was known through the case as Marine E, yesterday spoke for the first time about the toll of being court martialled over the killing in Helmand province in 2011. He admitted that he had offered to shoot the wounded insurgent, who was eventually killed by Sgt Blackman. The sergeant was convicted of murder in 2013, but freed in 2017 after Daily Mail readers raised funds for an appeal that found he had been suffering from combat stress and was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
He and Mr Deen were among five Marines initially charged with murdering the armed insurgent. They had found him lying mortally wounded in a cornfield after an Apache helicopter had shot him when he tried to storm a British outpost.
The murder charges were later dropped against Mr Deen, who told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show: ‘You can’t really go through something like that and not be different at the end of it. I absolutely went off the rails.
‘I broke down and was crying. No one knew what to do. The stresses from the trial all just boiled open and popped. It has just really affected my mental health years down the line.’
Mr Deen, who is from Leeds, revealed he tried to take his own life last year, adding: ‘I was having panic attacks. I didn’t want to live like this any more. I took an overdose. It wasn’t the best time.’ Recalling the shooting, he said: ‘The guy was dying. He was in pain, he was going to die anyway. There is no other way that day could have ended without risking British casualties. It had to be that way.’ Sgt Blackman told the programme: ‘After my own mental health diagnosis, which helped me understand more why I did
what I did on the day, and having many friends diagnosed since, you see what a devastating impact that can have. You can appear normal, yet struggle terribly. It needs to be addressed.’
after Sgt Blackman was jailed, there was a clamour for justice after a Mail investigation revealed details of the hellish conditions he was operating under in afghanistan.
Funded by Mail readers, he appealed in 2016 and a year later his murder conviction was downgraded to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. High Court judges ruled that combat stress had clouded his judgment on the day he pulled the trigger, leading him to snap following months of brutal fighting against taliban insurgents.
Sgt Blackman said yesterday: ‘One of the things that affected me the most was the damaging affect it had on the young men in my command, and it has been one of the hardest things for me to get over.’ In the two years since h his release the 45-year-old has written a book – My toughest Battle – and is now working for ExFor+, an organisation t that helps military veterans.
Sgt Blackman, from taunton i in Somerset, was in charge of a s small band of Marines manning n an outpost in what was dubbed the most dangerous square mile on Earth.
His men later said he had shot the wounded fighter who ‘everybody wanted dead’ to p protect his junior comrades.
they said he took responsibility because not finishing off the unsurgent would have risked British lives.
Sgt Blackman spent 1,277 days behind bars for the shooting. top brass left him to rot in jail, but an investigation by the Mail revealed vital evidence had been ‘deliberately withheld’ from his trial.
Our appeal for donations to pay for a new legal team was backed by the author Frederick Forsyth. the campaign was spearheaded by the sergeant’s loyal wife Claire.
‘I will never be able to thank enough the Mail readers and everyone else who helped me, but hopefully I can at least show that I am taking a positive step to help others,’ said Sgt Blackman.
‘If my life had gone slightly differently, and I had finished my service in the Marines, I probably wouldn’t have been that interested in doing this.
‘But I have been shaped by my experiences and now I am in a position where I really want to help other veterans.’
ExFor+ was set up by Simon adams, another former Royal Marine. He said: ‘We want to help injured or sick veterans who have served their country and are ready and skilled to continue making a positive difference in civilian life.’
For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit www.samaritans.org.
‘Months of brutal fighting’