Band of brothers

Michael Alexander speaks to Don Snyder, founder of the Caddie School for Soldiers, which is changing military veterans’ lives

A merican novelist, screenwriter and caddie Don Snyder has never served in the military.

But when the founder of the world’s first residential caddie school for ex-servicemen talks about what inspired him to establish Caddie School for Soldiers – currently running for its second year at the Duke’s Course, by St Andrews – he’s in no doubt that he understands what binds those “bands of brothers” together.

“My father went off to World War Two after Pearl Harbor,” explained the Mainebased 69-year-old, who wrote novels and non-fiction for 40 years, including the Emmy-nominated 2003 movie Fallen Angel.

“He came home and he married the girl he loved, Peggy. She was 18. Nine months later, she gave birth to me and my twin brother.

“Then she died 16 days later. “There he was. Broken. He spent all of that autumn sleeping on her grave in a little cemetery.

“And it was the guys he had gone to war with who took turns coming by in the morning picking him up and taking him to the coffee shop. All his life, he told me that those soldiers had saved his life.”

The point of origin for Don’s Caddie School for Soldiers dream came in 2008 and 2010 when he was working for two seasons as a caddie at St Andrews and Kingsbarns.

Having “lost belief” in himself as a writer and with his four children having grown up, he needed to find new purpose in life and had made a promise to his son, Jack, that he’d caddie for him on his first professional golfer tour.

He was struck by the camaraderie and rugged loyalty of caddies out on the Fife courses – no matter how bad conditions got – and when he started hearing about soldiers in America coming back from the Middle East with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), he began thinking how those caddie traits defined soldiers as well.

Fast forward to a year ago and the original Caddie School for Soldier participants gathered at a house in Elie for their first meal together ahead of their training.

Don was deeply struck by the fact that these soldiers, albeit 70 years on, were the “same kind of people” his father used to tell him about during and after the Second World War.

They carried a deep affection and loyalty within them, and while his father “never recovered” from the loss of his wife, these “fathers of Don’s boyhood” helped teach him what it meant to be alive or, as he puts it, what it meant to “be a man”.

It’s a sentiment Don has held close to his heart for the past fortnight as another seven former soldiers from Canada, the United States and the UK have convened at The Duke’s Course for the second session of the Caddie School for Soldiers.

Over the course of the month, the art of becoming a golf caddie is being learned by Dan Matthews – Royal Canadian Parachute Regiment; Rick Finn – Canadian Army; Stuart Beaton – Royal Logistics Corps; Robert Goodwin – Coldstream Guards/royal Medical

Dad spent all that autumn sleeping on Mum’s grave. It was the guys he’d gone to war with who took turns picking him up.