Veteran says support group saved his life
I WALKED past, saw the sign, went in and they saved my life.
That is how veteran Nigel Turner feels after getting help from the Veterans Outreach Support in Portsmouth.
The 65-year-old said: ‘I helped with the casualties from HMS Sheffield and I saw burnt shipmates.
‘I didn’t want to talk about it at first and at the time you just bottle that kind of thing up and move on.
‘When I got back I would not want to speak to or meet up with other veterans as it brought up bad memories for me about that time and that I had not dealt with it.
‘Now I am a proud veteran thanks to Veterans Outreach Support.’
In 2010 Nigel was diagnosed with PTSD. He served as a sailor on HMS Hermes in the Falklands and had been part of the navy since he ‘ran away to sea’ at the age of 16. He got help from VOS in 2015 after being on an NHS waiting list.
Now the organisation has become one of more than 80 groups to team up and launch Portsmouth City of Sanctuary.
The initiative aims to offer support to vulnerable groups in the community, including, but not limited to, asylum seekers, refugees, veterans, the homeless, the LGBTQ+ community, and those suffering domestic abuse and hate crime.
Nigel said: ‘I think it is so important to help people who need it and there is a lot of good work going on out there already so this movement will really highlight the good organisations out there who can help people no matter who they are.
‘In a big city you can feel lost and unwelcome if you don’t have a support network but even if you do reaching out to friends and family over some problems can be hard so having all these groups having a united front and making sure people feel welcome is a brilliant thing.’