THE CRACK SHOT WHO CRACKED UP
He was the sniper with ice-cool nerves... until he saw the body of his best friend killed in combat. And when PTSD drove him to the edge, there was NOBODY to take his desperate call for help
DODGING Taliban bullets in Helmand, RAF sniper Luke Huskisson drew on all his training just to stay alive.
Yet it was many months later, safely back at base in Suffolk, that the battlefield almost claimed him.
In Afghanistan, flushed with adrenaline, he was constantly tuned to lifethreatening danger. Now, alone in his room, death and oblivion seemed enticing.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Luke recalls: ‘I was getting constant flashbacks and I couldn’t take any more.’
In a race against time, his partner Charlotte McKenna, drove 200 miles to RAF Honington to save him. ‘I have no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t gone to get Luke he wouldn’t be here today,’ says Charlotte.
Six months earlier Luke, now 31, was diagnosed with chronic PTSD. Back in 2011 and 2012, he witnessed unimaginable horror in his role rescuing badly wounded frontline soldiers.
He also picked up the dead and brought them back to Camp Bastion by helicopter – among them his best friend.
What happened that night in February 2013, when Luke suffered a breakdown, brings into relief why round-the-clock care to prevent suicides is vital.
Luke says the nurses assigned to him and others were based in another county and went home at 5pm – and he suffered his breakdown at 2am. There was no out-of-hours provision.
For months previously his care, he says, was patchy. Mostly he saw a nurse just once a week. ‘He was left to rot,’ Charlotte claims.
It was the anniversary of the death of his best friend Ryan Tomlin, killed during an insurgent attack in Helmand, that triggered the breakdown. Both men were Senior Aircraftmen in 2 Squadron, RAF Regiment.
When he tries to speak of how he returned to Camp Bastion with Ryan’s body in a helicopter, he offers an apologetic half-smile while slowly shaking his head.
Twelve months later he visited Ryan’s grave in Hertfordshire. ‘That night I was pacing the room, unable to focus on anything but the images replaying in my head,’ he says. ‘I was going to end my life.’
With the vague notion of saying goodbye, he called Charlotte and his parents in Cheshire.
Charlotte, 32, says: ‘He was an absolute wreck, barely coherent. He kept saying that he was giving up, that it was the end. I was in a state of blind panic.’ She drove to
‘I was getting flashbacks – I couldn’t take it’
Honington with Luke’s father, Phil. On the way she kept trying to ring Luke but he didn’t answer. ‘We didn’t know what we’d face when we got there,’ says Charlotte.
‘Luke was in a terrible state. We took him home and he was placed under the care of an NHS crisis team who were fantastic. The base said he should have taken himself to A&E. Yet he was in no state to take himself anywhere.’
During his Afghan tour, Luke was attached to the Medical Emergency Response Team, a flying A&E unit in a Chinook.
‘Mostly we would protect paramedics but often it was too dangerous for them and we’d have to go on our own, administer first aid and get soldiers back to the Chinook,’ he says. ‘There was a klaxon that went off at the camp when a call came in. At first, it was exhilarating but then – particularly after Ryan died – I came to dread that noise.’
On one mission, he was called out to a helicopter crash that killed six American airmen. He risked his life trying to save them from the burning wreckage and was later commended for his ‘courage when faced with an extraordinarily dangerous situation’. Since his breakdown Luke and Charlotte, who live on the west coast of Scotland with their two children, have fought with the RAF and Ministry of Defence. A planned investigation into his treatment before his breakdown kept stalling – and the RAF failed, despite requests, to give Luke his full medical records. Eventually a Medical Board dealt with his case in his absence and a decision was made to discharge him. He left the RAF last year without a pension – a decision he is appealing and which the couple describe as ‘appalling’.
In all this time, the couple have never stopped campaigning for a 24-hour helpline, with Luke even invading the pitch at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium during a match in 2015 in protest at the MoD’s treatment of its soldiers.
Charlotte gave up a well-paid job with British Airways to care for her partner, who still suffers,
‘The military are putting people’s lives at risk’
often vomiting in his sleep because of nightmares.
She has written hundreds of letters and tirelessly lobbied politicians. Some offered words of encouragement but little else. Only Lord Dannatt, she says, took up their case with any gusto.
‘I wouldn’t have fought for as long as I have if I didn’t believe the military are putting people’s lives at risk,’ she says.
‘We are not fighting for ourselves any longer – it’s too late for Luke, his career has gone, they have taken it from him. We are fighting for serving soldiers.’
The MoD said: ‘We are committed to providing the best mentalhealth care possible and are spending £20 million this year on mental-health provisions.’