Do not forsake the boys I saved

‘So many of our troops are failed by the system’

The She was the first female soldier to kill in combat. She saved scores of her wounded comrades as a medic in Afghanistan. Nobody is better qualified to back our campaign and demand: Give our traumatised troops a round-the-clock helpline

AS A female soldier, I was never supposed to get involved in close-quarter combat – until the day I s hot dead a Tal i ban fighter at close range. While serving as a senior medic, I treated dozens of horrifically wounded soldiers from the battlefields of Helmand.

Today, the anguished expressions of those injured troops remain etched in my memory and I still feel guilty about those we couldn’t save. Yet for all of that, I don’t suffer from any mental or emotional disorder. I am one of the lucky ones.

Lucky because in the past ten years the numbers of troops diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has almost doubled and more than 400 serving soldiers have taken their own lives since 1995 – most recently another Afghanistan veteran, Warrant Officer Nathan Hunt, of the Royal Engineers.

Enough is enough, I say. What more evidence does one need that the current provision of mental healthcare is lacking than the suicide of yet another respected and experienced soldier?

The Ministry of Defence expects an extremely high level of professionalism from its military so it’s time for them to meet like with like and care for those who selflessly serve their country.

So today I’m backing The Mail on Sunday’s campaign for round-the clock care, including a 24/7 helpline. Serving sailors, soldiers and ai rmen suffering f rom PTSD should not have to rely on charities or the already overburdened NHS to provide lifesaving treatment at night and at weekends. Simple measures like this will save lives.

As a medic, it concerns me deeply that so many troops are being failed by the mental healthcare system, or the lack of it. That is why I’ve previously driven through the night to be there for suicidal friends.

It is the norm for people in closeknit military communities to go the extra mile to support their comrades. Yet I can’t help thinking the MoD should be keeping a caring eye on our troops too.

So in addition to a helpline, we should introduce routine testing for psychological problems. We test our people’s physical fitness, so why not their mental health, as the Americans already do?

Across the Armed Forces, tens of thousands of troops who served in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan are still in service. For as long as they remain in uniform, their welfare is the MoD’s responsibility. These men and women deserve a dedicated 24/7 helpline, staffed by military experts who are vetted, cleared and supported by a nationwide network of first-responders.

The existing helplines run by military charities are not designed to support serving personnel yet serving members still reach out because they have nowhere else to go. These helplines are not integrated into the MoD’s mental healthcare system, so soldiers cannot speak to their allocated care team if they are already receiving treatment.

This isn’t good enough. It smacks of a half-hearted attempt to tackle a problem, a money-saving measure which exploits the voluntary sector. As does suggesting traumatised troops should visit their nearest A&E. I couldn’t think of anything worse. The MoD is better placed to provide carers with the necessary experience and affinity with combat troops than the NHS.

The officials who baulked at spending £2 million to fund the helpline – which is backed by former Army chief Lord Dannatt – should have considered that sum a worthy investment.

Having invested so much money in training soldiers, why are they so flippant about losing them to mental health issues?

I was never assessed for mental health problems when I left the military so any warning signs that I might later suffer were lost. We cannot leave to chance whether members of our Armed Forces develop such conditions. Waiting for a fatality is not acceptable. Our military has spent the last 20 years at war. We will all need to talk at some point. That’s normal, so a 24/7 helpline is the absolute minimum.

Medics like me didn’t do our damnedest to save soldiers’ lives on the front line to then stand aside when they need help back home. We are all relying heavily on Gavin Williamson, who has made a promising start as Defence Secretary.

Soldiers don’t need or want special treatment. They deserve the right treatment.

HERE is a message for those in the aid industry, and for its Establishment defenders who still think they have not really done anything very seriously wrong. A good way of judging your own actions is to imagine how you would feel if an enemy had done the same thing.

This test would be a useful corrective to the absurd, defensive attitude of Oxfam and its media supporters after the exposure of the revolting behaviour of some of its workers.

The deep, unshakeable self-admiration of modern state- backed foreign aid organisations just will not let them grasp how much trouble they are in, or why.

Their inability to understand was best summed up when Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring let fly with this extraordinary, exasperated outburst, asking: ‘The intensity and ferocity of the attack makes you wonder, what did we do? We murdered babies in their cots?’

No. But some of Mr Goldring’s staff did exploit the poorest and most desperate people in the world for sexual gratification. It is hard to imagine anything much more cynical than that. The fact that this is not as bad as murdering babies in their cots does not mean that it is not wicked in the extreme. What his organisation then did was to cover this up.

And Mr Goldring – and his Left-wing media sympathisers – may have noticed that when the Roman Catholic Church covered up comparable crimes, and when that Church tried to escape censure by saying it did many good things, these evasions and excuses quite rightly increased the fury against it.

All abusers justly face condemnation. But for aid charities, just as for the Churches, there is an extra dimension.

The people and the organisation are supposed to be working selflessly for the cause of good.

For such people and such bodies to abuse those they claim to love is a gross betrayal of trust – the trust of their donors and the trust of the world’s poor, who expected mercy and got exploitation. For the charities then to try to conceal or minimise the crime is a greater betrayal yet.

Millions of people give money and time to Oxfam and its fellow charities, in the belief that they are protecting the poor, the weak, the hungry and the oppressed from harm. They now deserve the full truth about what really happens to their gifts.

As The Mail on Sunday has many times argued, while much of the aid sector’s work is excellent and compassionate, much of it is misdirected, wasted or stolen. This scandal proves that we should no longer allow misplaced piety to shield it from scrutiny and reform.