Hero medic: Army cast me aside when trauma was too much
Officer awarded ‘nursing VC’ for work in Basra says she became victim of poor military mental health care
IT WAS eight years ago that Lt Col Janet Pilgrim stood before the Queen to receive a medal known as nursing’s Victoria Cross for her devotion in running a British field hospital under heavy fire.
Today the former senior Army medic nicknamed “Florence of Arabia” by newspapers sits at home suffering flashbacks, depression and suicidal thoughts as she struggles to come to terms with her experiences.
Her post-traumatic stress disorder has seen her abandoned and cast out by the Army, she feels, and left her at times to question whether she would have been better treated if had she lost a limb instead of suffering the mental wounds she sustained serving her country.
The 49-year-old believes her struggle is being mirrored across the Armed Forces, where many others psychologically scarred in Britain’s wars are let down by a failing military mental health care system. Treatment for soldiers, sailors and airmen needs overhauling, she told The
Sunday Telegraph, because at present they are either treated in a civilian NHS unable to understand their needs, or by military medical units that are poorly equipped and funded.
“I once told someone, I would have been better off losing a limb,” she said, “because you then get flown to Birmingham, you get treated by the top surgeons, you get put on a military ward and you have got a whole lot of welfare staff to look after you.
“A mental health patient gets none of that. You get thrown into the NHS system that can’t cope with us and we can’t cope with it, then we are left with nothing.”
The former officer in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps was tipped for promotion to colonel before her illness. She said: “If it was happening at my level, then what was happening to the guys who were junior, who didn’t speak out.”
Lt Col Pilgrim, of Terrington in North Yorks, was dubbed a new Florence Nightingale in 2008 when, then a major, she was awarded a rare Royal Red Cross for her heroism running the field hospital at Basra airbase in southern Iraq.
She commanded the tented wards over the grim summer of 2007, when Mahdi army rebels attempted to force British troops from the city. She and her staff treated 92 wounded troops – 20 of whom died – while the base was hit by rockets several times daily. Starved of sleep and always under threat of bombardment, she led the team who prepared bodies for repatriation and informed loved ones of their loss.
Her citation explained that she was “utterly committed as a leader, loved by those she commanded, exceptionally gifted as a nurse; she was the very embodiment of what many aspire to be”. Yet the responsibility and constant threat she faced that summer was to exact a terrible toll.
Returning to personnel and training staff jobs in the UK, she found herself unable to concentrate and suffering flashbacks.
She said: “You are in charge of a hospital and it’s built in a tent. Your staff are terrified, the patients are scared stiff, and you are trying to make sure everyone is OK, that you are going to have some hospital left at the end of it.”
A rocket that hit a nearby accommodation block killed three RAF Regiment gunners that July. The hospital’s welfare centre was destroyed and its power was cut by another rocket.
“There were a few staff I had to send home because they just couldn’t cope. They refused to go out and would always sleep in their flak jackets. You are working an 18-hour day. It was horrendous.”
Back home her condition deteriorated to the point where she could not eat, sleep or concentrate. She began to feel suicidal and turned to drink, but tried to hide her difficulties from her family.
She said: “I didn’t want them to worry and I was ashamed, because I’m a nurse, I’m an officer. There were younger ranks than me. Why did it happen to me? The shame and the embarrassment about not being able to cope are extremely hard to deal with and there is still a lot of stigma in the military about mental health.”
She was admitted to an NHS mental health ward in Darlington, but treated by staff who had never dealt with the military, in a ward with a constantly changing set of civilian patients.
Her bosses tried to ease her back to a desk job, but she deteriorated again. She was sent to another civilian mental health hospital in York, where staff were also unfamiliar with treating the military.
When she left early in despair, she says the Army put her before a medical board and discharged her.
“I have had to jump through so many hoops just to try and get the support that I need, that it’s just devastating,” she said. “I feel the Army just cast me out, they just didn’t care and I can’t believe that they would do that.”
She is now being seen by staff at an RAF base, while she looks for a charity to fund more treatment. But she says the mental health team is confined to an inadequate old building near the runway, where counselling sessions are constantly interrupted by the roar of aircraft taking off. She said: “There are some very good staff who are working very hard, but are being expected to work in inappropriate facilities and with poor resources.”
Her anger has been made worse by the fact that one clinical psychologist told her if she had been correctly treated from the start, she would have been “still in uniform” and able to continue her job.
She said: “Mental health care within the military needs sorting out. We are the poor relation of those with physical injuries. There are so many people out there who have been through stuff.”
A spokesman for the MOD said that it was unable to comment on individual cases. She said: “We are absolutely committed to the mental health of our Armed Forces and, in general, it remains good.”
‘You get thrown into the NHS system that can’t cope with us and we can’t cope with it’