Former army medic Andrew Cowin walking 120 miles to raise money for Combat Stress charity
A FORMER Stratford soldier who suffered PTSD after leaving the army is walking over 120 miles for an armed forces charity.
Andrew Cowin is walking the Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in Portugal this October in aid of Combat Stress. His own personal experiences of PTSD have put him in a strong position of understanding, Andrew believes.
Andrew spent six years in the army medical corps and was always on active duty. Joining just before the Falklands War, his unit was on the RFA Sir Galahad when it was attacked by Argentinian forces on 8th June 1982. 48 British soldiers died as the ship was badly damaged, but Andrew was away on a detachment at the time. Speaking to the Herald, Andrew said that he suffered survival guilt for many years afterwards.
“There are other things that have happened in my life that have compounded this,” he said.
“When I came out of the army I went and got help and advice from a friend who does neuro-linguistic programming. And as a result of that, I trained as a neuro-linguistic NLP practitioner, precisely because I know what effect PTSD has on people and I just wanted to help them.
“I was going to do the walk in Portugal anyway, I booked onto it and I paid for it. But I just got this notification flash up on Facebook about combat stress, and I just thought, ‘I have to do it’.”
The charity picks up the pieces that other authorities leave behind, according to Andrew.
“Combat Stress offers counselling and guidance for people who are suffering from PTSD, obviously veterans, but they also run courses for veterans' wives, relatives, loved ones, people who are supporting these poor people. The Ministry of Defence and successive governments, ever since we've been fighting wars, they've just totally ignored PTSD.
“Stress wasn't a thing. They're only sort of acknowledging it now, but because of the nature of PTSD, you could have a really traumatic incident that will trigger PTSD but you might not get the symptoms for a year, five years, ten years or, in my case, 30 years.
“It just affects your mood, it affects your relationships and things like that, it’s corrosive. It erodes people and a lot of people, because they don't understand quite a lot of what people in the armed service actually are asked to do. They just can't cope with it.”
Andrew said the first big and often hardest step for someone with PTSD is admitting there is an issue.
“The first thing that you try and do as a PTSD sufferer is to actually think ‘oh, there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just being moody or irritable.’ We just hide things away and we kid ourselves, and the biggest problem is to actually admit that there is something wrong, even if you don't know what it is, but also it's, where do you go?
“I was diagnosed just before I left the army with severe depression, and I went to the NHS in the early 2000s, I'm still waiting for an appointment. That shows you the problem that we have. Groups like Combat Stress, they step up to the plate, they acknowledge it and they help people.”
Earlier this year, Andrew suffered a physical setback when he suffered a fractured fibula during a snowboarding trip, a sport he has enjoyed for many years. He remains very determined to be ready for the walk in October.
“I tried to do a trick on my second day of my first trip in the season, and I had two or three lined up, and I just didn't make it. I buried my snowboard into the ground, my leg went one way and the snowboard went another. I was in a wheelchair for a month, hobbling around, but I’m back walking now. I'm doing about 20 kilometres a day at the moment, but it's still painful.
“I'm just walking through it because I need to be fit and ready to do that 120 miles and to be honest a sore leg isn’t going to stop me. The cause is so special and dear to my heart.”
To donate to Andrew’s fundraiser visit https://www.justgiving.com/page/andy-cowin
