Falklands war veteran and hero Simon Weston joined us at NMP Live where he shared the story of his time in the Falklands and the importance of embracing change.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Simon Weston
Can you tell us about your experience in the Falklands
On June 8th we arrived in Fitzroy in the late morning; we were waiting for transport to take us off the ships and none arrived – as simple as that. Really the amphibious assault on that day failed, and the people in charge failed to do their job, because they never made sure we could get off the vehicles.
There's a lot of people that have said an awful lot, and largely, if you don’t know the facts, be quiet. But those people who fail tend to make the most noise and kick those who can’t defend themselves at the time, and that’s what happened to us.
There was a time when they said to get off, but without your equipment. Well what would be the point of that? You would just be tourists. So, it all really, really went wrong on the day, and we were there far too long on a beautiful winters day.
It was a clear winters day. There were very few clouds in the sky and as we know in winter you can see far, far greater in to the distance, and the pilots found us. We didn’t take care of the forward fire observers, which was the Special Forces job. They left them there so they were able to pin point us.
Then Carlos Cachon led the attack on our ships, and the Sky-hawks killed 48 men and injured 97 others. Out of the 97 I just happened to become the worst injured that came off the ships, and subsequently the worst injured, so I’m told by surgeons and the medical people, to come back alive.
I’ll take that. It could quite easily have been somebody else and not me at all.
Throughout your recovery, how low was your morale and how did you overcome it?
I have had around 97 major general anesthetics. I’ve endured about 5 years of hospitalization. I have received between 500 and 700 units of blood and blood products. I lost a relationship. I had no vision of the future. I could no longer play the sport I loved, still love, that was taken away from me, and pretty much that makes you about as low as you are going to get.
My appearance at the time was far, far worse, and I had no thought that I would ever have a relationship again, because of the way I looked. In the early days, certainly with the burns, the smell was horrendous, because burnt flesh and all the infection that comes with that, it all smells badly.
So, I never thought that I would get back to any normal level of life. Then drinking became a big problem and I was almost addicted to prescribed painkillers, but I stopped taking them because I wasn’t myself and I was being somebody I didn’t like. I stopped drinking for a long time because that person was offending me as well.
I’m one of these people who has great discipline if I have to have it, but I suppose I sunk so low and then I almost committed suicide. I make no bones about it. I was in a very weak place mentally, but then again if it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger because now I’m in a very strong place and I realise that I was always the master of my own destiny; I just needed lots of people’s help.
Many people go through life not wanting to ask for help from those people who want to give it, and that goes right the way from kids in schools to people in business, even at the top of business. Sometimes people think they are an island, or that they have to look to be an island, and the reality is that they are making themselves vulnerable due to their lack of ability to ask for help.
What is the importance of embracing change?
Change is quite a scary process for a lot of people, because people don’t like change. I’ve come to like change and love change, but then again I have had a lot of it forced upon me.
Change is really scary for a lot of people because it is unsettling, because people have to do things differently or they have to move away from those people they’ve been comfortable with. To do that it takes a certain amount of courage, but you need that in all forms and shapes of business. You need a certain amount of moral courage in yourself, but that is about investing in you.
Change is one of those things that if you resist for too long you are likely to be always playing catch-up, or you may never ever catch-up. You’ll never ever be able to achieve the things you need to achieve because you’ve resisted change so much.
Change doesn’t just help you, it helps all those people that you work with and work for. By you making the investment now in the change it helps everybody else. We have seen so many things change so quickly with technology; if you don’t invest in it, or you don’t get involved in it, you don’t embrace it, you’re going to get left behind.
Have you always had a good relationship with the media?
The media first focused in on me as soon as I arrived back, and I got to Woolwich Hospital and the media were there. We were told they were a news crew, but they weren’t, they were there to film me.
I really didn’t respond terribly well, and terribly positively, but then if you think about it I had been travelling for the best part of a week to get home. It took four days to get home from Montevideo because the aircraft I was on broke down. I was very poorly but I still had that bit of spirit where I wanted to give a bit of lip to the camera crew because I thought they were trying to make a freak show, but they then explained to me what it was they were trying to do.
They then filmed me in hospital, and I was only just under 8 stone at that time; I had lost 10 stone of my body weight, and I was a very, very poorly puppy. I didn’t want the media there, but I was willing to do my bit on camera because I thought it was supporting and applauding the military medical services, which would have been absolutely the correct thing to do.
I still do to this very day because I wouldn’t be here and alive if it wasn’t for those great, great people. But, the fact of it was that I did find it difficult to deal with the media.
When did you realise the impact your story could have on others?
The moment I realized my suffering had a benefit to others is something that I haven’t really told a lot of people. It was when we received a letter from a lady in England who had gone through a terrible break up, and she had 3 daughters. And she said in the letter that she had contemplated taking her own life, and her 3 daughter’s lives, because she didn’t feel there was anything for them, but having seen my first documentary she realized that life wasn’t so bad.
I have never heard of a single mum killing herself and her three daughters. I hope that is the case still to this day, but that was the first time. I have heard many other stories since, but that was the very first time that I realised the power of a real positive story and outcome can make that difference, and you can change people’s lives. And hopefully I did change her to the point where she obviously felt she could bring up those three lovely girls and they could live their lives, and they just made me feel really sad that somebody was in that situation.
It made me feel very proud that just by telling my story, it could have that effect.
How did you become friends with the pilot who caused your injuries?
Carlos Cachon; he was necessary in my recovery and my survival. I met Carlos because I was having terrible nightmares. For 10 years, roughly, I was getting burnt every night, and there was this jet screaming overhead with this hooded figure, this spectre, with these demonic blazing red eyes. It was a constant and I needed to remove that.
We had the opportunity. Malcolm Brinkworth, who made my documentaries, he arranged for us to go to Argentina on the way to The Falklands. We met Carlos, and he agreed to meet me, which was so, so important, because he was told that I needed help, and he needed to change some things. He was hugely courageous in doing so because I don’t know if I could have done what he did, but it helped me put everything in to perspective.
My story is totally different to someone who is attacked in a terrorist way; because he was honourable and noble, and wore his country’s uniform and flew an aircraft. He didn’t attack innocents at a pop concert or at a train station. He didn’t murder people dressed up as something purporting to be normal, peaceful and caring; he wasn’t a terrorist. He was a pilot in a war, and he did his duty, and he still believes that what he was doing was right, he just doesn’t agree with me when I tell him that he was completely wrong.
We have become great friends because it wasn’t personal; you know terrorism is personal, this wasn’t personal, he was just doing his job. We were a target. He didn’t know we were all on board; he didn’t know there were that many men there, so you just have to accept that stuff happens and you have to move on.
What support was offered to you for PTSD and mental health?
Back in the 1980’s we had no mental support. If we’d have had alcoholism there was plenty on offer for that. Any addiction, we had plenty of mental health offers for that. But, PTSD didn’t exist until 1987 when the first Gulf War happened, as we were told, because they didn’t know about it we couldn’t have it. But for everybody who went to the Gulf, they could have it, and they could get the compensation and the treatment for it.
We didn’t get any treatment for that type of mental health problem, PTSD, we were left to our own devices, and maybe that is why there has been more people who have suffered from our conflict than suffered from other conflicts, or certainly that we know of.
Maybe it is because we were largely not given any information as well, but we did campaign as The Falklands Group to help get better treatment, and care, and compensation for the guys and girls who went to different wars.
Mental health is so debilitating and it cripples families, it can cripple businesses, it is one of the things that we have to be so totally aware of; everybody else’s mental state. When people are crumbling, to notice that people are changing.
If people’s drinking habits, or their work habits, or their eating habits, or their lifestyle habits are changing, people need to be more sensitive around those things and help support people through that, and get them the right help at the right time.
There are plenty of good organisations out there, but having been through mental health issues what I do know is that you can help yourself to a degree, but at the end of the day you do need the support of other people to help you get through the worst part of it. To know that people care, to know that people are there to support you and help you and guide you, and give you the right type of information, because a lot of it is because of confusion and not understanding what is going on.
When things change for you and the circumstances change that cause it, whether it is chemically, physically, emotionally, in the family, but when things change you need to be able to make sense of what has gone on and there are lots of good people out there.
I talk about it in part, but I’m not a professional in that, I just happen to have lived with it for over 10 years, and those types of problems that come with it. That makes me slightly an expert, but only as a sufferer, not somebody who can do the final fixing. I don’t carry the tool bag of resolving people’s issues but I can point people in the right direction.
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