Caerphilly-born Simon Weston been through thick and thin, fighting for better aftercare for injured veterans, but remains in ebullient mood as he chats to Carl Marsh.
When you were injured in 1982 – and I know from my own personal experience in the Army as well – did you spend a few years in limbo after being medically discharged from the Army?
Well as you know yourself, having a career [in the Army], you just think it’s all going to go the way that you want it to, and then all of a sudden it grinds to a halt. And then the wheels came off via the Ministry Of Defence. While the Welsh Guards were brilliant, the rest of the machinery with the MOD just didn’t work, so yes, limbo was definitely it. And that is when the depression and the drinking all come into play.
With the PTSD, that was most definitely going to happen anyway based on what we know now. I just don’t think the depression would have been as bad as it was had there been more done professionally to help me find my way forward. [MOD aftercare] is far better today but still not good enough. That’s the way that life goes.
You’ll be stopping at a few venues here in Wales, what will you be talking about?
It’s my life story but with the bits that you haven’t read about. There is more humour in it than there is sadness. It’s honest, and it tells the truth about everything really, from the sadness and the tragedy to the fun. The fact is that I am 57, nearly 58 now, so there has been a lot of water under the bridge.
Like all people that have served in the military, no matter what the tragedy or whatever’s happening, there are still very funny moments and people laugh. And afterwards, they belly-laugh. I just hope that people are more uplifted when they leave the theatre and they can get the chance to have a photo taken or to ask questions at the end of the evening.
Are you worried that anyone that’s not served in the military and is not used to the military banter might not get some of the humour?
Well, it is what it is in the military: people are only rude or cruel to you because they know you are going to survive, they wouldn’t do it if you weren’t. You know, we are not animals, but if someone loses their legs, the first thing people [in the military] say is, “Is that right that you have a pair of slippers to sell?” [laughter]. That’s just the way of the beast, isn’t it?
People are far happier being cruel to be kind in that way. You were probably like that before you got injured towards other people who did get injured, and that’s how people will be from now until the end of time, I hope. That’s part and parcel of military banter, which is a lot of what we do when we do the show. We talk about some of the sad and tragic parts, of course, we do because it would be rude to ignore that as it would be an insult to those people that didn’t come home, or to those that took their lives after the end of the Falklands war. It is essential that we talk about that side of it, but we don’t dwell on it because it can be a very dark and depressing moment if you do dwell on it for too long.
If you don’t mind me asking: when the bombs hit the Sir Galahad in 1982, did you lose consciousness?
No, no, no, I stayed awake through all of it, abso-bloody-lutley, abso-bloody-lutley. If I had been knocked out, I would have been dead. What we were doing at the time was winching some equipment on a pallet to be put on a landing raft. We were winching them out as the back doors of the boat had jammed, otherwise we would have walked up to the tailgate, chucked our gear in the back of a boat and got off and been on the beach in 10 minutes. But what happened was that one of the boats was commandeered and we had no transport to get off, so we got hit as we were there too long and there was no preparation for us arriving. The weather that day was also probably the nicest day of the whole campaign, which was our downfall as the Argentinians could see for miles.
Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wed 12 June; Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon, Wed 17 July. Tickets: £18.50/£20.50. Info: www.theatrausirgar.co.uk / www.brycheiniog.co.uk