‘Rehabilitation starts the moment a life is saved. From that moment we start to consider life beyond survival.’
Major Peter Le Feuvre MBE (Physiotherapist, Royal Army Medical Corps)
‘Road to Recovery’ is a fairly small but well laid-out and very powerful exhibition at the National Army Museum. It describes the modern treatment of soldiers who have experienced life-changing battlefield injuries, both physical and mental, and paints a vivid picture of the journeys of rehabilitation and recovery which each injured soldier has to take.
Installation view of ‘Road to Recovery’ at the National Army Museum
The exhibition is staged in one medium-sized room. In the centre is a starburst-shaped set of panels which present the stories of five particular soldiers who suffered life-changing injuries. They are:
- Captain Harry Parker – double lower-limb amputation
- Simon Brown – traumatic facial injury and severe visual impairment
- Dave Henson – double lower-limb amputation
- Gemma Morgan – complex post-traumatic stress disorder
- Johnson Beharry – severe head and brain injury
Each panel gives the facts of their injury and their battlefield treatment, details of subsequent operations, and the physical and mental legacy. Then they describe the rehabilitation process. All of this is stated in a kind of bureaucratic summary, a standardised list of fields and very clipped text descriptions, their brevity making them all the more powerful. Here’s an example:
Harry Parker
Rank and regiment: Captain, The Rifles
Dates of service: 2006 to 2013
Operational tours: Iraq 2007, Afghanistan 2009
Present occupation: Writer and artist
Injury: Double lower-limb amputation (right leg above knee, left leg below knee); lost a finger of left hand
Cause of injury: Stepped on an IED (improvised explosive device) while leading a patrol
Impact: 18 minutes from point of injury to Camp Bastion hospital; resuscitated three times; right leg amputated after 10 days due to fungal infection; 10 days in intensive care unity; 6 weeks and 11 operations in Selly Oak Hospital; 10 weeks after injury standing on prosthetics; in and out of Headley Court Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (Epsom) for six years
Treated: Camp Bastion Hospital, Afghanistan; Selly Oak Hospital Birmingham; Headley Court Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre
The details of each injury are harrowing enough, but each of the five case studies also has an interactive panel accompanied by headphones, where you press a tab and can watch and listen to the person in question being interviewed. The three short videos address the same topics, namely 1) the incident, 2) rehab, 3) the legacy.
Placed around the central panels describing the five specific stories, are more general panels describing different aspects of modern rehabilitation and how it’s changed and improved in recent decades. There’s a case showing a selection of prosthetic limbs, there are several artworks – three paintings and a bust associated with other survivors – and there’s a video in which occupational therapists, nurses and specialists explain the details and thinking behind modern rehabilitation treatment.
Unexpected survivors
In the last 20 years, particularly during the long conflicts in Iraq (2003 to 2011) and Afghanistan (2001 to 2021), huge improvements in battlefield medical care have led to many soldiers surviving physical injuries that only a decade or so earlier would have been fatal. In the jargon of the trade these soldiers are referred to as ‘unexpected survivors’. The wall panels indicate the extraordinarily skilled and sophisticated medical procedures which saved their lives on the battlefield and then at the rear area medical facilities in the first minutes and hours after the injury.
Respect to all the medical staff involved, but what really impresses is the resilience, bravery and determination of the patients themselves. The medics saved the soldiers’ lives but then, as the soldiers and physiotherapists and counsellors all make abundantly clear – that’s when the real journey to recovery begins, marking the start of the psychological journey to recovery.
The determination and bravery of the five selected soldiers is awe-inspiring. Would I be that brave and determined if my legs were blown off, if half my brain were permanently damaged, if I was blinded by a shell exploding a few feet from my face?
Here’s a painting done by Harry Parker, whose story I outlined above. He had studied art before joining the army. This is the first painting he did after his injury and, according to the wall label, painting it made him realise that he had more options in life than just being a soldier.
‘Legs’ by Captain Harry Parker (2013)
Harry realised there was more to him than obeying orders in the Army, that he had a lot more to contribute and live for. In its way this painting epitomises the fat that the key to recovery for most injured veterans is regaining their independence and finding a fulfilling alternative career.
PTSD
The exhibition is at pains to point out that soldiers suffer not only physical injuries but can suffer from severe mental trauma, too. The best known condition is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The symptoms of this include nightmares and flashbacks, trouble sleeping, being hypervigilant and angry, or, at the other extreme, becoming completely emotionally detached from your surroundings. As well as hurting the sufferers, PTSD can obviously also have a devastating impact on family and loved ones, struggling to cope with a loved one who, in extreme cases, becomes a complete stranger.
In the past the Ministry of Defence was guilty of failing to screen soldiers back from active service adequately, failing in its ‘duty of care’ as the jargon has it. Nowadays everyone is much more aware of the seriousness of the condition and soldiers can be referred to the NHS or to charities which offer help and support. Treatment usually takes the form of a combination of therapy and medication.
Four of the five detailed profiles laid out on the wall panels are of soldiers who suffered horrific physical injuries, but one of the five is devoted solely to psychological damage, the case of Gemma Morgan.
Gemma Morgan
Rank and regiment: Royal Logistics Corp
Dates of service: 1996 to 2002
Operational tour: Kosovo 1998 to 1999
Present occupation: Speaker and Leadership Consultant; ambassador at Help for Heroes
Injury: Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Cause of injury: Observing and verifying instances of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo (a further wall label explains that Gemma witnessed acts of ethnic cleansing but, due to the nature of the mission was unable to intervene; it was this inability to help the innocent which caused her mental anguish)
Impact: Nightmares and flashbacks; alcohol abuse and emotional withdrawal; suicidal tendencies; wrongly diagnosed with moderately affective disorder, not attributable to her military service; three years after leaving the Army diagnosed with severe PTSD attributed to her service in Kosovo; seven weeks as an in-patient and over a year as an out-patient at a private clinic
Treated: Department of Community Mental Health, Aldershot; NHS; the Priory
As Gemma’s story indicates, the mental wounds are often harder to diagnose, harder to identify, and so harder to treat than physical ones. There’s an interactive panel which lets you listen to Gemma herself explaining her journey through the three steps of: incident, rehabilitation, and legacy. God, the poor woman.
Another wall label tells us that local villagers in Kosovo called Gemma ‘Djamelia’. At first she thought this was a local pronunciation of her name but then learned that it was a local word meaning ‘bringer of hope’, and this meant a lot to her later on, during her recovery. You can imagine how something like that must answer the need for purpose and meaning to events which otherwise just seem too horrific to process.
‘Rehabilitation for me has been about learning to find new meaning, learning to find new purpose to my life and finding a tribe that I belong to.’ (Gemma Morgan)
Jaco
The exhibition tells three or four more inspiring stories. Jaco van Gass lost his arm and suffered other life-changing injuries when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan in 2011. After years of rehabilitation he became a para-cyclist and won two gold medals at the 2020 Paralympic Games.
Jaco van Gass by Caroline de Peyrecave (2017)
Snippets
At the peak of the war in Afghanistan, 2009 to 2010, Headley Court Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Epsom was the largest centre for prosthetics in the UK with 11 full-time prosthetists.
There are over 2,000 Armed Forces charities in the UK, from well known ones like Help for Heroes and the Royal British Legion to more specialised ones like Blesma, Combat Stress, KartForce or Waterloo Uncovered.
The Invictus Games were set up in 2014 under the patronage of the Duke of Sussex, to give injured veterans a platform to compete at sports against their peers. Many have gone on to compete in the Paralympic Games.
Kings College London leads research into military mental health. As a result of its work, early screening and treatment for PTSD are being implemented.
Although there is more institutional help than ever before, more understanding, more therapeutic approaches and more charities working in the area of soldiers’ mental health, some still slip through the net. Surprisingly, maybe, the suicide rate among veterans is lower than the general population, but in 2018 75 veterans took their lives.
Best wishes
This is a very moving and often upsetting exhibition. Best wishes to all the veterans injured, either physically or psychologically, in all the stupid wars our politicians have sent them to fight. And huge respect to all the professionals – the medics and physiotherapists and psychotherapists and counsellors – who help put them back together again.
Related links
- Road to Recovery continues at the National Army Museum until 28 August 2023
- Meet the curator, 24 April, 2 to 2.30pm
Charities mentioned in the exhibition
- Blesma: Military Charity for Limbless Veterans
- Combat Stress: Mental health services for veterans
- Help for Heroes
- KartForce: Endurance Racing for Injured Troops
- Royal British Legion
- Trauma Risk Management
- Veterans’ Gateway
- Waterloo Uncovered: Rehabilitation through archaeology
Related reviews
- Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism by Michael Ignatieff (1993) – 1
- Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism by Michael Ignatieff (1993) – 2
- The Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience by Michael Ignatieff (1998) – 1
- The Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience by Michael Ignatieff (1998) – 2
- Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan by Michael Ignatieff (2003)
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