Stephen Collins had had a hard life. His mother had died
when he was very young and his father, a sergeant-major in the Army, never
thought that his son would ever come to anything. Stephen was constantly berated
by his father for not being manly enough – in other words for not being a
carbon copy of himself.
It was therefore out of a sense of devilment that Stephen
chose his career path. He joined the Army, and was even accepted into his father’s
old regiment – the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry – but not as a
fighting soldier. Instead he trained as a nurse and became a medical orderly.
His father was therefore always faced with the dilemma of whether to think of
his son as a brave soldier or an effeminate nurse.
Being a nurse did not exempt Stephen from the physical
training needed to accompany fighting men into battle. He would be of no use to
anyone if he could not carry a wounded man back to the safety of a field
hospital. He therefore went through a whole series of training exercises, on
the Brecon Beacons and elsewhere, that would have defeated many a lesser man.
He also learned to shoot, and was reckoned to be one of the best shots in his
unit.
The training was not merely for the purpose of preparing
soldiers for potential conflicts, because at that time – the early months of
1982 – big trouble was brewing in the South Atlantic. Nobody had heard of the
Falkland Islands before this time, but anyone who was alive then would never
forget them. The military junta that ruled Argentina invaded the islands and the
British Government, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, decided that the only
justifiable answer was to declare war and send a large task force – comprising
all the Armed Services – to seize back the islands and return them to their status
as a British colony.
Stephen therefore fully expected to be part of this force,
but fate was to decide differently and in a particularly bizarre way. While
standing guard outside an important building at Windsor’s Combermere Barracks,
he only took a passing interest in the maintenance work being done on the
nearby expanse of lawn. However, as the large lawnmower passed within a few yards
of him it picked up a stone that flew across and hit Stephen with the force of
a bullet. It went into his right calf muscle and spun around inside his leg.
At the time he was not aware that the stone had caused so
much damage, but during the night he was in so much pain that he had to be
admitted to hospital where an operation was performed to cut out the dead
tissue.
That put an end to any prospect of Stephen being sent to the
Falklands. Indeed, he was still in hospital when casualties of the war started
arriving back in the country a few weeks later. He was in Ward 10A of the
Cambridge Military Hospital which specialised in dirty wounds and infections.
Some of his fellow patients were in a bad way, having lost limbs or been the
victims of anti-personnel mines.
Most of the patients bore their wounds with great composure
and courage, despite knowing that they would never be able to resume the lives
they had known. There was even room for humour, and Stephen was the unwitting
cause of one of the funnier moments of the Falklands aftermath.
The Falklands War led to a huge surge of public support for
the soldiers, much of it sponsored by newspapers such as the Sun and Daily
Mirror. People were very generous, and items such as colour TVs and sound
systems turned up on the ward as a result. Cigarettes and beer – which are not
normally regarded as suitable items for hospital patients – also appeared, and
it was the beer that led to the incident involving Stephen.
One day they were visited by a full colonel, who took the beer
donations as his opportunity to make a name for himself as a caring, sharing
commander who fully understood his men. He therefore armed himself with a
couple of bottles as he approached each bed, chatted to the patient and handed
over the beer. Each man told his story about where and how he had been wounded,
telling the tale about what had happened at Tumbledown Mountain, or aboard the
Sir Galahad that had taken a direct hit with the loss of 48 lives.
And then the colonel reached Stephen’s bed.
"Where were you hit, soldier?” he asked. “How did it
happen? Were you at Bluff Cove or Goose Green?”
“Not Goose Green, sir. Windsor Green” said Stephen.
“I don’t understand”, said the colonel as he handed him the
beer. “Was that a private name for one of the actions?”
“No sir. Windsor. Where the Queen lives.”
“What? So how you were wounded? A mishap on the firing range?”
“No sir. A lawnmower accident.”
“A lawnmower?” The colonel was getting cross.
“Yes sir. A large Atco. I never saw it coming.”
The colonel was clearly in no mood for timewasters. He promptly
snatched back the beer and marched off down the ward.
If laughter is the best medicine, the roar of it that
convulsed the ward after the colonel had left must have done as much good as
Stephen might have achieved had he actually seen any Falklands action. Needless
to say, Stephen did not go short when it came to sharing out the beer.
© John Welford
