Dealing with unseen wounds of battle
THE Rev Charles McCartney, who as a chaplain accompanied troops in Iraq, says it isn't just the soldiers who came back wounded. SAM McBRIDE reports.
Although the Rev Charles McCartney never fired a shot in Iraq, the 55-year-old Dundonald man came back to Belfast a different person.
As a senior chaplain with the Royal Logistic Corps, the father-of-five had 14 other chaplains in his care and was with British troops when they crossed the Iraqi border in 2003.
"Coming back to Northern Ireland is even worse because for many years we couldn't talk to anybody – we had to hide," he says.
"All of us come back feeling wounded and especially in Northern Ireland because we were not able to be as open as soldiers in the rest of the UK.
"That's why it's important for our troops to come back here to have their parade."
Mr McCartney was the man who often had to counsel troops facing unspeakable trauma.
Now a Church of Ireland minister in east Belfast, he recalls one of his wartime experiences: "I spent a considerable amount of time with one of the chaplains who looked after the morgue.
"He was responsible, with a small team of soldiers, for going across the battlefield, sweeping it every day for bodies – both enemy and British.
"I also helped to counsel the soldiers who were responsible for recovering the bodies from the 'friendly fire' incident where the Americans shot down one of our fighters.
"Those soldiers had to make the bodies safe to be repatriated to the United Kingdom.
"I personally wasn't firing bullets on the front line, but we were dealing with guys who were dealing personally with the trauma on the front line."
A former RUC officer, he believes that a parade for the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan would be a fitting way to recognise their bravery.
And he knows what it is like to both be in a war zone and to have loved ones in danger thousands of miles away.
"Our son at the moment is flying with the Royal Air Force over Afghanistan and Iraq so it's very close to us," he said.
"I think it would be great to have a parade in the city because for a long time here in Northern Ireland the local population has been separated from the military.
"If you were on the mainland, there are large garrisons where the main road runs through the garrison and soldiers go to the shops with their families in their uniform.
"I feel very strongly, now that peace has come and there has been a change of feeling, that the population here needs the opportunity to come closer to their military.
"For too long, and of course for all the right reasons, we have felt separated from the military here – they have put up barbed wire fences all around themselves."
He says that despite the intense training soldiers go through before going to war, nothing can adequately prepare them for what they will witness.
"Whether they are TA soldiers or regular Army, soldiers will come back to reasonably normal lives.
"But we all come back very aggressive – it's a very aggressive environment.
"My wife would always have said that I came home with a very aggressive attitude.
"I had to remember that my wife and family had been surviving without me for six months and the slowdown took several months each time.
"Despite instant communications and the newscasts of soldiers under fire, it can never bring back to the people how you live and do the simplest of tasks – how you wash, how you keep yourself clean in that environment."
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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