Ex-Para David Brown saw action in the two major battles of the Falklands War, at Goose Green and Port Stanley. After he left the army he was struck down with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Undiagnosed as a sufferer, he hit the bottle and drifted into football hooliganism, becoming involved with the infamous Leeds United 'Service Crew'. This culminated in a four-year prison sentence in Armley Jail, Leeds. But after early parole, and having been formerly diagnosed as suffering from the disorder, he found sanctuary with his present wife Lynda and set about rebuilding his shattered existence. Charles Heslett spoke to him about the fight for his sanity.

THE THING ex-Para David Brown really likes to do these days is to take a peaceful stroll with his wife and two dogs near his home in Thornton.

It's a far cry from the killing fields of the Falklands War when in 1982 as a fresh faced 21-year-old he witnessed the brutality of modern warfare.

The legacy of serving with 2 Para in the Falklands 17 years ago has left David needing a variety of pills every day to calm his panic attacks, depression, and violent mood swings.

He says they are symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought on by his experiences in the South Atlantic.

Sometimes he even has to shut himself off from the world for days on end until the internal rage which builds up in him as a result of his condition disappears.

Says David, 38: "I know as soon as my birthday on May 21 has gone by I start to think of all my friends who were chopped to bits by gunfire in the Falklands, and I get very angry and depressed.

"I was part of C Company which landed on Blue Beach at San Carlos Bay on May 21, 1982. While most people celebrate their 21st birthdays in a night club or by going to Amsterdam I was holed up in the pitch black waiting for the next orders."

His next orders were to advance to Goose Green where his company fought in one of the conflict's bloodiest battles.

David's company was trapped on a hillside during the day but after retreating he went back on his own at night to destroy maps which were still on the body of a dead signalman.

He says: "The man was my best friend and I was there in the pitch black trying to burn these maps which wouldn't light because they were soaking wet, but I couldn't work out what the liquid was. When I woke up the next day one of the lads said, 'you've got blood all over you'. I checked to see if I was wounded but then I realised it was his blood from the night before."

This trauma was only the beginning of the horrors David would now witness on a daily basis.

Once Goose Green was taken his company 'Tabbed'- the Para's team for marching - their way to fight at Wireless Ridge as part of the battle to take Port Stanley.

On route they witnessed the bombing of the troopship the Sir Galahad and its terrible aftermath.

He says: "We saw the lads being carried off the ship after it was hit. Some were dead and others horrifically burned, but it didn't seem to affect as much as before because we'd been blooded at Goose Green."

With the fall of Port Stanley and the collapse of the last Argentine resistance on June 14, David returned home.

He served with the Paras for another three years, until 1985, but the damage of his war experiences was beginning to sink in.

David says: "We'd go on these exercises using blank rounds and smoke bombs and the marshals would jump up and say you're dead, you've been shot, but the lads who'd fought in the Falklands would say, 'no I'm not,' and carry on. You couldn't take it seriously because once you've been under real gunfire there's no comparison."

Disillusioned, and unbeknown to David starting to show the early signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he left the Paras, and after a six-week resettlement course in Catterick and a holiday, came to live in Leeds.

David says: "This was when everything started to go wrong. When I was in the battalion we would always be having a drink and talking about the war and what happened to us. I got a flat in Leeds and all of a sudden I was on my own."

With his support network gone David resorted more and more to drink to get himself to sleep at night and to blot out the nightmares and flashbacks as images from the war came back to haunt him.

His work started to suffer and it was during these dark months he fell in with the football hooligan group the Leeds United 'Service Crew'.

David says: "I'd supported Leeds all the way through the Paras and when I got out the in thing at the time were football 'firms.' I'd got used to having drinking sessions with close mates in the army and this was what these lads offered me. We'd fight with other firms outside the grounds. But I started going through phases of just hitting people without even realising it. Even some of the lads were getting concerned."

What David didn't realise was this uncontrolled violence was a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but his actions meant he was arrested four times in 1985 and 1986 for football-related violence.

On April 22, 1987, he found himself in Leeds Crown Court along with a number of other suspected hooligans. The national press vilified him and branded him "the general", accusing him of orchestrating the violence. He was found guilty on a charge of organised conspiracy to cause violence and jailed for four years, despite a plea from his defence to take into account the terrible effect of his experiences during the war.

David says: "What the Paras teach you is to go in and cause as much damage as you possibly can. I was still fighting the war in my head nearly fours years after it finished, but the judge didn't want to know. His said whatever I'd been through didn't justify the amount of violence I'd used.

He entered his darkest period in Armley Jail without any drink or medication to keep the demons in his mind at bay, but through sheer determination he survived until he was released on parole on July 27, 1989, having served 14 months.

Vowing to give up his hooligan days he went to live with his mother and father in London, but it was while out with friends in Bradford in 1991 during one of the weekends he came up to watch Leeds play, that he met Lynda, who was to become his wife.

David says: "We got married in September 1996 and we're still together, which is unusual for many Falklands veterans. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has destroyed so many marriages. You're living on a knife edge every day. Lynda doesn't know whether I'm going to wake up in a bad mood or not, so it really affects her too. It's not been easy and if I get stressed I just take myself out for four or five days and don't really speak to anyone until I've got it out of my system."

The couple live together in a comfortable semi-detached house with their two dogs, Tetley and Tasha, who are the centre of their lives and spoilt like favourite children.

David is signed off permanently on the sick and will never work again despite being only 38 after his stress disorder was formally diagnosed. Earlier treatment would probably have left him fit to continue working.

But David has not given up and is part way into setting up the West Yorkshire branch of SAMA82, an organisation formed in 1997 specifically for veterans of the Falklands conflict.

The aim is to give advice and support for anyone like himself and to try and help them avoid the suffering he's had to endure.

David remembers his time in the Falklands with a mixture of love and hate, but either way he is still counting the cost of that experience 17 years ago.

He says: "The frustration is that I can barely do anything now compared to when I was a Para and could do anything I wanted. We were the best of the best."

Falkland veterans from the Yorkshire area can contact David Brown for more information about SAMA82 on 01274 416150. The families or relatives of veterans who died in the conflict can also get in touch using the same number. SAMA82 has reserved 252 free memberships, which is the number of British servicemen killed during the conflict.

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