UK-US Service Personnel Task Force: A Personal View of the Past Two Months

“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by the nation.” President George Washington, 1789.

Judging by the amazing opportunities and activities of the last few months for wounded servicemen and women of the UK and the US, President George Washington should be resting easy. In April, the US Olympic Training Camp and Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs saw the largest ever UK contingent participate in the Warrior Games as the only non-US team. Prince Harry was on hand to give his support, and also float the concept of an International Warrior Games in the UK in 2014. The UK team won 4 Gold, 7 Silver and 10 Bronze medals, and found the American camaraderie and hospitality utterly overwhelming. Every athlete found the competition stimulating and rewarding in equal measures, and it acted as a springboard for many to ensure an active lifestyle – sport, health and nutrition – remained a fundamental part of their future lives.

After the Games, I was then fortunate enough to lead a team of four staff from the British Embassy and eight American Wounded Warriors – named Team Shoulder to Shoulder (S2S) to reflect the closeness of our partnership – to Europe to participate in the Help for Heroes Big Battlefield Bike Ride. The bike ride saw over 300 able-bodied and disabled cyclists ride from Paris to London over six days via a number of Allied War Memorials and Cemeteries. My US team members were all ambulant but suffered from a range of injuries, PTSD, cancer and spinal injuries.

Between these events we held a fundraising dinner in the British Ambassador’s Residence for the bike ride. With the help of Montgomery County Police Department and US Secret Service, it was a huge honour to travel down Wisconsin and Massachusetts Avenue by bike during Friday evening rush hour on a totally cleared road to cheers and applause from passers-by. The evening raised over $50,000 for the team and three charities: Help for Heroes, Fisher House and the Allied Forces Foundation. Thanks must go to Astrium, Airborne Wireless, BP, Barclays, Jaguar Land Rover, MBDA, Raytheon, Smith & Nephew and Tata for their extremely generous support. Thanks must also go to L3-TRL, Seven Technologies, Agility Logistics and 20 Transport Squadron RLC for their physical, financial and moral support.

Our departure from Paris, during the bike ride, saw us meet another member of the British Royal Family, the Duchess of Cornwall, who launched the Ride from Les Invalides after a brief chat with USMC Staff Sergeant Ryan Harshman of Team S2S and other British, American and Canadian wounded. A dreary, wet exit from Paris lead to a beautiful but long afternoon’s ride through the northern French countryside. Some eighty miles later we arrived at Compiegne – the site of the 1918 Armistice signing – and the first of many thought-provoking wreath laying ceremonies.

Two hundred and fifty miles later, we arrived at Calais via memorials at Thiepval, Ligny, Azincourt, Montreuil, Etaples and Wimereaux Canadian Cemetery. Each stop was extremely moving in its own right, and along with the Pedalling Padre’s considered sermons, reinforced the fact that our nations have been allies for almost a century, fighting and falling alongside one another to defend freedom. Combined with the opportunity for the injured American cyclists to share stories with their British and Canadian counterparts, the whole experience was uplifting, inspirational, reflective and rehabilitative.

Leaving the shores of France, cyclists sailed into Dover singing Jerusalem (lead by Mark Elliot of Help for Heroes) and faced a seven mile climb straight out of the docks to the Battle of Britain Memorial to the Few. The climb was absolutely worth it – the memorial is spectacular and made even more so by a wonderful ten minute flypast of a Spitfire from the Royal Air Force’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. After a few more severe ‘undulations’, around fifty miles of them to be precise, we arrived at the Chatham Naval Memorial for our penultimate wreath laying ceremony.

The last day saw a final push from Chatham to Blackheath where we were joined by over a thousand other cyclists from across the UK for the ‘Grand Finale’. We were issued new coloured T-shirts: Gold for the wounded, then dark blue, red and light blue representing Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, before cycling (slowly) the final ten miles to Whitehall. After laying a wreath at the Women in War Memorial and our final sermon, we rode past Buckingham Palace, with the ‘Gold’ wounded and colours of the Services riding as one down The Mall in the form of the Help for Heroes medal. The tremendous public support throughout the streets of London and especially the final mile was truly overwhelming, and there were plenty of people grateful they were wearing wraparound sunglasses as we stopped on the gravel of Horse Guards Parade.

The exercise had significant benefits to the US wounded cyclists from both a personal and rehabilitative perspective. US Navy Commander Bobbi Dittrich, Head of Walter Reed Bethesda’s Rehabilitative Cycling Programme and senior US team member, summed it up as providing an, “insight to the US members that allied forces have suffered similar devastation from war and trauma, finding several common threads with our British and Canadian allies; not only pain and suffering, but resilience, wellness, recovery and growth.”

From my perspective, I found it a true honour and extreme privilege to meet and ride with an amazing group of people. Not just the wounded – their humbling resilience, good humour and fortitude impress me every time I meet them – but ordinary members of the British public who just wanted to ‘do their bit’. There were people in their sixties and seventies on the ride, there was one crazy man who rode on one of those fold up Brompton bikes and another who did it on a Transport for London ‘Boris’ bike – fifty pounds of steel with a shopping basket! There were teenage girls and their mothers, retired generals, business leaders, and of course Team America (S2S)!

It is so important to keep events such as this in the public eye to ensure that the needs of our wounded, injured and ill are not forgotten once we transition out of Afghanistan. Many of these individuals are still just in their twenties and thirties, and will need support for decades, as will their families. The Service Personnel, Veterans and Families Taskforce, created by President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron two years ago, provides the optimum opportunity to cohere UK and US support to the various Service charities, veterans’ transition and employment, and improvements in mental health and rehabilitation. The routine combination of Defence officials, non-profit organisations and the private sector across both nations offer the best mechanism to ensure that the point made by George Washington over 200 years ago is fulfilled today and in the future.