Village launches appeal for heroes (From Evesham Journal)

Village launches appeal for heroes

10:09am Friday 29th February 2008

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THE Vale village of Fladbury might not seem the obvious choice to launch the Worcestershire appeal for a new national charity.

But there were three good reasons for its selection to mark the start of the county's appeal for public support for the charity Help for Heroes - set up to help injured servicemen and women.

In a nutshell, they were three people local to the village - Ian Baldry, Sue Fowler and Edward Cross.

Ian, a businessman and Territorial Army Major, is the county co-ordinator for the fund, which has set out to raise £6 million to fund the construction of a new swimming pool and physiotherapy unit at Headley Court near Epsom, Surrey, the Joint Services Rehabilitation Centre.

The centre looks after military personnel who have been seriously injured. Many of them have lost limbs on operations in Iraq, Afhganistan and other theatres where British troops have been deployed.

Ian said: "Injured personnel currently have to be transported by minibus to Leatherhead Leisure Centre where, in the glare of the general public, they have access to a roped-off single lane. They deserve better."

Presumably working on the premise that charity begins at home, Ian has engaged on a door-to-door collection in the village and enlisted the support of the local pubs. Already he has raised almost £1,200.

He said: "The vast majority of people in the village were not aware of this charity but once told have been very supportive."

Another reason for the Fladbury launch is that the village is also home to the family of Army Major Sue Fowler.

A member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Sue is a physiotherapist who has served on operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

She also has first-hand experience of Headley Court, both as a patient and as a clinician. In August she will return to the centre to become head of the physiotherapy department.

She explained: "The aims of treatment are to maximise each patient's functionality. This is achieved in a number of ways including the use of manual therapy, hydrotherapy and exercise-based rehabilitation."

Hydrotherapy is an intergral part of the treatment programme, she said, but the existing facilities are simply not adequate to cope with the demand.

Yet another Fladbury resident provided the third reason for the choice of venue for the launch - Edward Cross, formerly a commissioned officer with the Staffordshire Regiment, spent three months at Headley Court after incurring a serious knee injury on operations.

He was quick to rally to the cause. "The treatment I received at Headley Court was absolutely superb. The medical staff are totally dedicated and technically superb and enabling them to use state-of-the-art rehabilitation equipment in the future will only lead to an improved service to today's injured soldiers."

The charity was only launched at the end of September last year by former Royal Greenjacket turned cartoonist Bryn Parry.

He said: "We are all busy, bound up in our own lives, but then we hear something that makes us think, touches us, makes us connect to the world we live in, makes us stop and really focus.

"For me it was meeting the wounded servicemen at Selly Oak Hospital.

"We walked into a ward of 30 or so soldiers, sitting or lying on their beds, in T-shirts and boxers.

"They were not lying there under white sheets like in the movies, they were on top of the bedclothes and they were missing arms and legs.

"One man was missing both his legs and his neck was in a brace. He was consoling the son of another soldier who had died in the incident in which he had nearly died. It was profoundly moving.

"We came home determined to do something to help make these brave, modest and humerous people's lives better."

Ian Baldry is in no doubt about how we can help here in Worcestershire.

"We want members of the public to support this charity regardless of their personal views about the deployment of British troops.

"Our troops in Afghanistan are involved in high-intensity warfare and, as a result, the services are sustaining heavy casualties. Many of these casualties are treated at Headley Court and can be as young as 18.

"There are families in Worcestershire whose sons and daughters are serving in the Armed Forces who have done operation tours of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

"For these families, just knowing that they have the full support of their local communities has a significant impact on their morale."

For further information on the charity and how to make a donation online, visit www. helpforheroes.org.uk.

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