3 Day Motorcycle Tour of Wales in Aid of Combat Stress.

The idea for this tour started with a letter received in December 2012, from the wife of an Army Medic Falklands Veteran, asking if they would consider supporting Combat Stress. She said that the charity had given her and her young family a lifeline at a time when she felt she had lost her husband for good. She said that as an army medic he came back from the Falklands suffering with: “deep psychological injuries; having seen the brutality of war in a makeshift field hospital at Ajax Bay where he had received severely wounded comrades and enemy troops.  She explained, "These sights and sounds had followed him home, and from a friendly outgoing husband he slipped into states of anxiety, became hyper sensitive to noise, haunted by nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks. But now with the help of Combat Stress, the isolation has disappeared having somewhere and someone to turn to”.  Combat Stress helped her husband to cope with the mental scars and trauma that war had inflicted; being able to speak to people who understood the things he had seen and the way that he now felt, helped him to cope with day to day life. Sadly not all service men and women have a loving family around. The mental scars they suffer can tear families apart. Unlike physical wounds, mental scars are not always obvious; quite often individuals look as if they are unscathed by the ravages of war. The stress and trauma they have suffered and continue to suffer is often only obvious to close family and friends. These are the photos of the end of their journey returning back to the Promenade in Llandudno.