Armed Forces Day 2023 - Interview with Falklands veteran Simon Weston

SIMON Weston turns his constantly-weeping eyes to the floor and is temporarily silenced by thought.

After several moments, the unforgettable battle-scarred features stir into action as he attempts to answer a question that he’ll never truly understand.

“What do I regret the most? Christ, where do I start?

“I suppose the hardest part, aside from the trauma, the hell, the depression and the post-traumatic stress – was the realisation that so many of my friends had died. But that’s the way it goes.

“You can't expect war to be easy. You’re dealing with reality, not a John Wayne movie.

“Yes, I was a good soldier. But I was never enamoured with war. I didn’t like it then, and I like it even less now. But if I had to pick up a weapon to defend someone, I’d still do it.”

On June 8, 1982, exactly two months before his 21st birthday, Simon Weston was transferred to the Sir Galahad from HMS Fearless.

Welsh Guard Simon Weston (Image: Newsquest)

“Some of the Welsh Guards had already been taken to land but we were left on the Fearless for far too long,” he recalls.

“It seemed like it was taking forever…eight, nine, ten hours…to sail one mile to the landing craft. It was so cold and wet that night, so they decided to put us on the Sir Galahad and bring us back on that. But once again, we were left for far too long in daylight. We were sitting ducks.”

As they finally prepared to disembark, the Sir Galahad was bombed, with a resulting fireball that engulfed the ship and became one of the defining images of the war. It cost the lives of 32 Welsh Guards.

Despite the indescribable pain and trauma which Simon endured, his memories remain brutally clear.

“Yes, I can remember it. But I don’t want to go into that now. Why make the memories more painful by talking about them?

"It took me years to come to terms with what had happened and even now I get bouts of depression which can last for weeks. My whole life was shot to pieces.”

For as long as he can remember, the boy from Nelson in Mid Glamorgan had longed to be a soldier.

“I wanted to be the best soldier I could be. I signed up when I was 15 and joined a year later but I didn’t go in with rose-coloured specs.

"My grandfather had been a prisoner of war and he’d told me stories about how he’d been brutalised by the Italian and German squads. I didn’t go in lightly, but I never had an inkling of what lay ahead.”

Following the attack, Simon spent a year in hospital undergoing countless operations to rebuild his face, to save his eyes from blindness and to re-graft the skin on his entire body. So severe were the injuries that he was at constant risk of infection, including a flesh-eating virus that would have signalled death. His weight plummeted from a strapping 16-and-a-half stone to eight stone.

“I was a very poor puppy. My surgery didn’t come to an end until 1991.

“What did I go through? I went through copious amounts of lager, cider, brandy, trauma, depression, and despite what the cynics say, post traumatic stress disorder. My family and friends were there for me – they had to be if they loved me, because it’s written in the contract – and this support was the greatest thing I could have had. But if you haven’t got the drug of life, they won’t be able to save you.”

Simon still isn’t sure when he finally turned the corner to realise the value of the life that lay ahead of him however his marriage to Lucy, on May 12, 1990 – eight years to the day that he’d sailed to the Falklands – went a long way to restoring his self-confidence.

“Suddenly I was getting asked to speak at events and this terrified me. I was very shy, and I just didn’t get it. I was just a solider who’d been injured in the Falklands.”

But his growing list of engagements eventually necessitated an agent who predicted that Simon’s new career would last no longer than three years. The public, however, thought differently.

Twelve years later he'd been voted Speaker of the Year by the Speakers’ Club of Great Britain, Man of the Year (1985), Man of the Decade (the 80s), Pebblemill Man of the Year, a Freeman of the City of Liverpool, an OBE and a host of honorary doctorates and fellowships.

“But I still don’t understand it,” he says. “I see myself as being myself for what I am – the most awkward cuss in the world.

“My agent said I’d be forgotten in a few years but I’m still here. Why?

“Is it because of me? Is it because of my story? I just don’t know.

"But it seems there’s a quality in me that people can identify with and gravitate towards. But throughout it all, I’ve kept my feet firmly on the ground.

“ I still regard it as the greatest honour in the world to do an interview thinking that there’s someone out there who considers what I have to say is worthy.

“And if I hadn’t been injured in 1982, Id like to think I’d fundamentally be the same man as I am today. Nothing has changed.

“If either of my two sons decide they want to become soldiers then the decision will be theirs alone. I’d never put them off.

“All they have to do is look at their dad and they’ll know what could lie ahead.”