Larry Knowles served in the RAF for 26 years before he developed post-traumatic stress disorder and ended up homeless. He shares his experience, and talks about the change he’d like to see so others don’t fall through the cracks…
On June 16, 2013, I got on my hands and knees and pleaded to God to take this terrible affliction away from me. Vodka was my food. Within a few weeks I would have died, without a doubt.
I was 22 when I joined the RAF in 1975. I served 26 years in different places throughout the world, eight years in Germany, Belize, Cyprus, detachments all over the United States and Canada. I rose to the rank of chief technician in charge of 200 aircraft engineering personnel. One of my duties in the latter part of my service was organising aircraft crash recovery, which unfortunately involved picking up some really bad scenes.
There was a culture of work hard, play hard in the RAF, I’m sure it’s the same in the Army as well. At the end of the day, irrespective of what you’d gone through during that day, you’d end up in the NAAFI bar or the sergeant’s mess, or any of the other bars that were always available and you’d thrash things out over a beer. A man’s way of doing it, I suppose. But it’s when you get home and you’re in a quiet room that you reflect on things and that’s when it hits you the hardest.
Picking up victims of crashes affected me badly. I finished up with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which reared its ugly head in the form of alcohol abuse. My drinking became completely out of control after I left the service in 2001. I went from excessive to compulsive. I couldn’t go without a drink. I went from beer, to beer and a mixture of spirits, to a litre of vodka a day. My marriage broke up. A lot of it was down to my drinking. I was never violent but I became objectionable and probably quite obnoxious without really knowing it. I lost everything, my family, my home, my livelihood and I finished up on the streets not knowing where my next drink was coming from, and that was all I was interested in. Quite a lot of the time I slept rough. For a couple of weeks I lived in a porch of a church in Porthcawl.
PTSD reared its ugly head in the form of alcohol abuse. My drinking got out of control, and my marriage broke up
I ended up in different hostels in Newport and selling The Big Issue. It was an experience in my life I will never forget. If I see anybody selling The Big Issue now I buy a copy from them because I can relate to people like that, having done it myself. There was a place called The Wallich, which was helping people who were homeless, and they cottoned on to me. They managed to get me a one-bedroom flat in Bridgend but it didn’t even have a bed. I was put in touch with an organisation linked to a local church that gave furniture to people like me. From them I got a bed, a sofa and a few pots and pans.