Endal: How one extraordinary dog brought a family back from the brink. Sandra Parton
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regular crew would go on leave and we’d go on board with the books and check all the maintenance and fix up the bits that weren’t working and then hand it back to the crew once they were rested. We were there for a year, I think, and then we were transferred down to Portsmouth where I worked on a guided-missile destroyer.
The kids were born in these years, first Liam in 1985 and then Zoe in ‘86. Apparently, the night Zoe was conceived I was meant to have been at sea, but the ship’s engines broke down so we came back ashore, and she was the result!
After Portsmouth, I was moved to Bath, where I was working for the Director of Engineering Support, basically designing new weaponry systems. There was a vast underground naval complex beneath the city, which was like something out of a Harry Potter novel, and we didn’t see daylight from Monday to Friday. It was dark in the morning when I started and dark when I walked out in the evening, but I loved the challenges of the work I was doing.
I was the only non-commissioned officer there. I’d passed the exams and so forth but I hadn’t actually gone to Dartmouth to get my commission, and I was aware that I was being watched by all the other officers to see whether I fitted in. When we went out socially, the highest of the high were watching my social graces, so I couldn’t make myself a chip butty at table or anything like that. I had to wear a jacket and tie instead of running around with the lads. But I was ready for it. Being an officer would mean that I could provide better for my family.
When the Gulf War started in 1990, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I volunteered straight away. I felt I should be out there on a ship instead of sitting behind a desk in Bath. It was never going to be a naval battle, so it was more about making sure supplies were getting through to our troops, intercepting any shipments of arms to the Iraqis, that kind of thing. We didn’t need thousands of ships there because it was all fairly easy with modern radar equipment, and you can more or less see right across the Gulf anyway.
When we arrived, our ship was given some free fuel from a prince who owned some oilfields in one of the Gulf States and we found we weren’t really needed, so we sailed on to Singapore and Malaysia. I know Sandra came out and joined me there, because she has shown me some stunning pictures of us standing in front of huge Buddhas and going round all the sights. So in fact, when she waved me off to go back to the theatre of war, we were sailing from Malaysia, not the UK. That was the last time she saw the ‘old me’. I’ve got a complete blank about that whole period. I can’t remember a single thing. I’ve no memory of ever being in Malaysia or the Gulf. It’s all gone. Sometimes I think I remember things because I’ve seen a picture of them but I can’t fill in any detail that’s not in the picture.
When I woke up in Haslar military hospital in September 1991, I was determined to get straight back to work. I just needed the doctors to fix me up. I hadn’t had an operation, there weren’t any scars or blood and gore, I hadn’t broken my back or my neck, so why was I having such trouble walking?
‘Your brain is not sending signals to your legs,’ I was told. ‘That’s why they don’t respond effectively. There’s nothing actually wrong with them.’
It was the same with my eyes. There was nothing the matter with them, but because my brain wasn’t working properly it wasn’t picking up signals from the optic nerve as efficiently as it should have been. The squint I’d had as a young child appeared to have come back. And I had no feeling in my right arm and the right side of my body, although I seemed to be able to move them; there were intermittent pins and needles but I couldn’t feel my hand if I dug a nail into it.
I took hope from the fact that there was no physical damage. Surely I just needed a bit of rest and it would all come back again? But why did I seem to have forgotten roughly 50 per cent of my life history? I had no memories of my grandfather, mother, sister, wife or children. Why did I forget basic words like ‘toothpaste’ and ‘bed’ and ‘pyjamas’?
‘You experienced a huge traumatic internal brain injury when your spine was forced up into the brain cavity,’ they said. ‘There’s no treatment we can give you. We just have to wait and see. It could get better, or it could get worse.’
If the doctors ever sounded negative in their prognosis, I thought to myself: They don’t know whom they’re dealing with. Maybe other war veterans would sigh and shrug and accept their disabilities, but I was way too ambitious for that. I was itching to get back to my career. I would work tirelessly at my physiotherapy and speech therapy and any other damn therapy they cared to give me. I would keep exercising until my legs worked properly again; I’d recover my memory and my speech and my eyesight and I’d astonish them all with my miraculous powers of regeneration.
I was so determined that I didn’t listen to anyone who warned me it might not be possible to get back the life I’d had before. They didn’t know me. They didn’t have a clue what I was capable of. As far as I was concerned, they were just plain wrong.
Allen and I met in November 1982 in a nightclub in Haslemere, Surrey. I was twenty-three years old and living near there in a village called Clanfield, where I was working as a live-in nanny for the children of a surgeon at the hospital where I’d trained as a nurse.
I liked nursing on the whole and knew I wanted to end up working in some kind of caring profession, but I’d recently been posted on a couple of difficult wards, including a unit for people with severe burns, which had been very traumatic and upsetting. I decided to take a bit of time out from nursing to decide what to do with my future, and the nanny job was ideal. I got on really well with the surgeon’s wife, and when I mentioned to her that I was finding it hard to meet new people in the area she arranged for me to go to the nightclub and be introduced to some of the locals by the club owner, who was a friend of hers.
‘I need to get you up to that naval base and meeting some of those young officers,’ she said, prophetically.
I tried on lots of different outfits and spent ages doing my hair and make-up that night. It seemed like a long time since I’d made the effort, and the surgeon’s wife sat and chatted to me as I got ready. I was very apprehensive about turning up at a club on my own, even though she said the doorman would look after me when I arrived. I’d led quite a sheltered upbringing and wasn’t really a clubbing type. The whole thought of it made me feel very awkward.
My shyness wasn’t helped by the fact that when I arrived the doorman who was supposed to be looking after me wasn’t there, but I hadn’t been in the club long before a scruffy-looking guy in ripped jeans and a tatty old duffel coat came up to me, completely the worse for wear.
‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ he said. ‘Will you marry me? I’m pregnant, and I need you to marry me or I’ll get into trouble with my mum.’
I thought it was a great opening line, and liked his handsome boyish looks and the twinkle in his eye.
He told me his name was Allen, and then he bought me a hugely potent cocktail called a JD, which had orange juice, angostura bitters, gin and vodka in it, together with something else completely lethal, I think.
I was definitely attracted to him but I didn’t much like the fact that he was drunk. I’ve never been comfortable around heavy drinkers, having grown up with an alcoholic father.
As his speech grew more incoherent and I saw he was having trouble standing upright, I made my excuses and walked away. I didn’t want to have to mop up after him if he was sick! But in the week that followed I found myself thinking about him and wondering if I’d see him again. Despite the alcohol, he definitely had charm.
The following week I went back to the same Haslemere club, hoping to see him, and was delighted when he came bounding over as soon as I walked in.
‘I’m sorry if I said anything rude last week. I hope I wasn’t too offensive.’
‘I’m surprised you even remember meeting me,’ I commented.
‘How