Examination of Witnesses (Questions 906
- 919)
WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2004 (MORNING)
MRS LYNN
FARR, MRS
JANETTE MATTIN,
MS JUNE
SHARPLES, MRS
CLAUDIA BECKLEY-LINES
AND MR
JUSTIN HUGHESTON-ROBERTS
Q906 Chairman: Good morning, ladies,
this is the first of two evidence sessions today in our Duty of
Care Inquiry, an inquiry we are still in the midst of, although
we hope to report in March. Thank you for giving up your time
to come to see us this morning, for what I hope will be as informal
a meeting as a Select Committee meeting can be. We appreciate
that these times are intensely personal and distressing for you;
we obviously understand. Before we begin I would like to repeat
what I said when we began our inquiry; although our inquiry was
prompted by the deaths of young soldiers at initial training establishments,
we are not a substitute for the Police nor for the judicial process.
We have not and will not be considering the findings of the Police
or of the coroner about how the deaths occurred. I am obliged
to remind you and the wider audience who may be following the
Committee's work in this area that this inquiry and this evidence
session is not the appropriate forum to make allegations about
named individuals. Our task is to see whether the Armed Forces
are learning the lessons of the past and whether they are doing
everything that can reasonably be expected of them to ensure that
their training regime and culture promote the well-being of the
people they are training. Having said that, we could not have
concluded our inquiry without having heard from you, the families
of those involved with these tragic events. This session is an
opportunity for you to tell us about your experiences and to give
us your views on how the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence
should improve the care and welfare of recruits. Thank you, Lynn,
for your memorandum and, in case anyone gets conspiratorial, the
names at the rear of this memorandum as available have been deleted
by the Committee, I understand in consultation with you; there
is no sinister attempt to prevent any truth coming out. Before
you start, please would you like to introduce yourselves?
Mrs Mattin: I am
Janet Mattin.
Mrs Farr: I am Lynn Farr, my son
Daniel was 18 when he died at Catterick.
Ms Sharples: I am June Sharples,
my son Allan died at Catterick; he was 20.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: Claudia Beckley-Lines,
my son died at Catterick when he was 22.
Q907 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I will start off with the first question—and there are lots
of questions that we would like to ask. If you would like me to
ask a question again, or any of my colleagues, please ask, or
if at any time you want a little time out, then that is perfectly
acceptable. You do not all have to answer the same question, if
whoever is coming second or third thinks the question has been
answered, then there is no obligation to repeat, because we have
a lot of questions and we want to cover as much ground as we possibly
can. If a question clearly applies to all of you, then of course
do not in any way hesitate to speak. Whether a question could
be addressed to you all and whether we go from left to right,
will that be okay?
Mrs Farr: Yes.
Q908 Chairman: When your children
applied to join the Army were you as parents given information
about the training regime that they would be experiencing? Janet?
Mrs Mattin: Just a printout, a
small pamphlet that I remember, nothing that I felt was particularly
aimed at me, it was more for the new recruit.
Q909 Chairman: Thank you, and you
were not alarmed in any way, it seemed a natural document to be
published for any applicant or parent to read.
Mrs Mattin: No, I was not alarmed.
Mark had been in the cadets from a youngster, and it was a natural
progression as we thought.
Q910 Chairman: Thank you. Lynn, please?
Mrs Farr: I do not think there
is anything aimed specifically for parents, it is all aimed at
the younger person wanting to go into the Army and, again, you
are not alarmed—I would be alarmed now, but at that time
I was not alarmed, no.
Ms Sharples: The same for me,
yes.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: No, we were
not given anything, and my son was a cadet so he just wanted to
get into the Army.
Q911 Chairman: You did not have a
document and he did not have a document?
Mrs Beckley-Lines: No.
Q912 Chairman: Might he have had
one and did not show you? It seems strange that you did not have
a document.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: He lived with
me, so I would have seen it anyway.
Q913 Chairman: We will ask about
that, if it is a matter of absolute routine that every applicant
for initial training receives a document that would cover the
information that we ask. Thank you. Were you in any way informed
about the welfare and supervisory regime at initial training establishment
prior to your son joining up?
Mrs Mattin: Mark initially went
to Bassingbourne, which I visited only the once on his first and
only passing-out parade. They seemed super, they were really nice,
but prior to him going down there no one called me or I did not
receive any mail or anything in particular, it just seemed that
Mark knew what was expected of him and I was not particularly
involved in the process, so no.
Mrs Farr: In Daniel's papers that
he got from the recruitment office there was one in which the
Army stated that they would uphold the duty of care to the soldiers,
and you take that as their word, but fortunately that has not
been so. My first concern was when he was at Glencorse he had
to have his large toenail removed, and within an hour of that
being removed he had to put his socks on and go on a run in his
boots. That was the first time any concerns came to light.
Q914 Chairman: You did not know about
the small operation then until afterwards?
Mrs Farr: I did not until afterwards
that it had happened.
Ms Sharples: The same for me,
all I remember was them saying that there would be the duty of
care and that Allan would be looked after. That was it, basically.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: The same, we
trusted them—we trusted our sons to them to take care of
them. I noticed my son, he got leaner and leaner. He was 18 stones
when he joined, he was 12 stones when he died. He just got leaner
and leaner and leaner and I asked him what was the matter. He
was a quiet boy, never used to talk, and he got quieter and quieter
and quieter, and he would never tell us what was going on.
Q915 Chairman: So you saw a personality
change in him.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: Yes, a lot.
I tried to tell his father, I said "Look at this boy . .
." Because my children are mixed race I would say it is the
white side coming out, that is why they are so quiet, but then
he just got quieter and quieter until never he would say anything,
until he died.
Mrs Farr: I think there is a personality
change in them all, even after the first few weeks of being there,
and some of it really I have got to say is for the better because
they are a little bit more independent, but then there is a personality
change where they do not speak to you any more and you get the
feeling that they are not yours any more. I cannot explain what
it is, but you can just sense that they do not belong to you any
more, and that is just after probably the first few weeks.
Chairman: We have been to a number of
establishments and clearly there is an attempt at changing behaviour
patterns and attitudes, so you are right to say that, it is almost
inevitable. Thank you for the first question, Peter is our Deputy
Chairman.
Q916 Mr Viggers: Did you discuss
the transition from civilian to service life with your son?
Mrs Mattin: In my case, no, because
as I stated he was a cadet from a young age and I assumed he knew
everything that the life entailed, all the hard work and the training,
and he was very happy to enter into it. The change in Mark did
not occur until he moved to Catterick, but up to then everything
was just fine.
Mrs Farr: I think it is as new
for the parents as it is for the recruits and if the parents were
briefed—especially on the younger soldiers, the under-18s—prior
to their children going into the Army, so that they would be aware,
because I do not think the parents are aware of any culture change
or social change, you just take what is in these leaflets and
basically that is it. You discuss the future with your child,
but unless you have actually had somebody in the Army before then
parents are not aware of this.
Ms Sharples: Allan and myself
spoke about it and about the changes that would be made, and Allan
was aware of what he was going into.
Mrs Beckley-Lines: My son was
really aware of what he was going into but because, as I said,
he did not talk a lot, he could not even ask questions. He said,
"Mum, we can't even ask questions" and then he would
say "They would make this sign to us like this", the
officers (draws hand across throat) and I just thought, whoa.
He was intimidated all the time, that is what he said, he said
the man would say "And if you go home we'll go back and get
you" so he knew he was doomed to them, "If you run home
we'll go and get you" and that kind of thing. It was just
intimidation and you cannot ask any questions, just obey, and
then he said they were sworn to secrecy, that they should not
tell, so they did not know whether they were doing the wrong thing
talking about their lives to us, or the right thing, because they
were sworn to secrecy.
Q917 Mr Viggers: When you started
moving into this area did you notice a change in your children's
character or behaviour after they joined the Armed Forces? You
started intimating that you did indeed, but can you explain how
this impacted?
Mrs Mattin: At Catterick he started
not looking anyone in the face. He was there such a short time,
it is hard to be really concise. He went AWOL, he sat on a friend's
sofa and just sat with his head in his hands all night, apparently,
and kept repeating "I'm not going back, I'm NOT GOING BACK."
He did not tell me, he just was so quiet, introverted, would not
look you in the face. I knew there was something wrong, or afterwards
I knew there was something wrong. He did not visit his girlfriend
of two or three years by that stage on the last weekend he came
home, he just—well, he was not really there, it was not
Mark any more, he was not himself.
Q918 Mr Viggers: This was not, I
think I understand you to say, from the beginning of the time
he joined the Army.
Mrs Mattin: No, he was great at
Bassingbourne, it was just for the short period that he was at
Catterick and he totally changed.
Q919 Mr Viggers: Lynn, changes from
the time your son joined the Army?
Mrs Farr: When Daniel first joined,
after he came home from his initial training up at Glencorse,
he was a completely different person. In some respects he had
a little bit more pride in his appearance and things like that,
which was not a bad thing, but like I said before you just had
that feeling that they are not yours anymore and there is a type
of barrier there, they will not discuss things with you, and every
time that you tried to bring up a subject regarding the Army he
just did not want to talk about it, and that was the end of it,
different things like that. He did go through a series of being
homesick and wanting to come out, but I think that is a natural
thing with the young recruits. Then he got as though he did not
want to go back, but he did not tell us, he was telling his friends
this, but he kept going back. Then the week before he died he
actually went AWOL and I went to pick him up and he wanted to
speak with me, but because I took my younger son with me he would
not speak to me, so I honestly do not know what he was going to
tell me that day, yet there was a general progression of going
down really with Daniel, from him being at Catterick to him dying,
it was just like a general downward slope.
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