A former soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan tells Chris Webber how post-traumatic stress disorder cost him his marriage, career and home and left him living on the streets

OUR interview finished, we’re sharing a couple of laughs when, suddenly, the building’s fire alarm sounds and Sean has leapt to his feet.

He’s marching around the room shouting: a man no longer in control of his own actions.

In seconds, a kindly member of staff, long-known to Sean, comes in, cracks a smile, and our soldier is sat down, laughing and joking once again.

“That was nothing, much better than I was,” says former Royal Fusilier Sean Percival-Scott, 29, of Billingham. “Any loud noise and I would dive to the floor. It was embarrassing.”

Sean, who has established a successful business as a dog-trainer, is a success story for The Beacon, a purpose-built centre in Catterick for homeless war veterans.

By the time he had, in a moment of desperation, called the people at The Beacon for help he had already lost his a marriage, fallen out with his family, lost several jobs and been hitting the bottle hard. All due to his erratic, sometimes frightening behaviour.

Surprisingly candid, even chatty, in our anonymous office room, Sean begins to tell of a suicide attempt but stops, quite abruptly. “Too emotional,” he says. We move on.

“I was on the streets for about three months, around Shildon and Bishop Auckland.

“I was on this park bench in Shildon staring at the greasy, £1 pizza I’d bought, swigging down a cheap bottle of red wine. I thought, ‘look at you, you’re a f***ing tramp, you’re going to be another one of those soldiers found dead in the woods.’”

Thankfully, someone had made Sean put a number in his phone. It was for an organisation called The Spaces which helps soldiers at The Beacon.

They collected him, gave him food and a room, and Sean, at last, began his tough journey back to a normal life.

Sean had worked as a funeral director before joining up aged 20. Describing himself as a bit of a dreamy young man, lacking confidence, the army brought out the best in him.

“It made me pro-active, a do-er, confident. I would be the last one you’d think would have problems.”

He did more tours of Iraq and Afghanistan than he can remember. But it wasn’t the actual violence that caused Sean to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or, as Sean himself, typically making light, puts it: "Go wibble."

“What got me was the waiting,” he says. “You got used to the sound of indirect fire, mortars, and there was an alarm sound when they were coming into base.

“But when Ramadan came it all stopped. There was this silence. I was like a boxer saying, ‘I’m going to hit you right in the jaw...but I’m not going to tell you when.’

“I couldn’t do exercises any more. I could only do it for real. I had massive lapses in concentration, would fake illness, easy when you’re vomiting from nerves. Sleep was very erratic.”

Eventually his behaviour started to worsen in his home life. “One day my girlfriend came back to find I’d turned the kitchen upside down, smashed it up. All because I hadn’t cooked a potato properly. I never hurt anyone physically, but I was aggressive. Either that, or like a scared child, crying. My girlfriend had the worst of it.”

Sean left the army and moved down to Shropshire, finding work and met and fell in love with a new girl. He got a job, married the girl, also a soldier but he couldn’t take to civvy street, ended up attacking an unpleasant boss.

After about a year, with a different surname, he managed to get himself back into the military without too many questions asked, this time as a Royal Marine. “I genuinely thought, ‘this will fix me, but, of course, I just went ‘wibble’ again.”

‘Wibble’ meant getting drunk, donning full battle rig marching around the camp bare foot in the dead of night taking a swing at two soldiers.

Quickly discharged, but offered no help from the military, a bad situation quickly became worse.

“My wife left me, so I lost my marriage, my career and even my pad, because it was a military home, all in one week.”

The slide to the streets accelerated until that call to The Beacon.

“What’s amazing about this place is it allows you put your life on pause. That’s helped more than anything. Then you can just press, ‘unpause’.

“You can live again.”