Groundhog Day for Danny Claricoates with PTSD

Groundhog Day for Danny Claricoates, the warrior with invisible wounds
Tom Coghlan

As Danny Claricoates was walking past some roadworks last week, a workman switched on a tarmac-flattening machine. He froze. Sweat began to pour off him and his heart started to race with shock.

He could hear the unmistakable sound of an incoming Chinook helicopter. He was back in Afghanistan on November 12 last year as the vehicle in front of him blew apart, then weeping as he carried the bodies of two close friends to a waiting helicopter.

Danny is trapped in a dystopian version of Groundhog Day. Particular sounds trigger the same flashback, and though the experience is always the same, it never loses any of its horror.

It is deeply debilitating. He is perpetually on edge and unable to shake off deep feelings of guilt.


What makes Danny unusual, however, is that not only is he willing to talk openly about the still-taboo subject of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of which he now has a diagnosis, but that he is also a winner of one of Britain’s highest awards for gallantry: the Military Cross.

In 2007, aged 27, he spent seven months in Helmand. All but five weeks of that time was spent on the front line. He was awarded the MC for his exceptional courage under fire on three occasions.

When Danny returned from Afghanistan he was, his mother said, a different person. He was troubled, above all, by a sense of guilt. There had been a moment when a Marine was hit beside him and Danny didn’t stop to help him. The man was only shot in the wrist but Danny always blamed himself.
read more here
Groundhog Day for Danny Claricoates