UK:A hero broken by war, the story of Jake Wood

A hero broken by war: Afghanistan veteran Jake Wood admits he's a walking timebomb - and there are hundreds more like him
Daily Mail UK
By TONY RENNELL
14 February 2013

Jake Wood is paranoid. To stand any chance of sleep at night, he must lie facing a closed bedroom door with a hammer close to hand under the bed, so he can kill any night intruders before they kill him.

And even then he may well wake up screaming and drenched in a sweat of terror.

Taking a shower in the morning, he never takes his eyes off the bathroom door, though he knows full well that it is locked and bolted.

Out in the street, the sound of a pneumatic drill sends him to the ground on one knee, arm raised, primed to fire.

‘Just the bang of a door and I am back in Afghanistan,’ the former soldier says.

Everyday life defeats a man whose courage under fire cannot be questioned, but who is haunted by what he has seen and done.

‘I cannot stand the sensation of anyone walking unseen behind me. On the Underground, I never take my eyes off anyone with a backpack in case their hands make a sudden movement towards a detonator.’

His senses deceive him. ‘I see blood in the blank canvas of snow, just as I saw blood in the pale sand of Helmand Province.

'I know I am hallucinating, but when I turn away and force myself to look again, it is still there.’

And, as he explains movingly in a new book, Wood knows the precise moment he finally lost control in Afghanistan.

As an experienced Territorial Army NCO, he was trying to stay alive under an enemy onslaught on forward operating base Inkerman — a makeshift outpost behind mud walls in the dangerous Sangin Valley — when a mortar eviscerated his respected, loved company commander.
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