War horses: Soldiers returning from the front line are finding new purpose in a most unlikely place

Published on Sunday 18 July 2010 19:32

JAY HARE sits astride his American Quarter horse, a wide-brimmed hat shading him from the afternoon sun. It is just after lunchtime in this bucolic corner of Aberdeenshire and Hare and Chexy, his sandy coloured mare, are strolling across the rolling fields together.

• Jay Hare and Rick Anderson were both injured in Afghanistan but have found new hope and peace. Pic Ian Rutherford

They take it slow and steady, Hare gently guiding the animal where he wants to go.

On one side of him, also astride a horse, sits a man with one arm. On the other, a man whose craggy face has seen its fair share of combat guides the three of them down the hill. Waiting at the bottom, a loud American in an even wider-brimmed hat gives Hare a high five. "Looking good, brother!" he shouts. Hare dismounts and, with a smile, pulls up the leg on his blue Levi's. His prosthetic limb glints in the sunshine.

In November 2008 Corporal Jason Hare, of 45 Commando Royal Marines, stood on an improvised explosive device (IED) while on patrol in the notorious area of Sangin, in Afghanistan's Helmand province. It blew off Hare's leg, two fingers and half his face. He was 27 years old. The next thing he remembers is waking up in Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital. "I had so many drugs pumped through me I thought I was still out there," he says. "Then my wife said, 'You've been injured' and I looked down and thought, 'Ah, I remember that now'."

Based just outside Arbroath, 45 Commando lost 12 men during its most recent tour of Afghanistan, which finished in March 2009. Another 12 sustained serious injuries, and there are six amputees in the unit, two of whom lost two limbs. Since their return from combat, they have gone through an extensive recovery process, some of it at Headley Court, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Surrey, undergoing a gruelling regime of surgery and physiotherapy as they learn to walk and even run again.

Such fundamental losses could — particularly in young, fit men whose motivation in life stems from being at the peak of physical fitness — be seen as a cruel end, not a new beginning. But for Hare, his horrific injuries have brought him here, to Horseback UK, a tiny charity treating casualties from the Afghan war by teaching them how to become 21st-century cowboys. It is a move that has given not only him, but his entire unit, a hope and a peace that is as far removed from the dusty plains of Afghanistan as the Aberdeenshire hills themselves.

Around the kitchen table of their farmhouse near Aboyne, as his wife Emma bustles around making coffee and the family dogs wander in and out the door, Jock Hutchison — former Marine, horse lover and founder of Horseback UK — explains how his stableyard has become a second front line of the war in Afghanistan.

"It was Hogmanay two years ago," he says. "We had some friends here, many of them ex-Marines. We were discussing the number of guys getting wounded out in Afghanistan, just how many of them there seemed to be, and what happened to them when they came home. Sitting outside having a few drinks round the campfire, somebody suddenly said. 'This is where they should come.' That was the catalyst."

Hutchison served in the Marines for ten years, in Bosnia, in Kurdistan, in the Gulf and in Northern Ireland. He has an understanding, he says, "of what the thinking of an average Marine is". He also has a fair idea of what goes on inside a horse's head — the legacy of a childhood spent on horses, a year in North Carolina as a teenager working alongside western cowboys and a recently realised long-held dream to own a farm with stables. He had come up with an idea to run commercial courses in western riding and had nine horses already ensconced for the purpose, as well as 30 acres of land.

But after that Hogmanay night, the answer seemed obvious — use the horses to rehabilitate the injured Marines. "There is a freedom you get on a horse," he says. "It's like driving a Ducati 900 and swimming with a dolphin at the same time. It gives you adventure, it gives you a sense of fulfilment, it's a spiritual thing."

The type of horse riding he's talking about, however, is not the sort you would see down at your local gymkhana. This is western riding — in other words, what cowboys do, all the way from the hats to the whispers. Hutchison points out that cowboys, like Marines, are old-fashioned men. "They work hard, play hard and are focused on their family."

For him there was a symbiosis — so much so that he brought in an expert to teach the injured Marines the ropes. Jay L Richardson is what most Robert Redford fans would call a horse whisperer, although he says the term is "a bit mystical". Standing in the kitchen door frame, he looks like the Marlboro Man in jeans, an O'Farrell hat and a hearty Colorado accent. The only hint he is on the wrong side of the Atlantic is that he smokes Lambert & Butler cigarettes.

Richardson, who has spent the past two months at Horseback UK, grew up herding cows on the family's Colorado ranch, and more recently spent several years working with Pat Parelli, a "natural horseman" much revered in the US for his skills in training horses the natural way. It is a method that claims to tune in to how the horse thinks, rather than simply view it as a beast that can be bent to man's will.

"In a nutshell, natural horsemanship is about love, language and leadership versus force, fear and intimidation," he says. "It's about causing our idea to become their idea. We need to learn more to think like a horse, and I don't mean this in a mystic, 'Ooh, let's eat some grass and see how it feels' way.

"But if you watch horses, you'll see that horses play games with each other. And if we can learn to play these games with the horses and mentally engage and become a partner and a good leader, we get a lot more success and we can go a lot further."

Trying to convince a group of war-hardened Marines, however, that playing cowboys and Indians is going to help their recovery from combat injuries isn't an easy sell. After several months setting up the charity, the Hutchisons welcomed their first group of Marines to the farm earlier this year, and with some trepidation, introduced them to their specially bred American Quarter horses. "We had 20 guys sitting out there who had never been near a horse before, and I remember standing in front of them and seeing them looking at me in my gear and thinking, 'Yeah, right, he's a tosser'." he says. "Yet after two days we had problems prising them off the horses. It totally exceeded my expectations."

Emma chips in: "They were all walking around hugging the horses, sneaking off to give them a cuddle. It was really quite moving."

The philosophy is that anyone can ride a horse. It doesn't matter if you've lost an arm or a leg — the guys will find a way to work round that. Small groups of Marines — at the moment they are all from 45 Commando but they are hoping to expand it to Britain's two other Marine units, 42 Commando and 40 Commando, who are currently serving in Afghanistan — come up for a few days at a time and go on an intensive course. They aim to get everyone on a horse in the first day, and emphasise the importance of the relationship with the horses themselves. All are given the correct safety gear.

Hare, almost two years on from the explosion that robbed him of a leg and a eye, is on his way to becoming an expert horseman. "Given that I'm halfway down my recovery I feel anyone can do this. It's a challenge and everyone loves a challenge, to try and do something different," he says.

Hare, who had already completed two tours of Afghanistan when he was injured in 2008, sees parallels between the sort of intensely dangerous military action he saw in Helmand province, and dealing with a horse — a huge, heavy and unpredictable beast with a mind of its own. He demonstrates how to get on and off a wooden horse built specifically for the purpose. "In the military it's called an IA — an Immediate Action. Something where you get the hell away from it. If you come under fire it's called IA. So should the horse react and I need to get off it in a hurry, and given the fact that I've got a prosthetic leg, can I do that?"

He can — he's good at this stuff now, so much so that he is based full time at Horseback UK, training on the horses himself, as well as helping train other Marines who have been injured. For him, that's what it's about.

"You're among lads who've got the same humour, which can be quite black at times but it's the way we get over things. It's camaraderie. And when you're on a horse, it's being part of a team again."

Troop Leader Finlay Farthing agrees. He runs the Harden Troop — a unit of around 30 Marines from 45 Commando who have suffered injuries, many of them in Afghanistan. Over the past months they have all been up to the farm to try it out for themselves. "Some of these guys have been profoundly injured, and it's re-enabling them. When they had legs they were yomping around those hills, and now they can get the same ability and enjoy the same activities they were doing before, and use the horses to get there."

Hare and Chexy have a close relationship. "It's like any animal — you build up the rapport and respect the animal," he says. "It can't speak English and you can't speak horse, but there are other ways whereby its body language will tell you if the horse isn't happy, or if it's relaxed. The horse understands me now — when I whistle, she comes to me and understands, 'Right, it's time to go and work.'

"And they adapt. They've had to adapt to how we are — we might be a bit heavy on the left or the right-hand side, depending on our injuries and our weight distribution, but they get used to it."

Marine Zack Adlington, 20, had never been on a horse before when he arrived at the farm with a dislocated knee in February. He's since been back twice. "By the third time I could do a gallop and the horse was really quite responsive," he says. "I can definitely see that it's quite spiritual."

And for him, there is an even greater benefit in the evenings, after the horses have been stabled, when Hutchison recreates that Hogmanay campfire. "The lads like to be round their own," he says. "It's called spinning dits — telling stories. What Jock's basically building is a Marines' paradise where you can sit around and tell stories."

Farthing says the importance of that — particularly in an age where charities such as Combat Stress, which deals with veterans with mental health problems and has seen a 66 per cent increase in the number of British military veterans suffering post traumatic stress disorder in the past five years — can't be underestimated.

"Everyone sees an incident from a different angle. People in different places do different things, so you might have someone who doesn't realise how beneficial the work they did on a specific day was, but by sitting down and talking about it they can say, 'Look, I saw you and what you did was absolutely brilliant'."

Figures for British casualties in the Afghan war are sketchy. But with over 300 now killed, and no immediate end in sight, as the conflict continues the numbers of members of the military who sustain serious injuries can only rise.

Long term, Hutchison plans to turn the charity into a working farm. "We want them to experience what it's like to be a working farmer, to go to the market and herd cows — and to do as much of it on horseback as possible. The aim is to get horsemanship right through the core of everything, learn about real skills and through the locals."

And if cowboys in Aberdeenshire — just down the road from the Queen's summer residence at Balmoral — sounds far-fetched, it shouldn't. The first cowboys, after all, long before they dominated the American landscape, were the drovers of the Highlands, who would routinely drive black long-horn cattle through much of Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, it is said that it was their skills — imported when Scots emigrated to North America — that created what we see as the classic American cowboy of today.

Back outside, the stableyard is a hive of activity. A vet arrives to visit a horse that has gone lame while Ramsay Dickie, the 17-year-old stableboy who lives up the road and plans to join the army next year (his brother is currently serving in Afghanistan) leads one of the horses past and into a field at the front of the farmhouse. Above them, a Union Flag reading "Horseback UK" flutters in the wind while, high in the sky, small birds wheel above the stable roof.

Rick Anderson stands in the middle of it all, smiling happily. Anderson signed up for the Marines in 1980 at the age of 19. Before long he was in Northern Ireland, and when the Falklands war broke out, he was sent there to fight.

"It was fabulous — the camaraderie, the fitness, the fun — you knew you were doing something important from day one. And like a lot of these young lads now in Afghanistan, when they get an impression of life in battle you achieve a feeling of manhood at an early age. A lot of people in society never get an opportunity to experience that. I had my 21st birthday in the Falklands — that was rather an unusual birthday present."

Anderson lost his arm in an offshore accident after he left the Marines. "I didn't cope as well as I thought I would," he says. "There are huge differences between experiences in the military and Civvy Street."

It is a common story — particularly among Falklands veterans, many of whom struggled to adapt to civilian life and became unsure where to turn for help. Now living near Horseback UK in Aberdeenshire where he makes a living sculpting stones, Anderson heard a former Marine was starting a charity and came along to say hello. He now comes regularly and helps the young Marines when they first arrive. "I'd never ridden myself before but it's just brilliant," he says. "I enjoy it so much."

During one recent training course the younger Marines noticed Anderson was wearing a 45 Commando T-shirt that looked the worse for wear. The next day they brought him a brand new one. It was a small gesture but a reminder, perhaps, that while many of us may forget our war wounded as each new conflict begins to dominate the headlines, those who have braved the front line never forget their own.

"It's great to have these guys here, to just chill out and get fresh air and adventure," Anderson says, looking around with a smile. "I wish there had been something like this in my day." n

www.horseback.org.uk