Michael Alexander meets Fife-raised former soldier and private security expert Tam Carroll who has plans for a horse therapy centre in Perthshire for forces veterans struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Standing on the cliffs near Anstruther in Fife, former soldier Tam Carroll had decided enough was enough – he was going to kill himself.
After six years with the British Army including a tour of Iraq, followed by six years working as private security for the Americans, he had seen and done some unspeakable things, and, having been blown up and injured by the Taliban numerous times, he returned home to a hellish life of drug and alcohol addiction as he struggled to integrate.
But things came to a head in November 2013 when, fed up with the severity of the shrapnel injuries to his back and the on-going impact of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on his mind, the new father found himself alone on the cliffs ready to end his life.
“The best way I can describe it is it was like holding death’s hand and saying let’s roll – I was just going to go,” explains Tam, 33, who grew up in Cupar, Fife.
“My main concern was making sure my dog Buddy was ok. I tied him up with a note saying what I had done, why I was doing it and who he should be taken home to.”
Then suddenly a “bolt of lightning” changed everything. Something inside told him that rather than killing himself, he should get a horse.
“A horse? I thought it was crazy and my partner Hazel thought the same too when I told her,” adds Tam.
“I’d never had a horse, didn’t know anything about horses. But I purchased my first horse, Ollie a 17hh Clydesdale orphan, from a dealer in Stirling, and that is where my journey began – the journey that saved my life.”
With no equine background whatsoever, Tam learned about all things equine through Karen Paton at WD Stud in Perthshire and won over Karen’s husband Jim with stories of what he had been through.
Tam now believes in the power of equine therapy so much that he has recently bought an abandoned and currently derelict cattle farm near Powmill, in the heart of Perth & Kinross, that he hopes to turn into a 38 acre ‘Warrior Ranch’ – a not-for-profit equine assisted human development centre to help Britain’s service personnel cope with trauma and PTSD.
It’s here that The Courier caught up with him as he explained he is currently self-funding, but is seeking donations towards the rebuild of an outbuilding roof, class rooms, tack room, disabled toilets, and stables to home horses.
“I am looking for donations big and small to get this dream come true and maybe save a life,” he says
“There are thousands of veterans out there suffering. As an ex combat veteran I can help these guys and girls get out of the maze that is PTSD with the power of the horse leading the way to recovery.
“I’m currently getting trained to become a recommended intelligent horsemanship trainer using the Monty Roberts horse whispering technique as well as studying equine assisted human development and traumatology with the International Foundation of Equine Assisted Learning (IFEAL) team.
“I intend to use both these techniques to develop a very special and effective training technique.
“My vision here is I want to teach veterans horsemanship skills – horse whispering – using the Monty Roberts technique, where the horse mirrors your inner self. You have to be congruent with yourself to work with horses – something these veterans don’t have – and that’s where the training comes in.”
Jim, who is well known in farming circles, has ambitions to establish an organic farm on part of the site to provide work for ex-soldiers who find themselves on the streets.
There’s a lot of work to be done, funding to be obtained and planning hurdles to be overcome.
But it’s Tam’s first-hand experience of life in the military, and the trauma that followed, that drives him on – and he is determined to succeed.
Suffering from dyslexia and admitting he was regularly in trouble with the police as a “rogue teenager”, Tam joined the army at 15 – going to the Army Apprentice College – then joined the Royal Engineers as a regular soldier at 17. He went into the reconnaissance troupe, serving in Bosnia and Iraq. He deployed to Iraq in November 2004 for six months aged just 20 where his job was to plot safe routes for convoys to follow.
Tam recalls that during this period his squad were ambushed in Amarah. They “took out” a whole group of insurgents.
It was when the tour ended, however, that Tam, who was on £12,000 per year army wages, decided that he wanted to leave the army to “earn some proper money”. He gave a year’s notice, seeing out his time at the Royal Engineers’ then base in Germany.
Within days of being discharged, he went back to Iraq to work in private security where he could earn up to £40,000 “danger money” for a four week block, working with “proper equipment and professional teams”.
Initially he worked for the United Nations, based just outside Baghdad, providing security for the first ever democratic elections that were taking place. It was not without its dangers. “Six of us were sitting ducks – we had no military back up,” he recalls.
After that he went on to work for the United States government for the remaining six years – making a “good bit of money” which he spent on property then later drugs and booze.
It was during three years working for a high security team in Basra, however, that he got blown up and badly injured by an EFP (explosively formed penetrator) – a tank buster made in Iran – and received the accolade of being the first person ever to survive such a blast, albeit left with a lot of shrapnel in his back, legs and head.
“We were driving along to a site – taking along some engineers to look at the infrastructure for this oil platform – and they hit us on the way there – three roadside bombs,” he recalls.
“My work colleague got quite badly injured and had to retire after that. It cut the car in half, but just before the blast I was reading a map, dropped it, leaned down to pick it up, and the blast came through the window. If I’d been sitting up we wouldn’t be talking here today!
“Because I was classed as working for the American military, a helicopter came in an evacuated us out to Basra where I got surgery on my back to remove some of the shrapnel. Then I got evacuated to Germany, to the American camp, to get operated on again. I had three weeks off then I went back to work. I was blown up three or four times after that.”
Tam lost a number of colleagues over the years – mainly through IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) out on the road or rockets fired into camp. These included a friend who was only out in Iraq to pay for his wedding.
But Tam, who was pensioned off by the Americans through injury in 2010 with the equivalent civilian rank of a brigadier general, says the reality is most of the friends he lost came through suicide when they returned home.
“I know my way out of the PTSD maze,” he adds, “but now I want to show other guys how to do it.”
*Tam’s fundraising page can be found at www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/tamcarroll
