British troops need more support, say charities

The number of troops seriously injured in Iraq and Afghanistan is underestimated by the public and the number suffering from less obvious effects of the conflicts such as mental illness continues to increase, veterans' charities said today. In the last decade, 670 soldiers have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan seriously or very seriously wounded. Most – 448 – were from Afghanistan. Yet only 12% of respondents in a poll by St Dunstan's , the charity for blind ex-service men and women, correctly estimated the number. Robert Leader, chief executive of St Dunstan's, said: "With a majority of the UK public underestimating the number of injured troops returning from current conflict, the need to support our service personnel has never been greater." The charity Combat Stress said that since March there had been a 15% rise in the number of Iraq veterans it is supporting (up from 400 to 460) and a 26.5% increase in Afghanistan veterans (up from 102 to 129). Combat Stress said it had a caseload of more than 4,500 veterans. Today, it opened a new wing at its Tyrwhitt House short-stay treatment centre in Surrey for ex-service men and women with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. St Dunstan's survey came as David Cameron was urged to protect the military from the coalition's pension cuts. In a letter to the Times, the Forces Pension Society said widows and injured soldiers faced losing hundreds of thousands of pounds, and called on Cameron to intervene. The society calculates that the change, which affects forces pensions and annual Guaranteed Income Payments, means a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan, for example, would be almost £750,000 worse off over the course of her lifetime.