Doug's Story
“I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”
Royal Navy veteran Doug waited 60 years to get help for PTSD. Here he shares the difference it has made to his life.
Doug joined the Royal Navy at 18 in 1963 and after his initial training was drafted to Singapore for two and half years, due to a confrontation between Indonesia and Malaya (now Malaysia). The confrontation lasted for several years and became violent.
Part of Doug’s role was to patrol the Sumatra Straits and Borneo to stop terrorists and arms-carrying boats trying to infiltrate Malaya. “The confrontation was played down in the media, but a large number of military personnel were killed and injured during the campaign,” he says. “During that time there were a number of actions.
"One of our jobs to was stop boats trying to cross the straits, and to search them in case they were carrying arms or explosives. Some of the searches were pretty hairy and you were aware that at any point someone in the enemy boat could cause you severe damage or death.”
On returning to the UK Doug volunteered to join the submarine service during the end of the Cold War, before leaving the military in 1976 after 13 years. “The military is a family and you have high levels of trust in your comrades throughout your service. I found trust in civilian life difficult due to them not understanding what I’d been through. Then I started to have dreams, which were of the results of the actions we took in the Far East.”
Doug’s first marriage broke down as he struggled to cope with his PTSD and as the years rolled by it took more of a hold on his life. “When you’re young you don’t necessarily realise the implications of your actions,” he says. “But as you get older you start to look at the moral implications of what you did.”
On the advice of his doctor, wife and now grown-up children, Doug agreed to seek help. He called our Helpline in 2025 – 60 years after he went to Singapore - and went on to receive online intensive treatment with a clinical psychologist.
“I will only praise Combat Stress,” he says. “I went into treatment not knowing anything about PTSD or trauma and laid myself bare to my clinician. Now I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, understanding that I was not solely to blame for the actions taken.
“Before, thinking about the things in my past would upset me but now I’m ok. I still have thoughts at times - the dreams however are in the distant past.
"I can’t praise my treatment highly enough.”
November 2025