How Britain lost respect for its veterans

LYTHAM, England — Ian Hewitt, 46, shifts his full weight onto his stick as he holds out the miniature Bristol Beaufighter he built over two weeks.

“Claire and the kids get sick of models being scattered everywhere,” he says, gesturing toward the bombers, tanks and war scenes littered around his dining room. 

Right now he’s working on an RAF Jaguar with specifications from the Gulf War. So far, it’s a colorless dart with no wings or wheels sitting on a blue cutting mat, the minute detailing of the cockpit almost done. 

“It’s about trying to find things to keep myself occupied,” he explains. “If I don’t do something it could drive me insane.”

Hewitt was discharged from the RAF in 2004. He ruptured his spine during his initial training in 1999, leaving him with lower leg paralysis. After a spinal operation, he signed up with the Red Arrows, desperate to prove he could continue his military flying career. But after 18 months, the Ministry of Defence decided it wasn’t going to happen. 

Instead, Hewett ended up fighting an unexpected opponent over the following decade: Veterans UK — the government office overseeing armed forces compensation and pensions.

First, it took two appeals and a tribunal to force them to give him £2,000 per month in support commensurate with his disabilities, instead of a small one-off sum officials first insisted was appropriate.

In 2011, following medical procedures, Hewitt began volunteering as a historic locomotive painter, leading to contracted museum and signwriting work. He informed Veterans UK and agreed to a reduction in his support but was assured it would be restored if his health deteriorated, preventing him from working again. 

It was a hollow promise.

In 2016, after suffering burning pain in his hands and feet, seizures and further paralysis down his right side, all stemming from the original spinal rupture, he was diagnosed with functional neurological disorder.

Veterans UK insisted he could work full time and denied him the restoration. 

It took three years of appeals and another tribunal before a judge ordered the government to raise his support package even higher than the initial £2,000 sum, plus backdate it to when he first applied for the restoration. He submitted a maladministration complaint and is still awaiting the result. The government said it cannot comment on individual cases.

During the long fight for his dues, Hewitt lost faith in the contract between the armed forces and the nation recruits like him agree to serve. "There was always a belief that should I ever become injured, the service will be there to protect me,” he says. “The reality is utterly, utterly different."

He knows others in a similar position — including those who were injured in training or wars in the Middle East, or who came home with crippling post-traumatic stress disorder and still have to fight Veterans UK over their pensions and compensation.

One, Charlie Radclyffe, started a volunteer legal service to help others struggling with the bureaucratic minefield.

He broke his back on a training exercise in 2003, paralyzing both legs from the knees down. After a few years of office work, he left the military and became a war pensioner aged 27. It took years of appeals and two tribunals to force Veterans UK to give him his full compensation, which has yet to be backdated to when he first applied.

Between 2019 and 2023, Radclyffe helped about 500 veterans secure uplifts in their compensation. Official stats show some 1,700 Armed Forces Compensation Scheme packages for the most serious injuries were offered in the past two decades. But that number rose to more than 5,200 following appeals.

"So that most seriously harmed group are getting screwed over," he says. "And those are only the cases we know about. There must be thousands of others who never had the wherewithal or the family support or the ability to afford to pay a lawyer, or the willingness to pay out
for financial legal support, who aren't represented in that data."

"It is an adversarial process," Radclyffe adds. "Betrayal is a good word."

Pomp and a different circumstance

Marking eight decades since the Allies defeated the Germans in Europe, 2025 could see the last major military anniversaries commemorated while World War II heroes are still alive. 

Once the old guard is lost, Britain will need to reconsider how it celebrates VE Day and its November remembrance events, and whether the younger generations of veterans deserve the same reverence and honor for their willingness to die for their nation.

These British veterans, who served in modern and sometimes controversial conflicts, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands, often feel like an afterthought compared with the heroes of the two world wars.

A report in 2018 concluded that “while the public maintains a huge emotional connection to the dwindling band of World War II veterans, some show ambivalence or even apathy to younger veterans.”

In some sense it’s understandable. "Because these conflicts have not been at home, it's the families of those veterans injured and killed who see the direct consequences of it,” says Hewitt. “It's not constantly in the public eye.”

But lacking public perception leads to lacking political priorities. Housing, healthcare and even data collection about who Britain's veterans are has been poor. A recent report from MPs said a promise from the state to ensure its troops do not lose out is failing “far too often.”

Then there are those, like Hewitt, left fighting for entitled compensation. Others lose support as the government cuts welfare spending, or are still waiting for justice after being exposed to nuclear test radiation, despite their U.S. counterparts getting at least some redress. 

One former government official who worked on veterans issues says the new generation too often feel like “damaged goods” rather than national heroes.

Even the veterans of old have at times found themselves demoted from their sacrosanct status. 

During the general election campaign in 2024, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was pilloried for skipping the end of D-Day commemorations in France to record a TV interview. 

His successor Keir Starmer deleted the Cabinet position for veterans affairs and moved a team focused on the issue from the center of government back into the defense department, arguing doing so would better serve veterans.

But there are hopes recent efforts to increase support for veterans could pick up steam in the new global landscape, and help boost recruitment numbers.

"We are in the recruitment doldrums, and have been for a number of years now," says Nick Pope, a former lieutenant general who chairs the Confederation of Service Charities in Britain. "But we've got to reverse out of that trend."

The surging focus on defense, as U.S. President Donald Trump throws the role of Washington as global guarantor into doubt, could prompt the change British veterans are desperate for. 

Another world

As the band kicks up into its first bouncing march, a handful of men in the crowd stand to attention and are met with a warm applause. A pensioner with two hearing aids and a crisp white shirt waves to no one in particular. A man under 40, wearing a baseball cap and hooded sweatshirt, beams with pride. 

As the band switches into the march of a different unit, a middle-aged man wearing a blue checkered shirt and red tie salutes. Poking out of his breast pocket is a miniature flag bearing the American stars and stripes. 

Veterans Day is always a big occasion in the U.S. But nowhere more so than at the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater — the white marble arena nestled among the hundreds of thousands of graves in the forces cemetery overlooking Washington, D.C. 

It’s a crisp November morning of endless blue skies as U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the event for the final time as commander in chief.

“It’s been the greatest honor of my life to lead you, to serve you, to care for you, to defend you, just as you have defended us, generation after generation after generation,” his voice echoes off the gleaming stone.

The band starts back up once he finishes, and the crowd filters out to visit the graves of their loved ones.

"I still feel, even though I'm out of the military, like I'm serving,” says Thomas Kendall, the man in the checkered shirt. He received a service grant to attend nursing school after his time as an armed forces medic, and now works as a care nurse. "It's my duty to honor those people who didn't come back."

The educational training scheme Kendall undertook is one of numerous benefits the American government provides veterans leaving service — some of which can be transferred to spouses or children if unused. There are also schemes on housing, life insurance, healthcare, support to set up small businesses and more.

There are also non-government benefits. Companies shout about their veteran discount schemes, flights board current and former service personnel first, and sports games pause to thank troops and sing them “The Star-Spangled Banner." 

Most people even thank veterans for their service on meeting them — regardless of the conflicts they served in.

"I commanded a squadron in central Texas that had a small U.K. contingent,” says Jason Eckberg, 49, as the last few spectators dribbled out of the amphitheater. He was not long back from Europe, where he had served with the Security Assistance Group for Ukraine, as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force.

He says the British soldiers he worked with appeared envious about the “veneration” of service in the U.S. and how it’s “different from the way it is in the U.K."

But the sentiment in America wasn’t always like this.

The American nadir

As the Vietnam War drew to its humiliating close in the first half of the 1970s, U.S. troops returning home from Asia would keep quiet about their service. Soldiers were shouted at in the streets, accused of killing babies and pelted with tomatoes or spat on.

The toxic politics around the conflict — one of the first to be broadcast via TV — had infected the public feeling about the troops themselves. Incidents like the brutal Mai Lai massacre made things worse, embedding a perception that the soldiers were the chief perpetrators of a cruel war. 

Even the government office that sent them into battle went missing in action, with limited treatment for injuries, post-traumatic stress or support back to work. More than 100,000 veterans committed suicide, and thousands more ended up in prison or on the streets.

“With the Vietnam War, Americans as a society did not decouple the individual troop with the conflict,” says Jason Nultan, a former lieutenant colonel who now teaches armed forces leadership.

The troops fought again, this time at home, to change public perception. Vietnam veterans became awareness campaigners, or rose through the military ranks vowing to change the culture. Movies like “Platoon" — directed by former Vietnam soldier Oliver Stone — helped reshape public thinking.

At the turn of the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan apologized to American troops who faced abuse on their return home from Vietnam, and the unveiling of the Vietnam War memorial in Washington in 1982 served as a marker for a changed nation. 

The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 lifted veterans to another level of reverence. "When you experience something like that, that is so difficult on a societal level, and has such a profound effect on everything, I think that attaches itself to that society's soul and becomes part of everything,” says Nultan. 

“Now, by comparison, when the troops came home from Iraq they weren't admonished by society for having served. They were honored — even though the war was unpopular.”

Spot the difference

Brits who have seen up close the treatment of veterans in America think the U.K. could learn something. 

Fiona Bagley, who patrolled the Berlin Wall during the Cold War and served in Northern Ireland, now lives in the U.S. state of Georgia.

"What I love about this country is it embraces its military,” she says on the veranda of the tea room she owns in Dahlonega. “When I came back from Northern Ireland, I didn't have anyone waiting for me at the airport. I didn't get discounts at any stores. We didn't think about it. It wasn't a thing.”

Now she gives veteran discounts in her English gifts shop and thanks former soldiers wearing veteran baseball caps for their service. 

“This is one of the things I think America does really well,” says Sonya Foley, from Reading, England, but also now living in Georgia. “That is, to recognize the sacrifices that were made and treat veterans with a lot of respect.”

She adds that the U.S. approach is far from perfect, noting continued veteran homelessness and mental health issues, “but I think there is a bit more of an infrastructure to support veterans here.”

One person who has experienced the difference first hand is Dean Stott. He served for more than a decade and a half in the British Navy special forces before an injury forced him to leave. He then spent another half a decade fighting a tribunal against Veterans UK to secure the correct medical pension. 

Now he lives in California. “Since coming here, I’ve probably had more help from the U.S. veteran space than I have from the U.K.,” he says. 

He admits the heart-on-sleeve sentiment in the States is a bit much for stiff-upper-lip Brits. But he argues there’s no doubt the British government can learn a thing or two. "The aftercare for veterans now is a lot better than it used to be. But it's still nothing on par with what it is here in the U.S."

Forward march

Stott is right. Veterans care in the U.K. improved a little in the last half-decade. 

"We were going down that cliff like the Americans did through Vietnam,” says Johnny Mercer, the former Cabinet minister for veterans’ affairs. “I pulled us up a bit — and now it’s stagnated.”

Mercer, a former commando captain who served in Afghanistan, convinced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to make the veterans minister a Cabinet-level post, able to better reach across government into the services veterans might need, including welfare, health and education. 

He created an office for veterans’ affairs in the Cabinet Office, the central hub of the Whitehall machine, and began the process of digitizing veteran records — creating a veterans ID card to smooth access to services, and gathering better data, including via a census question. 

Mercer created a veterans homelessness scheme called “operation fortitude,” a mental health scheme called “operation courage,” and a specialist support scheme called “operation restore,” after he met a veteran whose mother was paying for her son’s annual wheelchair services. 

When Mercer lost his seat at the 2024 election and the Labour government took power, there were plans in train to boost veteran access to education, an guarantee private-sector job interviews for veteran applicants — mirroring a scheme he implemented in the civil service. 

At a 2024 remembrance service in Westminster, around eight months before the election, Mercer used a private moment with Starmer to tell the man expected to become prime minister how keeping the office for veterans affairs close to Downing Street made it so effective.

“Don't release its independence and chuck it back into the Ministry of Defence," Mercer told the Labour boss. "And you've got to keep that veterans minister in your cabinet."

Starmer promised he would. He even repeated the pledge about the Cabinet minister in public. Downing Street declined to comment when pressed on the conversation.

Fighting from the rearguard

As he appointed his first ministerial team after the summer election, Starmer demoted the veterans minister back to a junior role in the defense department. It went to Al Cairns, himself an Afghanistan veteran who later advised the government.

Less than three weeks later, it was announced the office for veterans affairs would be moved into the MoD.

“All the drive we had seems to have completely evaporated,” Mercer says. “You need that central thrust from No. 10, or nothing happens.” The government challenges that interpretation.

“We are renewing the nation’s contract with those who serve and have served, strengthening support for veterans with a new £50 million package announced this week to help veterans across the U.K. to get easier access to the support they need,” a Ministry of Defense spokesperson said.

“We are also delivering further support through dedicated mental and physical healthcare pathways, free career advice and access to social housing, to help veterans of all ages further after they have served.”

The £50 million "valour" scheme announced ahead of the VE Day events is about better connected access to care and support. Cairns said it would mean "a renewed support mechanism for those individuals that we owe so much,” after decades letting ever-more-cash-strapped charities pick up the slack.

Ministers also announced a new charter for veterans living in public housing, ensuring new homes will be “clean and functional” when families move in, and promising “more reliable repairs.”

Both announcements were indicators of how bad things have become. 

Just last month, a defense select committee report painted a damning picture of the so-called “armed forces covenant” — a Conservative-era promise of no disadvantages for service personnel and their families as a result of their service.

The MPs heard examples of personnel unable to access medical care or find appropriate schooling for their kids after being moved. Families arriving in new places are being put at the bottom of medical lists and driving across the nation to their previous practices for checkups as a result. And these are the personnel still serving. 

“In cases like these, the government and society are falling short of their commitment to the armed forces community,” the report read, noting that failure is happening “far too often.” It pointed out vital areas the covenant doesn’t even cover, around work, social care, immigration, criminal justice and more.

The government is considering its response to the report, but argues its "valour" scheme will help ensure covenant promises are kept, and has pledged to put the contract on a legal footing.

On housing, Aldershot MP Alex Baker, speaking before the election, said military families in her patch felt there had been a “corrosion” of government promises to the forces. 

“We're seeing some really bad examples where people are having to live with mold and damp,” she said, noting one father who was struggling to convince officials the rashes on his children’s legs were a consequence.

Official stats show morale among service personnel is low, and a 2022/23 review into the compensation scheme for soldiers injured during service found it to be often inefficient, unfair, opaque and inflexible.

“These concerns, individually and in sum, are having a detrimental effect on some of the most vulnerable claimants to the scheme,” the report said. 

Will the 'new era' extend to veterans?

Britain finds itself in a “dangerous new era,” Starmer said in February, as he announced a boost to defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent before 2027.

Trump — who is skeptical of NATO nations banking on America coming to their aid, and hesitant about supporting Ukraine against its Russian invasion — is the author of that new era. 

Yet British troop numbers covering land, sea and air have fallen to 127,000. Recruitment targets have been missed each year for the past 25. 

Nick Pope, the chair of the Confederation of Service Charities, believes the renewed focus on defense could change the game for the British armed forces, both in public perception and government support. 

"Keir Starmer faces a number of strategic security challenges that he probably did not expect when he entered government," he says. "I would argue that a considered and coherent national response to the global challenges is no longer optional, if the government is to meet its primary purpose, the defense of the nation."

For Hewitt, whose 12-year-old son is thinking about joining the military despite what it did to his dad, the first step is showing possible recruits their contract with the state will be honored. 

“You've got to have the correct system to ensure personnel are looked after from the day they join — to not only the day they retire, but if they're injured, the day they die,” he says. "I genuinely hope we can reassess veteran care and, to some degree, bring it closer to how the American system has been.”

“We're not being asked to be put to the front of the queue or anything,” he adds. “But to be treated with care and respect in the system is fundamental."

Esther Webber contributed reporting.