Simon Weston

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a soldier. He enlisted in the army to escape from a life that seemed to offer little but unemployment and possibly petty crime. At the age of twenty one, he went to war, and on the 8th of june 1982, in Bluff Cove on the Falkland Islands, his ship was bombed. Most of his friends died. He lived, but was terribly disfigured. His resilience and humour have since made him a celebrity, carrying him through a series of television documentaries and autobiography, and these days is the host of a local radio programme. He's got married and he's been awarded an OBE for his charity work. People call him a hero, but he dismisses this. I'm an ordinary person, he says, who was a little less fortunate than others, but luckier than most. He is Simon Weston.

Presenter1:15

You've lived, Simon, with your disfigurement for, what, fourteen years now. Does that mean you're used to it, or do you still look in the mirror and think, I wish it wasn't there?

Simon Weston1:24

I think you tolerate it. I don't think you ever totally get used to it, um, because it's not the person you want it to be, but it's the person I am, so I suppose I live with it and just accept it to a to a degree.

Presenter1:34

But you get used to people staring at you. Do they still stare?

Simon Weston1:37

Um I suspect they do. I don't really notice, to be honest. And initially when it happened I I thought that you know I didn't know whether they were staring at the injuries or the person they'd seen on T V or in the press. We were walking through Liverpool not so long ago and um my wife and myself, she he overheard some young lad say to his mate, he said, Oh look, there's that that uh fella from the Falklands, you know, that that fellow, what's his name? And he said, You know, you know, the star, the big star.

Simon Weston2:05

I didn't I didn't hear it, but but Lucy was rolling with laughter for hours.

Presenter2:09

But it was the kids in the first instance. I remember th that first documentary that was made about you when you came back your sister's children, your nephew and your niece, who who just above everybody else really accepted you as normal. You were still Uncle Simon, although you had at that stage a truly monstrous face, didn't you?

Simon Weston2:24

Ah, I suppose, yeah. Um, little Becky, she didn't know at the time, she's fifteen now, but at that time she didn't know me really, although I was her uncle Simon before I went away, who wasn't injured. She didn't know me and she'd never remember me as that, so

Simon Weston2:39

She just accepted me as this person who loved her, really.

Presenter2:42

What about your own children now? You've got James, who's four, and Stuart, two. Obviously they've only ever known you as you are. But is is James getting to the age where he begins to ask questions and ask why you don't look like other people?

Simon Weston2:46

Yeah.

Simon Weston2:53

He he's quite a bright lad. He started asking them about sort of when he was about two and a half really. But now I've got like a pad of skin in the palm of my hand which was taken from from my groin and that's the thing that that amazes him now. He can't understand how they transferred this pad of skin and I chase him round with it and he screams with laughter'cause he thinks it's a great joke.

Presenter3:12

It was, of course, your great joke, wasn't it? That you've got skin from your behind on your nose, or is it on your lips?

Simon Weston3:17

On my nose, on my nose, yeah. Uh so when whenever I kiss anybody they don't realize how close they come to kissing my backside.

Presenter3:24

Is it true though that your mother didn't recognize you when you first arrived back?

Simon Weston3:30

That's right, yeah. So she'd gone out and bought me loads of new underwear'cause she thought, Oh, well, he's bound to have lost all of that'cause of you lose it all in the confusion. And when I came off the ambulance after being brought back, my mother and my grandmother were standing out waiting for me to be taken off one of the ambulances and um they said, Oh, look at that poor boy and I said, Ma'am and the you know, their faces were were dead, there was no expression, there was no life there. It's like as if their world had gone uh and they'd a long time then too.

Simon Weston3:58

to to sort of re rebuild their lives because they they they had to rebuild as well as I had to.

Presenter4:04

So tell me about your first record.

Simon Weston4:06

It's men at work and uh down under. When I first started getting out of the hospital with any sort of conviction really and a belief in myself that I just wanted to live my life, I used to go out with a guy called Mark Pemberton who was a corporal and if I'd have listened to him and gone and got a cup of tea that he wanted me to get for him, I'd have probably had very minor injuries. And we used to go out and this record came on the radio in his car and from that point on although this record is full of nonsense, it just made me feel, yeah, I mean, it's making a nonsense of everything which is the right way to look at it until everything is sorted out until I can get my my life back on the tracks really.

Speaker 44:43

My sectors pick up my language

Speaker 44:47

He just smiled and gave me a Vegemit sandwich. He said, I come from La La, Mala.

Speaker 44:57

We just love and mention her.

Speaker 45:02

You can hear them from far.

Speaker 45:05

You better run, you better take cover.

Presenter5:11

Men at work and down under.

Presenter5:13

Do you remember how you felt, Simon, as that twenty one year old setting sail out from Southampton water on the QE two, waving goodbye to your family off to the Falklands?

Simon Weston5:23

I I was actually still only twenty at the time. I hadn't reached my twenty first birthday. I got injured exactly two months to the date of my twenty first birthday. Eighth of June I got injured, eighth of August my birthday. And um

Simon Weston5:38

It was one of sort of total disbelief, you know, there are lots of signs up thanking Mrs. Thatcher for the cruise and all this business.

Presenter5:43

The holiday cruise.

Simon Weston5:44

So yeah, well nobody thought we were going to go to war. We genuinely thought we'd probably have to go down and clean the area up after the Marines and Pirates had done a good job.

Presenter5:51

Might be all over by the time you finish.

Simon Weston5:52

Pretty much, yeah.

Presenter5:53

But your your family, obviously, standing on the quayside, were were breaking their hearts, and as far as they were concerned, their boy was going off to war.

Simon Weston6:00

Yep, yeah. I suppose it must have been a terrible contrast of emotions. I could see my grandfather, sadly, he's gone now, he's dead now. But he was wiping his eyes, you could see him, because he knew the horrors of what he'd been in in the war, in the Second World War, and he was a prisoner of war and all this stuff.

Presenter6:14

Any mum?

Simon Weston6:15

She'd always had a dream that she saw me in a coffin.

Simon Weston6:19

And once I'd been injured she stopped having the dream.

Simon Weston6:22

She'd been having it for years and years and years.

Presenter6:24

'Cause you'd always been in trouble, hadn't you, as a boy? I mean, you're always breaking something, always knocking yourself about.

Simon Weston6:28

No. I I'd always done something. I was and my mother always said to me, Simon, whatever you did, you never did the same thing twice. If I told you to stop doing something, you'd always go and do something else. But uh, yeah, I I pretty much got into every type of scrape and scratch that you can think of as a kid.

Presenter6:45

And your gran was standing there as well, waving. And I I think you you've said since that you you hadn't really said a proper goodbye, you just sort of said Cheerios if you're going down the road to get a bag of chips.

Simon Weston6:48

I think you

Simon Weston6:53

Yeah.

Simon Weston6:55

That's it, yeah. I went we we were called back off leave and I went. Basically, that was it.

Presenter6:59

Did that Simon Weston, and you you've said since that that person is now long gone did did did he have any serious thoughts, though, about the nature of the task ahead, about the cause that he was being sent to fight, or about the men he was going out there to fight?

Simon Weston7:15

We didn't know much about them. That's South America. We initially thought we were going to the north of Scotland somewhere. And truthfully, and I know it's an old story.

Presenter7:22

Yeah, we we

Simon Weston7:23

Yeah, we we genuinely didn't know where the hell it was. So we went down there.

Simon Weston7:28

Um and

Simon Weston7:30

We pretty much knew the stories that were going around about the the Falkland Islands. It could have been stopped, this could have been prevented and most of us took the opinion that, okay, so whether politicians decided not to, or they failed to do it, or they just didn't want to do it, or they made a mistake and slipped up, or whatever it was, at the end of the day they hadn't done the job.

Simon Weston7:53

So it was the time for talking was finished by now. It was the time for action and w the this is why we went to do our job.

Presenter7:59

Record number two.

Simon Weston8:01

The Beatles and She Loves You. Goes back to when um my family lived in Nocton Hall because uh I come from a service family, I was a service brat.

Simon Weston8:10

My first memories of when I used to get into bother as a kid, and I was only about three or four or whatever it was at the time, and I had chicken pox, I think it was, and I was cutting up jelly on a dustbin with a bread knife my mother still has at at at home. And um and I was cutting up this this jelly and giving it out to all my friends and uh and I got a a real going over for that. I I just remember things always going wrong and my mother going up the wall'cause I'd drawn all over the walls in the house and uh there'd been a service quarter it had to be a mattlet when you handed them over or you get fined and all this stuff. Then I just remember this this song was the first song I can remember in my life.

Speaker 48:53

You'll think you've lost your love. Well, I saw her yesterday. It's you she's thinking of.

Speaker 49:03

And she told me what to say. She said she loves you. And you know that can't be bad.

Speaker 49:11

Does she love you?

Speaker 49:14

You know you do

Presenter9:17

Beatles and she loves you.

Presenter9:19

The mood on board the QE two must have changed, Simon, on the way down as as the news came through that the General Belgrano had been sunk and hundreds of Argentine boys had lost their lives, and then of course HM Sheffield was hit by an exocette. Presumably, you know, the kind of spirit of gung ho must have begun to diminish at this stage.

Simon Weston9:38

I don't know whether the gung ho had disappeared completely. Um you'd never really take that out of young men going to conflict, because at the time we were still safe, warm and dry. So really the realities of war had never come home to us, the horrors of it.

Presenter9:51

But but three and a half weeks later, there you were, sitting um on board the Segalahad in broad daylight, waiting to go ashore. You must have been aware that you were vulnerable as a surface vessel, just sitting there in broad daylight.

Simon Weston10:05

We realized we were there too long, but at that time we really didn't care. There was a lot of lads upstairs watching uh mucky films and uh we were downstairs nice warm and dry, drinking tea and eating fresh bread and we really didn't care. There was lots of lads on land who were wet and cold.

Presenter10:20

target and then suddenly these Argentine Skyhawks bombers came up over the horizon.

Presenter10:26

Did anybody see them, do you know? I mean, obviously you learn would have learned this afterwards, but

Simon Weston10:30

These ones seemed to have been very lucky. The top cover that was allowed to fly over us once every hour or something had gone. They come in and they couldn't find us at first.

Presenter10:41

'Cause you were tucked away in the cove, weren't you?

Simon Weston10:42

Well, we were, but I mean, I somehow I find it very hard to understand how anybody could miss two great big ships that are sitting in the middle of open pond um that had been seen by a forward fire observer from the Argentinian army. Uh he'd seen us and had called them in and they came in um and it was only by sheer luck they found us. I I s I met the pilot who who blew blew my ship up and he was to tell me that uh they didn't know we were there, they couldn't find us and it was only by the man on his left wing looking over his shoulder and saw us just there and he said, Oh, that's it. They had enough fuel to make one pass and drop the bombs, that's all they had left and then they just scooted off back home.

Presenter11:23

And did you have any warning at all in that moment eating your fresh bread and cups of tea below deck?

Simon Weston11:27

Yeah.

Simon Weston11:29

No, we had very, very little warning. It has to be said. We we we'd never really been given drills or flash equipment or anything to protect ourselves under the

Simon Weston11:38

The chance of attack, so we were very ill-equipped for that. And when we got this A-Raid warning green, everybody went, What?

Simon Weston11:45

Then they went Aerid won in red, Ariad one in red and people went, What?

Simon Weston11:49

And they said, Get down, get down, get down So I just thought, All right And I used to be known as hydraulics in the shooting team'cause I always got down very slowly and um I did go I got down too slow by the look of it but um there were a couple of chaps behind me who who lost their legs and got injuries and if I'd have got on the floor perhaps I'd have caught what went skidding along the floor to them.

Presenter12:11

Tell me about your next record.

Simon Weston12:13

This is meatloaf and bat out of hell. It just reminds me of when we were training in a very happy time, although very hard, and I cried to my mother after seven weeks I wanted to get out of the army and it was too tough for me and this man kept shouting at me and I wasn't used to it. But I met a lot of good friends, I had a lot of good fun, um and it was the first time I probably started to discover the the real me and the one that perhaps I wanted to be.

Speaker 412:39

I'm going hit the highway like a battering ram on a silver black phantom bike. Or when the mail is shot and the engine is hungry, I'm all about to see the light.

Presenter12:45

Oh, with no money.

Speaker 412:51

Nothing ever broken is rotten or hoard, and everything is gonna

Speaker 412:59

So nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost.

Presenter13:04

Meatloaf and bat out of hell. You've you've called it since the moment that that bomb came down. It was a two thousand pounder, wasn't it? Your your own personal Hiroshima.

Simon Weston13:12

Yeah.

Presenter13:15

Can you describe to me what happened when it hit?

Simon Weston13:19

I just remember this like great grey streak. It was like a a shark almost coming straight across in front of us'cause it was a shape. But it had slowed down enough to see what it was. But the the main explosion happened inside an engine room and that's why so few of us were killed. I know forty seven of us were killed, but so few of us were killed because of it going off inside something that absorbed a lot of the explosion. But some of it did blow back out through the hole and the flame and the diesel oil and such like whatever caught the light came back out over us and created a fireball and the colours were I don't think the colours will ever leave me. Whenever I see those bright sort of sixties and seventies bright oranges that people use for curtains and clothes and the bright yellows and I once described it as the dance with the orange really because when you saw the flames licking around and the fearsome fire that existed and the people on fire and everything else and people seemed like they were dancing.

Presenter14:13

And were you on fire?

Simon Weston14:14

Yes, yeah. Oh yeah, I was I was

Simon Weston14:17

getting quite deep fried.

Presenter14:19

But you tried to rescue somebody, didn't you? You

Simon Weston14:21

Mm. I tried to grab hold of somebody, um and it was all sort of f futile really because I think he was already dead. But, um

Simon Weston14:32

My he slipped out of my hands and that's when I realized the palms of my hands had gone.

Presenter14:35

So you knew what was happening. You you mean you were compass mentus enough to know this is a bomb, we've been hit, there are men screaming and dying all around me.

Simon Weston14:39

Yeah.

Presenter14:45

Did you think you were going to die in that moment?

Simon Weston14:48

Oh, hell no. I thought we were being hit by kneepalm, to be honest with you. I was looking for a gun to shoot myself. I thought, I'm not going to burn to death in the slow way that these these wasters want us to with this uh terrible jelly that the Americans invented. Um I thought, oh, I'm going to end this pretty damn quick. Did you? Even in that moment.

Presenter15:04

Do you? Even in that moment you had that thought. But you didn't have a gun.

Simon Weston15:06

Oh, I forgot.

Simon Weston15:08

Uh well, I no, I knew where my gun was, but I couldn't get to it because of the heat and the fire that was coming out of the engine room, you see. So I I thought, Oh, well, nothing for it, out the flames and see what happens So I uh I just turned and ran.

Presenter15:20

And you got out into the fresh air and

Simon Weston15:22

Yeah.

Presenter15:24

What did you feel? What did you think at that moment? My God

Simon Weston15:27

I asked them to check my teeth to see if they were all my teeth are crooked anyway and I ch asked them to check my teeth and it was a stupid thing really'cause if my teeth were missing then the best part of my head would be as well. And then I I asked somebody to check my wedding tackle to see if all that was in place.'Cause I thought, well if I haven't got that I'm not coming home. I'm gonna jump overboard. But somebody cut my trousers off and I don't know whether there was the insistence of me anyway, he checked, he said, You're fine. He said, well, that's a point of debate.

Simon Weston15:58

But they threw my trousers overboard. I had my wallet in it and it had my Saint Christopher and um yeah, and my money and uh and my polka dice that I'd won the money with, and um that had all been thrown overboard. So I I'd lost all that. Uh

Presenter16:03

That your mother had given you.

Presenter16:15

But you got the wedding tackle.

Simon Weston16:16

Oh, I got that.

Presenter16:17

Tell me about your next record.

Simon Weston16:19

It's the the Rising of the Lark played by the band of the Welsh Guards. I would have had the Scots Guards because the pipe band is so evocative and most guardsmen will tell you that, you know, if you have to march, it's nice to march behind a a pipe band. But I've we've stuck with the Welsh Guards because being my regiment, I suppose it's it's quite fitting and you have to be loyal to the regiment, as they say. But it, you know, the Scots Guards as well, they they they were they were great to march behind, good bunch of lads as well to go to the Falklands with.

Presenter17:47

The Rising of the Lark, played by the band of the Welsh Guards. How close did you come to to dying as a result of your injury, Simon? Very close, wasn't it?

Simon Weston17:55

I I feel that I that I was looking down at me at one point. And they say that I stopped breathing once or twice, but whether I did or not I I don't really know. I was so heavily under drugs and things like this that I I would never know.

Presenter18:07

But you breathed in an awful lot of filthy black smoke and stuff, hadn't you? You were in deep shock.

Simon Weston18:11

Are you in

Simon Weston18:13

I was in shock, but I don't think I'd breathed in that much. I for some unknown reason I didn't have the lung and throat injuries that others had. I didn't have the inhalation wounds and problems.

Presenter18:25

So it was the burns, it was this.

Simon Weston18:27

It was mostly exterior with me, um, and the biggest worry was whether my eyes would survive.

Presenter18:33

But it was the psychological damage, really, wasn't it, that that was perhaps m even more difficult to cope with, because you went into the depths of depression.

Simon Weston18:40

The dead

Simon Weston18:41

I think that was probably more life threatening than than the injuries really, because once you got to a medical station there were very, very few people who got to the red and green life machine that didn't survive.

Presenter18:51

So when you say you y it was more life threatening, did you consider suicide?

Simon Weston18:51

So when you say

Simon Weston18:55

The thought of suicide crept upon me and I I did try with a crossbow. I tried to cock a crossbow. I don't know whether I'd have put a bolt in it, but I did try to cock the crossbow, but the the twine came back on my fingers and um it hurt. And I thought if I put a bolt in and I miss, you know, it's gonna be awfully painful. You know, and I think I've been through enough, I can't be bothered with it, it's just not worth it.

Presenter19:17

But why? What would be the motive? I mean, was it the classic thing of guilt that you'd survived and others had died?

Simon Weston19:23

I just couldn't see the wood for the trees. I couldn't understand where it was all going and what I was going to be able to do with my life afterwards. And I really just felt that um the way I was drinking and the way I looked and the weight I was piling on at the time, um I was about nineteen and a half stone or something ridiculous at the time. And I just piled this weight on and I was eating and drinking like a because I didn't like me.

Simon Weston19:46

I was embarrassed by me, by the way I looked, by by the way I acted, because I'd l I'd allowed myself to believe that I was as terrible as I looked. And I began to behave like that as well. So

Presenter19:58

You were horrible to your family, weren't you?

Simon Weston19:59

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. That was dreadful. And I regret every moment of it. But it was a necessary thing for me to achieve whatever I've achieved since, because I had to get it out somewhere. And the loved ones are the ones you take it out on first the most.

Presenter20:14

So what was the turning point? What what got you out of all of that?

Simon Weston20:17

Um my mum.

Simon Weston20:19

My mum, I suppose, my strength and saviour, really. Uh she phoned up the regiment. She knew it was my other family, she knew it was my other love, she knew it was the thing that I'd um almost died serving with. So she phoned them up and said, Look, I'm having terrible times with him.

Simon Weston20:35

Can you help? And they said, Well, we'll come and see what we can do. So

Simon Weston20:39

Everybody has a a key to their depression. Mine was simply the regiment and going back and watching them play rugby. It's as simple as that. No real difficult sort of solution for me. Um, I just needed some form of normality, somewhere where people weren't gonna kill me with kindness. And I survived probably because of my mother's wisdom and the regiment.

Presenter20:59

Record number five.

Simon Weston21:01

Yes, Billy Joel, and and you may be right.

Simon Weston21:03

I first heard this record in Berlin. Berlin for a seventeen year old, being paid wonderfully well, being able to do everything you wanted to do. The music and the memories of that time will always live on with me. It was it was a wonderful, magical time for me.

Speaker 421:19

You made it right!

Speaker 421:22

I may be crazy But it just made me

Speaker 421:28

The lunatic you're looking for

Speaker 421:32

So now the lights!

Speaker 421:35

Don't try to save me.

Speaker 421:38

You may be wrong of all I know, but you may be right

Presenter21:45

Billy Joel, and you may be right. How much did those documentaries, the television documentaries that were made about you, help you? How therapeutic were they?

Simon Weston21:55

They were good in the way that it allowed me to go out and people knew who I was. So I didn't notice the stares of ignorance, n not understanding, not knowing, curiosity. I didn't really notice those. So it helped me tremendously in that way.

Presenter22:12

And you could see how fat you'd got, so you'd go on a diet after you'd seen yourself.

Simon Weston22:15

Oh, for sure. Absolutely. And and I I've never been so embarrassed as I was when I was I saw myself in

Presenter22:16

Absolutely.

Simon Weston22:21

One scene and I drank from a bottle of I don't know what it was, whether it'd be sherry or whatever it was, and I was so embarrassed that I did it.

Simon Weston22:29

I've never bothered to do it again.

Presenter22:31

You make yourself sound like a man with a drink problem. I mean, yes, you did drink a lot then, but it it you were just a a a drinker as in a Welsh Valleys rugby fan.

Simon Weston22:39

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm not I certainly I like a drink, but I I don't drink that often, you know.

Presenter22:45

What about your confidence with women? Because that must have been difficult because of your consciousness of your appearance.

Simon Weston22:50

I I don't know whether I was ever that confident with women before I got injured, but it certainly took a big nosedive once I became injured. Um I was engaged at the time of my injuries and it caused the eventual split of the both of us. And I I hold no malice at all to her because I don't know whether I could have coped with it or whether I would have had the rules been reversed.

Presenter23:10

Had the rose green.

Presenter23:11

But when you met Lucy, whom you're now married to, in in in the late eighties, I think in Liverpool, I mean, there she was, very very sweet, very pretty, you fancied her rotten.

Simon Weston23:13

Moon

Speaker 423:20

Hmm.

Presenter23:21

How did you have the confidence to even begin to imagine she might fancy you?

Simon Weston23:25

Well, it it didn't didn't occur to me actually. I didn't even think that she would. I'd come to accept myself and I'd I'd learn to like myself and I'd learn to not be embarrassed by my injuries. And

Simon Weston23:38

It didn't affect her. She never stopped and thought about oh, there's that burnt guy.

Presenter23:42

But did that surprise you?

Presenter23:44

I'm sure it delighted you.

Simon Weston23:44

I'm sure it delighted you. I only really found out later on. I never really questioned her questioned her about it because um when you fall in love with somebody you just fall in love with somebody um and she did with me and I did with her and and that's all that mattered at that time.

Presenter23:59

Do you think you'd have ended up any differently if you if if the catastrophe hadn't happened?

Simon Weston24:05

I certainly don't think that, um

Simon Weston24:08

I would have achieved anything that I have achieved had I not been injured, uh purely and simply, not because I wouldn't have wanted to, but I wouldn't have been afforded the opportunities. Being injured has really given me the opportunity to to expand my horizons and to to see a a better future for me and and my family, really.

Presenter24:26

Record number six.

Simon Weston24:28

Jerry Rafferty Stuck in the Middle With You. It's a song that um when we were in Kenya.

Simon Weston24:34

We sung it everywhere we went. I mean it just brings back so many lovely, lovely, funny memories that like most of my life it's been quite good with just one major interruption now.

Speaker 424:44

A lot came in tonight.

Speaker 424:47

I get the feeling it's something right

Speaker 424:51

I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair

Speaker 424:55

Hey, don't wonder now I'll get down the stairs

Speaker 424:59

Clowns to live

Speaker 425:01

Jokers to the right, he ran stuck in the middle with you

Speaker 425:06

Yes I snoking it over you

Presenter25:10

Cherry Ravity, and stuck in the middle with you. You went back, Simon, to the Falklands with the BBC cameras in in nineteen ninety one, nine years after the war.

Presenter25:19

That was pretty traumatic, wasn't it?

Simon Weston25:21

It was, it caused a lot of nightmares to reoccur, because they'd pretty much gone.

Presenter25:25

You met the pilot who dropped the bomb on you and and maimed you and killed so many of your friends.

Presenter25:31

Was it difficult to shake hands with him?

Simon Weston25:33

So I think I I ran through the whole

Simon Weston25:36

The whole range of emotions when he came through the door.

Simon Weston25:39

I don't know, it was totally diffused by the sit by the fact that he had a lot of life in his eyes. He wasn't this big ogre and evil specter that I expected him to be. And he was a smaller smaller than me in stature, man, but uh a lot braver than me because I don't think I could have ever met me had I had been him. But he was a very nice guy, Carlos.

Presenter26:00

It was brave of him, I think that watching it on the television one felt that. Frankly, there was not a lot in it for him, was there?

Simon Weston26:04

Thank you.

Simon Weston26:07

Not in the terms of of the meeting, but there was because he had had nightmares as well, because it was over the years he'd got to learn of what he'd done. He'd had a lot of bad times because the press had started to tell, after about four or five years, of what had happened on board the Sagalahad and the amount of people killed, because to him it was just a job, much the same as it was to the rest of us, and if the roles had been reversed, we'd have done exactly the same to them.

Presenter26:31

So you acknowledged to each other in the end, did you, that you were just two men doing your job?

Simon Weston26:34

Yeah.

Presenter26:36

You went to the cemetery at St. Carlos, didn't you? And and and I think mercifully really for you you left the cameras at a distance and you stood there in in a rather respectful collar and tie and looked out to sea.

Simon Weston26:47

Looked at

Presenter26:48

That that, again, must have been a pretty tough moment for you.

Simon Weston26:52

I was very, very sad because I realised how close and yet how far we all were from land and relative security. I think the worst time was when we went right the way back to Blue Beach because there's a beautiful cemetery there and it's a circle of stone with a large wall at the very back end and it's surrounded by beautiful green and yellow uh gauze bushes and the the flag, the Union Jack, was flying.

Simon Weston27:16

And I went in and the tears were in my eyes because I saw where I came down the wall and I could see where my name would have gone. If I'd have run three or four foot further along, I might not have been here today, or maybe an inch further along, I don't know how close shrapnel have got to me. And I saw where my name should have gone. Uh and and that made me cry.

Simon Weston27:37

Sadness because I I felt guilty at that point. Sadness because a lot of the lads were still left there. And I suppose some of it was with relief because I wasn't on the wall.

Presenter27:50

I'm sure you you you wouldn't want to go back to the Falklands again, but but was it cathartic for you, that experience? I mean, have you felt like a different person since then?

Simon Weston27:59

It's allowed me to look at life in a much more positive way because I'm not looking back now, I'm not looking for things to haunt myself with. I'm not trying to drag the past up into the future.

Presenter28:09

Tell me about your next record.

Simon Weston28:11

It's the theme tomb to the BBC's Match of the Day. Um my stepdad was like my real father, lofty. I loved him very, very much and he passed away two years ago. And every time I hear Match of the Day theme tome now, I just laugh and I think of the times when we used to argue about football and I never knew as much as he knew, but um it was always worth arguing about and I owe an awful lot to him. He he he gave great comfort to my mum when and supported my mum when I was injured. And he was also like a nurse and a brother and a cousin and an uncle and a f a best friend to me and I miss him terribly.

Presenter29:16

Theme tuned to Matter the Day. Would you be able to cope on a desert island, Simon, or do you kind of feel been there, done that, really?

Simon Weston29:23

Um, I suspect so, really. I've I've lived in trenches and lived under makeshift roofs and things like this. Uh I don't think I'd want to be on a desert island, to be honest with you, for any length of time. It might be all right to get away from the pressures for a little while, but

Simon Weston29:38

I like people. I isolated myself from a lot of the world for a while.

Simon Weston29:42

And I don't ever want to go back there.

Presenter29:44

What will you say to your boys if they grow up and say they want to join the army?

Simon Weston29:49

Be the general's driver.

Simon Weston29:51

You never see too many generals getting killed in a conflict, do you?

Simon Weston29:54

Um I I would prefer them to get a trade. Uh anything that involved being sort of four or five hundred miles away from the front line of battle.

Presenter30:02

Your mother has said that as a result of all the pain and suffering and everything you've been through, that you're you're a nicer person. Do you think that's true?

Simon Weston30:10

Probably.

Simon Weston30:11

But then again I've grown up as well and I've got a family and I'm more responsible. But probably because of what I've been through, I'd had my face changed so much and I was never going to look like the Simon Weston who existed before. So I was able to turn over a complete new leaf. I was to I was able to become somebody different. Nobody expected me to be the same. And because of that, I didn't have to solve all my old problems with strength and muscle or aggression. I could be a gentle person. I could be the person probably that was really inside me all the time anyway.

Presenter30:46

But do you have a sadness for the loss of that person you were, you know, the squaddy who went to war without too many cares in the world?

Simon Weston30:53

Yes, I suppose everybody looks back to their youth and to the those early formative years of sort of from fifteen to twenty five and think, Oh, they were the best years of my life because they were so carefree, whether it be university or army or whatever you do in life, because if you're not married, you haven't got kids or anything and you have no mortgage or anything like that, you're having a wonderful, wonderful time. Yeah, I miss that side of it, but I I wouldn't swap what I've got for the world. And I've got Lucy and I've got Stuart and I've got James. I've still got my mum and I've got my sister and I've got my other sort of family, albeit Sonny's small. I've still got my very close friends and and that's very important to me as well. And I'm doing so many more useful things with my life than I was when I was in the armed forces. Although I'll never forget the army for what it gave me and the opportunities it gave me, even my injuries, because they have afforded me such a great deal to go forward in life with.

Presenter31:47

Last record.

Simon Weston31:49

Louis Armstrong and what a wonderful world. This is pretty much how I feel about it. Um I just like life and I like people and I like the efforts that the good are trying to do to overcome the evil. I'm genuinely just a happy guy who goes through life, hopefully, with a smile on his face and and not too many worries or cares in the world.

Simon Weston32:09

I see Sky

Speaker 432:11

Sabl?

Speaker 432:14

And dry Snow White

Simon Weston32:14

Drive

Speaker 432:17

The bright blessed day.

Speaker 432:20

The dogs are good night.

Speaker 432:23

And I think to myself.

Speaker 432:28

What a wonderful

Speaker 432:36

The colors of the rainbow

Presenter32:38

Louis Armstrong and What a Wonderful World

Presenter32:41

Now, Simon, if you could only take one of those eight records, you could have choose one out of the eight.

Simon Weston32:46

I take that one. Louie Armstrong.

Presenter32:47

Thanks, yeah.

Presenter32:48

But you haven't had any opera your grand told you to have opera.

Simon Weston32:50

She did, yeah. She said, Pick opera and classical music'cause it'll make you sound intelligent, she said.

Simon Weston32:57

I don't know whether anything could do that, but uh no, you mean she did she s she told me that she'd be quite upset that I've said it now.

Presenter33:04

What about a book? You've got the Bible and Shakespeare waiting for you.

Simon Weston33:07

But I would take one of Bernard Cornwall's books, Sharp's Eagle, pooling simply because I I've got into the series of books now and I really enjoy the way he's written them. It's just dead interest and I'm I I like history anyway, so what he's he's written about is really good.

Presenter33:21

What about your luxury?

Simon Weston33:23

I'd like to take a newspaper. I'd like to have a daily newspaper if I could. I wouldn't want to be out of touch that long. I'd like to be able to to read and I wouldn't be there for too long because uh

Simon Weston33:33

I'd I'd miss too much. I wouldn't take photographs of my family'cause I'd miss them too much. Even when I go away now I I miss them even if it's only for a couple of days. So I like to get back home as quickly as I can.

Presenter33:43

So you'd escape as soon as you could.

Simon Weston33:45

Yes, oh yeah, without a shadow of a doubt. But it'd be nice just for a couple of days.

Presenter33:49

Simon Weston, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Simon Weston33:53

It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 234:02

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.