Homeless veterans re-enact Kipling’s verses

Veterans Aid has turned the clock back to Crimean times to deliver a very modern message of hope.

Using a small group of volunteers who had either faced, or experienced, crisis or homelessness the Charity filmed a reconstruction of Kipling’s darkly controversial poem, The Last of the Light Brigade. Called Veterans Voices it was made to tell all in the ex-Service community, who find themselves facing problems after discharge, that there is hope – and there is help.

“We hope that it will provoke some thought,” said CEO of Veterans Aid Dr Hugh Milroy. “None of the gentlemen who took part are actors, all former soldiers, sailors or airmen and all have overcome difficulties that involved an heroic effort to conquer.”

Kipling’s poem was written as a scathing response to Tennyson’s more famous The Charge of the Light Brigade, in which those who survived that ill-fated engagement were hailed as heroes. Its relevance to today’s homeless veterans is obvious:

“You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The DVD was filmed in and around VA’s East End hostel, on the streets of London, at the Guards Museum and in Westminster Abbey.

Dr Milroy said “Our thanks go to all who made production of this film possible. It was made to showcase the talents of ex-Servicemen who had once been indespair, to deliver a message of hope and, frankly because it was a lot of fun. So many of the lads came to us afterwards and asked what our ‘next production’ was going to be because they enjoyed making it so much, but the lines they delivered resonated deeply with some of them and I think that passion shows.”

“Homelessness is the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr Milroy. “When a Veteran is reduced to living on the streets he (or she) has lost everything; the events leading up to that loss can be medical, social, psychological or economic. Life in Britain today is complex and challenging; it is poverty, not military service that accounts for the problems that bring most veterans to our doors. And that can be a result of myriad things, ranging from relationship breakdown to job-loss.

“Kipling’s poem describes a nation in which ‘thirty million English raised twenty pounds and four’ – an epic slap in the face for its homeless veterans. Today it’s a very different story.”