IT is a good thing that armed services personnel now have the back-up of Help for Heroes and other such organisations, the sights and sounds of war can have a devastating effect on human beings.

In late 1962, as keen fans of The Shadows, mum and dad took my brother and I to Bournemouth Winter Gardens to see them play live.

By today’s standards, their amplifiers were very small, but as soon as they began playing, father stuffed up his ears with his fingers, and with his eyes pinched tight shut, he threw back his head, mouth agape in a silent scream of terror.

We wondered what was going on, and found it amusing. But years later, after he had a deafness check for a small war pension, we found out that he had suffered the seven-day non-stop artillery fire at El Alamein, and this was what had affected him at The Shadows concert years before.

In those days after the war, personnel were given a demob suit, a pair of shoes and a trilby hat and told to ‘go and find a job.’

No one gave a second thought to any ear damage from noise, or mental problems from seeing horrific sights in those days, so thank goodness that since the Falklands, the personnel are taken care of correctly by these organisations.

ALAN BURRIDGE, Blandford Road, Upton