“That’s where you get in trouble,” Calder explains. “Most veterans self-medicate, look for distractions like riding a motorcycle, skydiving… You try to find something to give you the same high. But I’m telling you now, there’s nothing like the feeling you get when you’re at war, standing on the precipice of life and death. You feel immensely guilty for enjoying that feeling so much. It’s the adrenaline, it’s almost indescribable. Losing that creates a huge void that you desperately try to fill.”
Calder self-medicates with alcohol. “I drank, caused trouble at home, then disappeared back into the desert for a job in the neighborhood, to bury my head in the sand and just get through it,” he admits.
It became a vicious circle that only ended when a former colonel advised him to think about his future. Private security jobs in Iraq couldn’t last forever and he would have to find a new reason to get up in the morning.
By now, Calder was a father of two and determined to clean up his act. For years he worked odd jobs, but “it was a car accident,” he says. “I did what I thought I had to do, I showed up on time, I did the job, but I didn’t have my team behind me. I felt worthless.
“I felt like the army didn’t want me, I didn’t fit into society – I was in no man’s land. That’s when all the baggage you pretend you don’t carry, the mental health issues you never talked about bubble to the surface.”
Calder realized he needed professional help. The turning point came in 2017 when he discovered the RBLI, one of four charities supported by the Telegraph Christmas Appeal this year.
“The RBLI was the last piece of the puzzle,” he says. “I had gone from military to veteran, but the RBLI bridged the gap back to civilian life.”
He enrolled in the charity’s LifeWorks course, a national employment support program, which, as of 2023, has supported more than 6,000 veterans since its inception. Eighty-three percent of program participants went to work within 12 months, especially impressive given that 79 percent have some form of physical or mental disability.
Hosted by former military professionals, life coaches, career evaluators, psychologists and career counselors, the five-day course is delivered nationwide. It helps veterans create a modern resume, learn how to search for a job, and how to complete an interview.
“What I liked was that I called RBLI and they said ‘yep, we can help’. It wasn’t a matter of days or weeks of waiting, it was 48 hours, bang, there’s your date — it showed me they meant business,” says Calder.
One of the reasons many military veterans struggle, Calder says, is because they speak “another language.” What made RBLI’s help different from anything else was that it came from ex-servicemen who could share their wisdom and speak in a way that veterans could understand.
“We learned a mnemonic that I still use: STAR – situations, tactics, actions, results, I think about that every day,” Calder gives as an example.