GORDON Hoggan will never forget the day he killed an enemy soldier in the Falklands.
The moment he stabbed him in the neck has had a profound effect on the way he has lived his life since.
It was 1982 and he was in fierce fighting in the famous Battle of Mount Tumbledown. The screams of pain formed the beginning of years of problems with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Gordon, of Chapel Street, Spondon, served in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards.
The 55-year-old said: "I used my bayonet to stab him in the neck after he stalked me with his rifle and nearly shot me, but it never fired.
"I was covered in his blood and I remember his screams of pain and agony.
"At the time I thought this was war. It was either him or me. It didn't have any effect on me. It was part of my job. If he had shot me then I would not be sat here now and he would have lived."
Gordon took the helmet from the soldier as memorabilia, as is often the case in war. At the time, he had no idea the ghosts of the incident would come back to haunt him years later.
After finishing in the Falklands, he moved to London where he was stationed for five years guarding Buckingham Palace and other Royal households.
He left the armed forces in 1993 and moved back to his native Scotland as a bus driver.
He said the incident never used to affect him until 2001 when he started to wake up in the middle of the night screaming and having flashbacks about the attack.
Post-traumatic stress disorder can be caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events. Military combat and violent conflict are prime examples according to the NHS.
He said: "They reckon it takes so long to come out and mine took 20 years. I was having nightmares and was thinking about different things.
"As a bus driver I became incredibly irritated and used to deliberately miss stops, which got me in trouble. But that was how worked up I used to get because of the condition.
"But at this point I was never diagnosed with it and just carried on living with it. I didn't really know there was a big problem.
"My life spiralled out of control and I hit the bottle. I became a beggar on the streets and was homeless.
"It was a horrible time of my life. I cried my eyes out quite often and thought 'what is going on?'
"I used to be a proud soldier. And this is what I had become."
But after a chance meeting on the streets with a volunteer from the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association – SSAFA – Gordon was taken in and given help.
They found him a home in Derby and he moved to the city.
Now Gordon hopes he can be rid of all of his demons by contacting the family of the soldier through the helmet. He has been in touch with an Argentinian worker at Asda who is moving back to the country. He hopes he can take the helmet back to Argentina and track down the soldier.
Gordon, who is now retired, has come a long way since his previous troubles.
He said: "I still drink socially with friends in the pub. But I don't drink to block out those horrible thoughts anymore. I go for the social side of it.
"I have spoken to him (the Asda Argentinian) and he wants to take it back and help reunite it with a family over there.
"Hopefully the power of social media could help. I truly believe it will work.
"I will feel a lot better about myself when they found out and would love it if I could find them.
"To know the soldier has a family and people with him would make me feel better.
"At the time of taking the helmet it felt like a trophy. I felt like it was pride that I had killed him and it didn't bother me. But now it does.
"It haunts me and to have the helmet is not right.
"It upsets me to look at it and it gives me the creeps, so to reunite it with the family, and to find out about them would be helpful.
"It would put a lot of my remaining ghosts to bed.
"I'm on medication now so I feel a lot better about myself. June is tough because it's the anniversary of the conflict.
"I'll be on the medication for the rest of my life but things are going well."
THE FIGHT TO FREE THE FALKLANDS
The Battle of Mount Tumbledown took place during the Falklands War as the British Army advanced towards Port Stanley, the islands' capital.
It took place between June 13 and 14, 1982, and forced the Argentinian forces from the mountain.
The battle was the subject of a BBC film called Tumbledown.
The Falklands War began when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands on April 2 1982, and, then South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, in an attempt to establish the sovereignty it has long claimed over them. On April 5, the British government sent a naval task force before making an amphibious assault on the islands.
Other battles in the ten-week conflict included the landing at San Carlos, the Battle of Goose Green and the Special Forces assault on Mount Kent.
The conflict ended with the Argentine surrender on June 14, 1982, which put the islands back under British control.
The death toll included 649 Argentinian military personnel, 255 from the British forces and three Falklands islanders.
Relations between the United Kingdom and Argentinian were restored in 1989 after the governments met in Madrid.
