Endal: How one extraordinary dog brought a family back from the brink

That was all before I met Sandra. I have no recollection of how we met, where we met, what I said to her that night, or what I thought about her at the time. I don’t remember what we did on our first date, the first time we kissed, jokes we shared, how we fell in love or when I asked her to marry me – none of that stuff remains. I know what she’s told me but I have no first-hand memories at all, which is very distressing for her and just plain weird for me. She’s shown me albums of photos from our wedding and it’s strange to see myself there, happy and smiling and obviously very much in love, but to have no recollection of it at all.

I know that soon after we were married, in 1983, I was posted up to Rosyth in Scotland. We had married quarters that looked out over the Forth Road Bridge and the view was amazing. My job was to maintain the minesweepers and repair any other ships that came in with problems. The regular crew would go on leave and we’d go on board with the books and check all the maintenance and fix up the bits that weren’t working and then hand it back to the crew once they were rested. We were there for a year, I think, and then we were transferred down to Portsmouth where I worked on a guided-missile destroyer.

The kids were born in these years, first Liam in 1985 and then Zoe in ‘86. Apparently, the night Zoe was conceived I was meant to have been at sea, but the ship’s engines broke down so we came back ashore, and she was the result!

After Portsmouth, I was moved to Bath, where I was working for the Director of Engineering Support, basically designing new weaponry systems. There was a vast underground naval complex beneath the city, which was like something out of a Harry Potter novel, and we didn’t see daylight from Monday to Friday. It was dark in the morning when I started and dark when I walked out in the evening, but I loved the challenges of the work I was doing.

I was the only non-commissioned officer there. I’d passed the exams and so forth but I hadn’t actually gone to Dartmouth to get my commission, and I was aware that I was being watched by all the other officers to see whether I fitted in. When we went out socially, the highest of the high were watching my social graces, so I couldn’t make myself a chip butty at table or anything like that. I had to wear a jacket and tie instead of running around with the lads. But I was ready for it. Being an officer would mean that I could provide better for my family.

When the Gulf War started in 1990, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I volunteered straight away. I felt I should be out there on a ship instead of sitting behind a desk in Bath. It was never going to be a naval battle, so it was more about making sure supplies were getting through to our troops, intercepting any shipments of arms to the Iraqis, that kind of thing. We didn’t need thousands of ships there because it was all fairly easy with modern radar equipment, and you can more or less see right across the Gulf anyway.

When we arrived, our ship was given some free fuel from a prince who owned some oilfields in one of the Gulf States and we found we weren’t really needed, so we sailed on to Singapore and Malaysia. I know Sandra came out and joined me there, because she has shown me some stunning pictures of us standing in front of huge Buddhas and going round all the sights. So in fact, when she waved me off to go back to the theatre of war, we were sailing from Malaysia, not the UK. That was the last time she saw the ‘old me’. I’ve got a complete blank about that whole period. I can’t remember a single thing. I’ve no memory of ever being in Malaysia or the Gulf. It’s all gone. Sometimes I think I remember things because I’ve seen a picture of them but I can’t fill in any detail that’s not in the picture.

When I woke up in Haslar military hospital in September 1991, I was determined to get straight back to work. I just needed the doctors to fix me up. I hadn’t had an operation, there weren’t any scars or blood and gore, I hadn’t broken my back or my neck, so why was I having such trouble walking?

‘Your brain is not sending signals to your legs,’ I was told. ‘That’s why they don’t respond effectively. There’s nothing actually wrong with them.’

It was the same with my eyes. There was nothing the matter with them, but because my brain wasn’t working properly it wasn’t picking up signals from the optic nerve as efficiently as it should have been. The squint I’d had as a young child appeared to have come back. And I had no feeling in my right arm and the right side of my body, although I seemed to be able to move them; there were intermittent pins and needles but I couldn’t feel my hand if I dug a nail into it.

I took hope from the fact that there was no physical damage. Surely I just needed a bit of rest and it would all come back again? But why did I seem to have forgotten roughly 50 per cent of my life history? I had no memories of my grandfather, mother, sister, wife or children. Why did I forget basic words like ‘toothpaste’ and ‘bed’ and ‘pyjamas’?

‘You experienced a huge traumatic internal brain injury when your spine was forced up into the brain cavity,’ they said. ‘There’s no treatment we can give you. We just have to wait and see. It could get better, or it could get worse.’

If the doctors ever sounded negative in their prognosis, I thought to myself: They don’t know whom they’re dealing with. Maybe other war veterans would sigh and shrug and accept their disabilities, but I was way too ambitious for that. I was itching to get back to my career. I would work tirelessly at my physiotherapy and speech therapy and any other damn therapy they cared to give me. I would keep exercising until my legs worked properly again; I’d recover my memory and my speech and my eyesight and I’d astonish them all with my miraculous powers of regeneration.

I was so determined that I didn’t listen to anyone who warned me it might not be possible to get back the life I’d had before. They didn’t know me. They didn’t have a clue what I was capable of. As far as I was concerned, they were just plain wrong.

CHAPTER FOUR Sandra (#ulink_cdc13fdc-37ab-5288-b795-b64a26ce7f53)

Allen and I met in November 1982 in a nightclub in Haslemere, Surrey. I was twenty-three years old and living near there in a village called Clanfield, where I was working as a live-in nanny for the children of a surgeon at the hospital where I’d trained as a nurse.

I liked nursing on the whole and knew I wanted to end up working in some kind of caring profession, but I’d recently been posted on a couple of difficult wards, including a unit for people with severe burns, which had been very traumatic and upsetting. I decided to take a bit of time out from nursing to decide what to do with my future, and the nanny job was ideal. I got on really well with the surgeon’s wife, and when I mentioned to her that I was finding it hard to meet new people in the area she arranged for me to go to the nightclub and be introduced to some of the locals by the club owner, who was a friend of hers.

‘I need to get you up to that naval base and meeting some of those young officers,’ she said, prophetically.

I tried on lots of different outfits and spent ages doing my hair and make-up that night. It seemed like a long time since I’d made the effort, and the surgeon’s wife sat and chatted to me as I got ready. I was very apprehensive about turning up at a club on my own, even though she said the doorman would look after me when I arrived. I’d led quite a sheltered upbringing and wasn’t really a clubbing type. The whole thought of it made me feel very awkward.

My shyness wasn’t helped by the fact that when I arrived the doorman who was supposed to be looking after me wasn’t there, but I hadn’t been in the club long before a scruffy-looking guy in ripped jeans and a tatty old duffel coat came up to me, completely the worse for wear.

‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ he said. ‘Will you marry me? I’m pregnant, and I need you to marry me or I’ll get into trouble with my mum.’

I thought it was a great opening line, and liked his handsome boyish looks and the twinkle in his eye.

He told me his name was Allen, and then he bought me a hugely potent cocktail called a JD, which had orange juice, angostura bitters, gin and vodka in it, together with something else completely lethal, I think.

I was definitely attracted to him but I didn’t much like the fact that he was drunk. I’ve never been comfortable around heavy drinkers, having grown up with an alcoholic father.

As his speech grew more incoherent and I saw he was having trouble standing upright, I made my excuses and walked away. I didn’t want to have to mop up after him if he was sick! But in the week that followed I found myself thinking about him and wondering if I’d see him again. Despite the alcohol, he definitely had charm.

The following week I went back to the same Haslemere club, hoping to see him, and was delighted when he came bounding over as soon as I walked in.

‘I’m sorry if I said anything rude last week. I hope I wasn’t too offensive.’

‘I’m surprised you even remember meeting me,’ I commented.

‘How could I forget that I was talking to the most beautiful girl in the room?’ he said, and I blushed. ‘Do you want to come and join me and my friends?’

‘All right,’ I said shyly.

We got chatting and I decided I liked him when he was sober. He was playful and engaging and there was definitely chemistry between us. I was very pleased when he asked if I’d accompany him to a cheese-and-wine evening at the naval base the following weekend.

As the week went by, however, I got a bit nervous. What should I wear? How formal was it? Allen had said he would book a bed and breakfast for me near the base in Fareham, but would he expect to stay over with me? I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about that. I knew I liked him but I didn’t want to rush things.

As it turned out, the evening was fantastic. Allen had booked a taxi to pick me up from my B & B. He met me at the gate, took my arm as we walked in and behaved like a perfect gentleman all night. It was the first time I’d seen him in uniform and he looked very attractive, not to mention sexy. I liked the fact that he held doors open for me and took my coat and went to the bar to get me a drink, and that he introduced me to all his friends. Everything went smoothly and being with him felt very natural.

Afterwards he came back with me to the B & B, and even though I hadn’t known him for long I asked him in to stay the night. It just felt right. The surgeon’s wife had given me half a bottle of champagne and we shared it over whispered conversation before we went to bed. Next morning, he had to sneak out early before the landlady saw him because he wasn’t registered as a guest. The sight of him tiptoeing down the stairs in his socks, shoes held aloft, trying not to make a noise, was hilarious.

We started seeing as much of each other as we could: we went to the pictures, had dinner together, walked in the countryside, and talked the whole time. I couldn’t stop thinking about him between dates and used to get a churning in my stomach when he called, or when I was on my way out to meet him. He was the most interesting, lively man I’d ever met, and I could tell he was a nice guy underneath the extrovert exterior. He definitely had a caring side.

Allen explained that he could get a posting at any time that would mean he’d have to go overseas, and I told him plainly that I wasn’t going to wait around being ‘the girl he saw when his ship happened to be in Fareham’. I was at a stage in my life when I knew I wanted a husband and a home of my own and I didn’t want to waste time on a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere. I also knew I was falling in love with Allen and I wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to get my heart broken.

Fortunately he seemed to feel the same way because it wasn’t long before we started talking about marriage. Allen wanted to do it all properly though. At Easter 1983, just four months after we met, he was booked to go skiing in Switzerland with five of his friends. He’d learned to ski in the Navy and was seemingly very good. He suggested that I came along and shared the chalet with them, then he could propose to me formally out there, against the dramatic backdrop of snow-covered mountains. Before we left, he went to see my dad and asked his permission, which was a typically old-fashioned, gentlemanly touch.

I’d never skied before but I picked it up quite quickly and really enjoyed myself. Allen was a brilliant skier, whizzing down the slopes like a streak of lightning. It was a shame it wasn’t just the two of us but he had already arranged the holiday with his mates from the Navy and couldn’t cancel.

We’d talked about it and I knew he was going to propose at some point but he wouldn’t tell me which day he was going to do it. The way it happened was incredibly romantic. We’d just got off the chairlift at the top of the mountain and were carrying our skis to the top of a run, with a stunning view spread out below us, when Allen got down on bended knee in the snow.

‘I love you, Sandra, and want to spend the rest of my life with you,’ he said. ‘Please will you do me the honour of agreeing to be my wife?’ He produced a very pretty diamond ring from the pocket of his ski suit.

I was on the verge of tears. ‘Yes, I will,’ I said straight away. I loved his perfect manners and the way he could always make me feel so special. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful proposal.

That night, though, we went out to a local restaurant with his friends and they decided to celebrate by getting smashed. As the evening wore on, they grew more and more raucous until the owner of the place finally asked them to leave. Allen’s friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t like heavy drinking, and obviously thought I was a killjoy. They even tried to spike my drink. I was humiliated and angry, and really I thought we should have been having dinner on our own that evening.

The next morning, I was still tetchy with Allen and, sensing it, he became tetchy back. It all blew up when I asked him to brush the snow off my ski boots and he refused, snapping, ‘Do it yourself.’

That was it. My temper finally erupted. I pulled the engagement ring off my finger and hurled it into the snow.

‘In that case, you can forget all about getting married,’ I snarled.

We had a furious stand-up argument, in which I yelled at him that he had ruined our engagement by getting drunk. ‘I grew up with a father who always smelled of booze. He was scary and unpredictable when he was drunk and there’s no way I’m going to marry a man who drinks too much.’

‘I don’t drink too much. I just know how to let my hair down and you don’t.’

‘No, and I don’t want to if it means getting thrown out of a restaurant. I don’t want to live like that.’

I knew in my heart of hearts that Allen wasn’t an alcoholic. He just liked having fun with his friends. He was gregarious and obviously very popular with the other lads, whereas I was quieter and more reserved, but somehow we complemented each other.

‘That wasn’t my fault,’ he said, and blamed one of the other lads. ‘He’s just back from the Falklands where he saw friends of his killed and maimed, and he needs to let off steam.’