WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2004 (AFTERNOON)

MR DES JAMES, MRS DOREEN JAMES, MR JAMES COLLINSON, MRS YVONNE COLLINSON, MR GEOFF GRAY AND MRS DIANE GRAY

  Q1100  Chairman: The reason we are asking this question is that it is almost a family affair if somebody joins the Armed Forces, so I wondered whether the letter was addressed to the applicant or to the family, because maybe the applicant would not show the letter to the family, and we just wanted to see if it was more like that.

  Mr James: Sorry I cannot help.

  Q1101  Chairman: No, I fully understand.

  Mr Gray: Can I just pick up on what you said about it being a family affair?

  Q1102  Chairman: Please.

  Mr Gray: Geoff wanted to join the Army for ever. He actually went down to the Army Recruitment Office in London, the Strand, himself. The only contact we had with the Recruitment Office was a letter asking myself and my wife to go down and sign up for him to join the Army because he was under 18. That was the only contact we had with the Recruitment Office whatsoever. I do remember there was a training video that Geoff forced us to watch about 50 times. Again, that is the only information we had prior to Geoff joining the Army.

  Q1103  Chairman: Thank you. Mr Collinson or Mrs Collinson?

  Mrs Collinson: Can I really just reiterate what Geoff said here because James was only 16 and the only correspondence we had was our signature on a parental consent form. James was severely dyslexic so therefore he needed some help with filling out his entrance form papers, which we gladly did for him; we were happy to encourage him to join the Army, we felt it would be a really good career. And it was all he ever wanted to do. But there was no other information sent to us as parents.

  Mrs Gray: Can I say something?

  Q1104  Chairman: Please.

  Mrs Gray: A common thing with Yvonne and I, our children, both of them grew up and Geoff went into the scout group and James went into the Cadets. So they did know what they were getting themselves into; they did not go in blind, they were used to discipline.

  Q1105  Chairman: Was there any history of the military in your families, in recent history?

  Mr James: Cheryl's grandfather is a Burma Star Veteran.

  Mrs Gray: My grandfather served in the Army in Sri Lanka, and, unfortunately, 24 years old, he suffered death in an Army barracks as well.

  Chairman: Thank you. James Cran, please.

  Q1106  Mr Cran: I wonder if I could ask you a few questions—and I think you know more about this than most—about this very, very difficult transition from being in the family one day, in the womb of the family with the protection of parents and so on, in this move from family into something like the Armed Services. I certainly know the first time I left home that it was a traumatic experience for me. Therefore, with that in mind, did any of you discuss with your children how difficult it might be? I am not suggesting that you should have, by the by, but I am wondering if you did.

  Mr Collinson: With James, as I said, he started off as a 12-year old in the Army Cadets. He did five years in the Army Cadets; he went from a cadet up to being sergeant. He was also an instructor, if you like, a senior instructor as well in the Army Cadets. So he was used to being away either for weekends or for weeks or fortnights at a time at the training camps that the cadets went to. So after five years of being in the Cadets and joining the Army he was already accustomed to not being home at the time.

  Q1107  Mr Cran: What about Cheryl?

  Mr James: Cheryl lived only a few miles away but she had lived in a flat for a number of weeks. But, quite frankly, it was not an issue; she was very outgoing and made friends extremely easily, and whether she had gone into the Armed Forces or university or simply decided to live away from home, it would never have been an issue for us, I do not think.

  Mr Gray: The same with Geoff. As Diane said earlier, Geoff had grown up with the scouts and he was away at weekends, weeks, all the time, and we talked to Geoff a lot on the phone while he was doing his basic training and, to be quite honest, he was loving it and I do not think there were any problems with that transition from living at home, to leaving us.

  Chairman: So they were all excited about going; they wanted to join the Army and they went in with their eyes open? So anything that happened, happened outside the scope of their aspirations and experience?

  Q1108  Mr Cran: But I think it is true, Mr and Mrs Collinson, that you have said on a number of occasions—and if you did I think I would probably agree with it—about the importance of better liaison with the families at the initial transition into the Services.

  Mr Collinson: Yes.

  Q1109  Mr Cran: Just talk me through why that was important against the background of how you just answered my question.

  Mrs Collinson: I think as a generalisation, 10 or 12 weeks' first phase training, with recruits not being allowed to go home, I think is a long time because for many recruits it is the first time that they have been away from their parents, and I think it must be very intimidating. I think the transition from school life to work life is hard enough for a teenager, without having to be away from home for two or three months.

  Q1110  Mr Cran: Is this a view with which you, Mr and Mrs James and Mr and Mrs Gray, would agree?

  Mr Gray: Yes. The liaison between the Armed Forces and ourselves was nil. Basically, we put Geoff on the train to Waterloo, he went off and did his basic training and we had no contact with the Army whatsoever in the meantime. So I feel that, yes, there is a need for better liaison. I am not saying that we should molly-coddle young soldiers or wet nurse them, but there should be contact with the families, to give them a progress report even, to say that your son or your daughter is doing well, or not doing so well in this area.

  Q1111  Chairman: That is a really good point. What we have been told in the places we have been to is that once recruits enter the training regime almost everything they see and do is totally counter to so much of their experience beforehand—the discipline, the regimentation, living away from their families, things that they cannot do which they would have done quite naturally. That is why we are keen to ask you about this transition, especially if they are really young; they are almost getting out of childhood before they might be put into a new environment.

  Mr Collinson: As you said yourself, they are going in with their eyes open but at the same time all of a sudden they wake up in the morning and it is not like home, you know, "It's time to get up"—it is actual physical shouting to get up as well, and it must be quite a shock to the system.

  Q1112  Mr Cran: But all this begs the question—and maybe it does not apply to each one of your offspring—whether you received proper guidance from the recruitment section, wherever your three offspring were recruited. Was there any guidance given? Do you think there should have been? And I mean not only your offspring but you also. Do you think you should have been given that briefing?

  Mrs Collinson: I think especially when you have someone as young as 16; that is very young, they are still a child basically, and I think, yes, there should be some guidance given to parents.

  Q1113  Mr Cran: You would both agree with that, would you?

  Mr James: Yes.

  Mrs James: Yes.

  Q1114  Mr Cran: So you got absolutely no briefing whatsoever? You had no contact with the Armed Services whatsoever, the contact was through your offspring?

  Mrs Collinson: Except to sign the parental consent form.

  Q1115  Mr Cran: Can I just ask one other question, which will lead into other questions by my colleagues? They were all excited by going into the Armed Services and so on and, indeed, it is a great calling, there is no doubt about that whatsoever. Did you perceive any change in the attitude, in the character of your three children after they had got into Phase 1 training, perhaps, and then on to Phase 2?

  Mr Gray: When Geoff finished Phase 1 training I think there was a marked change in him. I think he was much more mature. Even though it is only a 12-week period I think he was much more mature. Physically he was very, very fit. At his passing out parade the Commanding Officer said that they had changed from boys to men, and you could definitely see that in Geoff's case.

  Q1116  Mr Cran: And the same with James?

  Mr Collinson: The same.

  Mrs Collinson: The same with James.

  Q1117  Mr Cran: And the same with Cheryl?

  Mrs James: Cheryl was glowing, absolutely glowing.

  Q1118  Mr Cran: So for the purposes of my questions, at the point of recruitment and even in Phases 1 and 2 they were as "happy as Larry"?

  Mr Collinson: At James's passing out parade, when he walked through the doors at Pirbright, after he passed out he was beaming and so proud; he had wanted to be a soldier since he was 10 years old. When he passed out he was just full of smiles.

  Q1119  Mr Cran: Mr James?

  Mr James: Yes. Just to add one proviso. As my wife said, when Cheryl came home from Pirbright she was absolutely glowing; she had never been fitter and, frankly, never been happier, which is what leads us to believe that there were not really any issues in her initial training. But when she was at Deepcut she wrote a series of letters, which were never posted, outlining that she was very unhappy with the pernickety rules and regulations and some of the things, but the letters were never released to us. So when I went to the Inquest and I was asked the question, "Was she happy?" I gave the answer that we have just given to you. It was only in February 1996, some months after her death, that the letters were returned to us. We were told by the MoD at that time, in writing, that those letters had been released to the Coroner, but the Surrey Police have since told us that they have interviewed the Coroner's Officer and he has actually told them in a statement that he has never seen the letters.