A MOTHER-OF-THREE told today how she has faced almost 20 years of ill health since she tended to wounded soldiers during the first Gulf War.

Lorrie Brown was an Army health care assistant based at a field hospital in Saudi Arabia during the conflict two decades ago.

She said before she went, she was given a range of vaccinations, including two for anthrax and one for plague, because of concerns that the Iraqis would use chemical or biological weapons.

She was also given nerve agent pre-treatment sets (NAPS) while out there and a huge arms dump not far from her field hospital was destroyed, causing a huge plume of smoke to billow out over the area.

The 41-year-old, of Thirsk, said that several months later she started getting severe headaches and, over subsequent months and years, gradually suffered a worsening range of symptoms including:

• Dizziness

• Painful joints

• Chronic fatigue.

Lorrie eventually had to leave the army and found civilian work in Thirsk, but then had to retire as her condition worsened.

She said: “Now I can’t even walk my children to their school at the end of the road, and I can stumble and fall because of dizziness.”

She said she was given a war pension after it was recognised she was suffering from a range of symptoms related to her military service, although there had never been any official recognition she was suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, as she believed. “I believe my ill health was caused by the vaccinations,” she said. “You don’t expect to be poisoned by your own side.”

Lorrie is a member of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA), which claims 9,700 British veterans have so far suffered from a range of Gulf War-related problems, and fears Government cuts mean veterans of the conflict will face a double whammy of cuts to war pensions and benefits, with an increase in the number of rejected claims for war disablement pensions.

Andrew Robathan, Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, has thanked Mrs Brown for her service to the country and said the Government did recognise the concern among many Gulf veterans that their illnesses arose from service in the Gulf.

“The scientific evidence, however, does not so far support the view that all these illnesses can be accounted for in terms of one single disease, commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome.”