Terry Butcher has spoken publicly about the death of his son Christopher in a bid to raise awareness of PTSD in the armed forces, describing a loss that has shaped his family for a decade. Christopher Butcher, the eldest of Terry Butcher and Rita Butcher’s three sons, served in the Royal Artillery and struggled after leaving the forces.
Next year marks the tenth anniversary of Christopher’s death at the family home in east Suffolk, when he was 35. An inquest found that he died from an abnormal enlargement of the heart combined with the effect of drugs against a background of PTSD, and the coroner ruled that he became a victim of war after two tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Terry Butcher said he had never given anybody a story like this before and wanted to be clear that this was bigger than him.
The former England captain, now 67, said Christopher’s difficulties became apparent about two or three years after he returned from Iraq. At first, he said, the changes showed themselves in drink, then in flashbacks, and later in voices that seemed to take shape in his head. Among them were a sergeant major and a young girl from Iraq. “The sergeant major was telling him how useless he was, and he shouldn’t be here,” Butcher said.
He said the family has found its own rituals around Christopher’s absence. Each night, when he goes upstairs, he stops at the top of the stairs, looks toward Christopher’s room and says good night. “When I go up to bed in the evening, Chris’s room is on the left and our room is on the right,” he said. “I always stop at the top of the stairs and say good night to him, just give him a wink and all that sort of thing, because that was the room where he passed away.”
Butcher and his wife also visit Christopher’s grave, where the family have placed a military marker with an artillery crest. “Whenever we go to the grave - he’s got like a military grave with an artillery crest on there - we sort of hug the stone and always say, ‘See you at home, son,’” he said. The grief, he said, has changed with time. “I was feted as this so-called hard man,” he said. “You just didn’t cry. But I think you have to. I think it’s compulsory. It’s part of the process.”
That openness sits at the center of an upcoming ITV documentary, Butcher: Invisible Wounds, which will explore the impact of PTSD on service families. Butcher said speaking out was not easy, but he wanted the story told properly. “If you’re going to do something, do it well. Don’t just do half measures. This is a story much bigger than me,” he said. For him, the message is personal and lasting: grief, as he put it, still creeps up, but he can talk about Christopher more now than he once could.
