Ex-SAS soldier and Billy Connolly’s guard on Comic Relief trip laid to rest in Thailand

[silver sea]

Sad story from Chiang Mai:

 

https://chiangmaione.com/featured/scottish-sas-hero-laid-to-rest-in-emotional-ceremony-in-thailand

 

 

Davie Penman from Falkirk, Scotland was born on March 4th 1964. He was a Sergeant in the Parachute Regiment, and then became a trooper in the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS). He served with distinction in Northern Ireland and in Kosovo.
 

In 1999, he was on board a Hercules aircraft when it crashed on take off during the Kosovo War. Two of them helped another trooper, Chris, to escape the wreckage, before the ammunition on board exploded. Chris had to have his leg amputated while Davie Penman was left traumatized by the experience. 

 

He left the SAS in 2000 and joined various security firms that offered jobs in places of conflict like Iraq. He was unimpressed by them, because it seemed that greed and profit were more important than safety and integrity.

 

The BBC employed him as a bodyguard for Sir Billy Connolly on a Red Nose trip to Somalia. He became good friends with both Connolly and his wife Pamela Stephenson. She had been a comedienne (Not the Nine O’Clock News), and then trained as a psychiatrist. It was she who told Davie Penman that he had been traumatized by PTSD.
 

This is Davie Penman’s memory of the Red Nose trip:

 

“The BBC wanted to do a ‘story / piece to camera’ about street kids living in Hargeisa the capitol city in Somaliland. We were up early as they wanted the sunrise, call to prayer and the children waking up (all very TV/MOVIE iconic?). Off we went downtown to do the police station for the planned filming .... The Red Nose team never understood the young street boys hung around the Police station, not for protection but for food, in return for attending ‘parties’ with the policemen. Such is the culture in Islamic countries! I hope the donations to Red Nose day was spent on KY JELLY and CONDOMS! For those poor boys. No one seemed to notice what was really going on, just a piece to camera to pull at the heartstrings of the public for donations.”

 

He never received much sympathy or support for his PTSD from either the British Army or the National Health Service. In the final years of his life there were various low points. He lived in Thailand with his Thai girlfriend Mu: “she supported him through thick and thin.” 
 

According to his brother, he did not commit suicide but: “David made no secret of how difficult he found living with the images of atrocities he witnessed in various conflicts.” It seems that he may have died from cardiac arrest.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tv-sas-star-billy-billingham-22416271