Leonard Cheshire talks about his motivations in the early days of what became the charity we know today.
This extract is from an interview our founder gave in 1990, just two years before he passed away.
Transcript:
Well as the war was coming to an end, and I could see for the first time that it looked as if I was going to survive I was dominated by the thought: I'm one of the fortunate ones.
55 million people have died. That's the figure we know now. Almost all those who were on my first flying training course didn't survive. So I thought I've got something to be very thankful for.
And I thought I've got a kind of duty to those who didn't survive. Not just to go back and earn a living and have a nice life. But somehow to get involved in the struggle to help build... I don't know how to put it... A better peace. A better world.
So I was dominated by that thought. But that difficulty was, once it was all over, how do you do it? You can have these great ideas, and it did really impel me, but I couldn't find a way.
So I was disorientated. I think, anyway, coming from war, where the nation had been totally united - had a goal. It knew that goal had to be achieved. And then to peace where each man was suddenly going after his own goal.
It was quite a traumatic experience. And that caused me, after about eight or nine months of this disorientation, to say, 'Do something.'
So I embarked upon a quickly thought out community scheme, to help ex-servicemen resettle into civilian life. We got a lot of publicity, a good deal of money, but it wasn't realistic, and it collapsed.
So I was selling everything off to settle these debts, when the telephone rang. It was a local hospital to say that Arthur Dykes, who'd been in the community and looked after the pigs, was dying of cancer. They couldn't keep him, would I please come and find somewhere else for him to go?
I thought, 'Well that's easy, he's an ex-serviceman, ex-medical orderly. Lots done for ex-servicemen. That's simple!'
I couldn't find anywhere. And the reason was that he didn't need treatment. So I couldn't walk away from him. You could see him looking lost.
So I suddenly thought, 'Arthur, would you like to come back to Le Court?' I knew he wouldn't but I thought at least I'm offering something.
He startled me by saying, 'I'd love to!'
Well what do I do? So the local district nurse said, 'It's quite simple, I'll show you what to do. You do it until we can find a better solution.'
