While the armed forces are exempt from the Disability Discrimination Act, Lee Heard says the harassment that he has faced at the hands of other soldiers 'has strengthened me into the person I am today'.

I think that one of the biggest blows to my speech came in the summer of 1996. I was 21 at the time and just finishing my last year of university. Having been in the Army Reserve here in Canada since I was 17, I had decided to try and join the British Army as an officer.

The whole process started about eight months before and consisted of filling out volumes of forms and undergoing several security checks. In that time I also had to speak on the phone with the British Army recruiters. Although I tried to control my stutter as much as possible during these conversations they noticed it and told me it might pose a problem.

My first interview was with a colonel in London. Although I handled my speech masterfully, he remembered our phone conversations and mentioned once again that it might pose a problem. After that I was off to the regular commissions board in Westbury, Wiltshire for a selection course. The whole time I was there I only blocked on one word so I was very confident that no matter how I did on the activities, my speech would not be an issue. On the last day I was told that due to my poor aptitude test score and my lack-luster problem solving abilities I was unlikely to succeed as an officer in the British Army.

Although I was crestfallen, this did not mean that my dream of becoming a British Army officer was dead because the regiment who sponsored me continued to sponsor my application. My sponsor was the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment and I now had an interview with the colonel of the regiment in Worcester. Since I knew that this interview could make or break my application I took some time to practice stretching in my hotel room and tried to visualise a successful interview in my head on the train ride there. After an hour and a half, a few glasses of gin and no blocks, the interview came to a close. The colonel told me that many good officers had done poorly at the RCB and that I was exactly the sort of chap they wanted as officer in their regiment. I was so happy.

All that remained of my trip was to take the train to London, spend a night there and fly out the next day. I was to move over in May to begin my training. When I got to my hotel room, there was a message from the colonel who had conducted my first interview to say there was a problem. It seems that they were not confident that I would be able to give orders under the stress of combat and because of this I was unsuitable as an officer in the British Army.

I exchanged some not so fluent choice words with the colonel and flew home, completely devastated. The whole experience had just hammered home to me that even when I controlled my speech as much as possible, it made no difference and still held me back. I felt that way until the winter of 1999 when I came home from my first tour of Bosnia with the Canadian Army and decided to attend a three-week intensive course in Ottawa Ontario.

Now when I look back at my British experience I see it not as a failure, but as more of an exploration into my speech skills and people's attitudes towards stuttering all over the world. In the end, the experience made me both a stronger and more motivated person, not just in my management of stuttering but in other aspects of my life as well.

It reminds me of a quote by T.S. Eliot who said:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

From the Spring 2003 edition of Speaking Out

See also
Not limited in the army - short comment from a soldier who has found the army supportive.
Stammering within the British Army - Steve Brown on his experiences, and how people who stammer can achieve their goals