Blog

After growing up in South Manchester, Garreth Murrell joined the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion in 1985. A year later, he joined the Cheshire Regiment, where he served for over a decade. 

“They were a superb Regiment, and I am incredibly proud to have been a part of them.”

Initially serving with C Company, Garreth moved to the Reconnaissance Platoon, in order to get out to the Falklands for a 6 month tour. After that, came COP Selection; which saw Garreth becoming 2IC of a 4-man COP team deploying to South Armagh. 

Garreth travelled the world with the British Army, serving two tours in Northern Ireland, becoming one of the first British soldiers into Bosnia under the UN flag, two deployments to the Falklands, Belize, Jamaica, Canada twice, Germany and Italy.

In 1995, Garreth left the Army, and became a Scene of Crime Officer (SOCO), a position better known today as a Crime Scene Investigator. This was a fascinating time for Garreth, despite often being gruesome. 

In 2004, Garreth was offered a place at university. Upon graduating, Garreth moved to the National Training School for Scientific Support, teaching a variety of forensic courses. 

In 2007, twelve years after leaving the Army, Garreth’s world fell apart.

He signed off work, and eight months had passed before Garreth realised that the issues were in fact his own, and not those of the world around him.

Thankfully it was at this stage that Garreth discovered Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy, which helped him in ways he would never have thought imaginable. After just one session, Garreth went back to work. Within two weeks, he was back to teaching in front of a class again.

He then became determined to train in “this NLP thing”. However, after paying £2000 for one day-long session, Garreth was concerned that the men and women who would most benefit from the treatment wouldn’t have the means to pay for the sessions. It was at this point that Garreth started developing a plan to set up a charity, to allow him to offer Veterans the treatment for free.

And so, in 2010, Garreth retrained as a Neurolinguistic Psychotherapist, and founded Veterans At Ease.

Eleven years on, the charity has helped over 450 returning service personnel to find the peace of mind that they so rightly deserve, and to once again enjoy a higher level of mental fitness.

The charity’s ethos always has been, and always will be, the same:

Military minds matter.