90-year-old-father nominates daughter for top armed forces award

A Scottish veteran has been short-listed for a national award celebrating the armed forces community.

Mary Wilson, from Edinburgh, is in the running for the Sporting Excellence award in the annual Soldiering On Awards.

The former Army nurse, who now works as Help for Heroes’ first Band of Brothers and Sisters coordinator for Scotland, was nominated by her 90-year-old father, William Hepburn.

His submission to the judging panel, of which General the Lord Dannatt is the chairman, tells how Mary has overcome several setbacks in her career that prevented her from playing and enjoying sport at the level she had been used to. But, instead of giving up, she has focused her energy on empowering and inspiring other wounded and injured veterans.

Every day she fights her own battle and struggles with the symptoms of MS and her chronic shoulder injury, but she reaches beyond her disability to inspire others - William Hepburn of daughter Mary

“Every day she fights her own battle and struggles with the symptoms of MS and her chronic shoulder injury.

"But she reaches beyond her disability to inspire others through not only their sporting achievements and the power of sport, but the empowerment and immense pride she has helped instil within them,” wrote Hebburn.

All nominees who made the short list were invited to a reception at the House of Lords, hosted by the charity’s patron, The Rt Hon the Lord Astor. Even once there though, Mary still refused to accept that she deserved to be so.

“I was in denial that I had been shortlisted for the awards. They are for people who have really done something exceptional and changed other peoples’ lives and I couldn’t see me as being one of them,” admitted the 52-year-old.

Mary was in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps for 20 years, reaching the rank of staff sergeant and serving in many locations including Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland and Belize.

She was also in charge of the Field Mental Health team in Afghanistan for three months. During her career she was recommended for mention in Dispatches due to an act of bravery, received the Ministry of Defence Peoples' Award for Inspiration and the Burroughs Cup for her Outstanding Contribution to Military Mental Health.

But in 2000, while attending a military horse-riding course, Mary was thrown from her horse, hitting a wall and breaking her cheek bone, two toes in her right foot and ripping her bicep muscle from her right shoulder. Four years later, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

After three operations, which left her with very limited arm movement, arthritis and constant pain, she was medically discharged in December 2012. Determined to retain her fitness, Mary trained hard and, the following year, was selected to compete in the US Warrior Games.

Said her father: “She inspired others to give it a go and many of them achieved more than they could ever have dreamed of. This gave her a greater purpose in life. She helped rekindle the military spirit, ethos and identity of others and helped them to feel valued… building morale and the feel-good factor at the same time.

“And it is for that courage that Mary deserves the Soldiering On award. Anyone who knows her is proud and thankful that she has crossed their path and helped make their world a better place.”

Knowing how involvement in sport turned her whole life around, Mary now teaches swimming not just to wounded former Forces members but also to the LGBT community of Edinburgh.

She is hoping to take her Level 1 coaching in wheelchair tennis this summer and has set up sessions for members of Help for Heroes Band of Brothers and Band of Sisters support groups, in rowing, canoeing and sailing at Strathclyde Park every Thursday morning, and dinghy sailing taster sessions at St Andrews Sailing and Coastal Rowing Club.

“Sport is a medicine like no other. Along with Help for Heroes, it helped me regain focus, determination and enthusiasm. It instils passion, pride, determination, friendship and comradeship and that’s what I want to pass on to others,” said Mary.

“I think maybe that is why I have been short listed.”