The mother of a soldier who died in unexplained circumstances at Deepcut Barracks in Surrey has said she will continue to campaign for a public inquiry, spurred on by the recent Hillsborough inquest following decades of campaigning by families affected.
Yvonne Collinson-Heath’s son, Pte James Collinson, died in 2002 aged 17 - the fourth and final Deepcut death which Yvonne believes was entirely preventable
Between 1995 and 2002, four young Army recruits died from gunshot wounds in unexplained circumstances at the Deepcut Barracks in Surrey.
The Army insists the deaths were all suicides, but each of the families disagreed.
The families of Pte Sean Benton, Pte Cheryl James, Pte Geoff Gray, and Pte James Collinson have maintained that they were either pushed into taking their own lives by "a culture of bullying" or possibly murdered.
Yvonne told 5 News’ Simon Vigar: “'I wouldn't believe it if it hadn't happened to me. I never, ever believed there'd be any kind of collusion or cover-up and then the more and more I learn, for example Hillsborough, the more and more convinced I am that that's exactly what's happened.”
Asked if she wanted a public inquiry she said: “Absolutely, for one I want to find out how James died, why he died.”
Speaking about her son’s death she said: “They found him with someone else's gun lying across his chest. It wasn't fingerprinted, they didn't do anything about it. Everything was so lackadaisical, it was unbelievable. You don't expect that of the British army.”
“I've gone over that visit a million times in my mind, thinking did I miss something, was there something wrong? I can't find anything, he was just his normal self. I still can't believe it, sometimes, if I see a group of soldiers I still, kinda, have a little look, it just seems so unreal that he's just not here anymore.”
Yvonne said she didn’t feel official apologies went far enough and commented: “We've heard it all before, it's all talk, it's always 'lessons have been learned, we're thinking of the families at this time', they roll out the same statements over and over again, they've done it for 15 years now, we need less talk and more action.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here