'Tattooed muscle modelling helped me tackle PTSD'

Luke Shipman never remembered the nights he was screaming in terror after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Comrades from the Mercian Regiment found him cowering under his bed in his full British Army combat gear.

Luke, now 37, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and eventually spent several spells as a psychiatric hospital inpatient.

After leaving the Army in 2017, he says exchanging the firing line for film and fashion shoots has helped him rebuild his life and put him in a "better head space".

Luke, from Langley Mill in Derbyshire, had his first taste of the spotlight when he entered a modelling competition for tattooed men on his 30th birthday, he said.

Now, after featuring in an upcoming comedy drama film, called Hustle and Cuss, he has set his sights on a career in acting.

"It's part-time at the moment but I'd like to earn a living from it," Luke said. "Acting is always something I've wanted to do.

"This latest film was just the luck of the draw really; my part needed to be filled because somebody fell ill.

"I decided I wanted to pursue the modelling just before my 30th birthday after I started to overcome my PTSD. I told myself - 'this is going to give me the trigger that I know I'm OK'."

Luke joined the Army straight after finishing school and was 18 when he started the first of three front-line deployments in Helmand Province in 2007.

Over years of service, Luke said several close friends and comrades died or were seriously injured while serving alongside him in the Mercian Regiment, in Afghanistan.

He said his mental health deteriorated after a Taliban soldier dropped a "cooked" grenade into a checkpoint that Luke had been standing guard at just hours earlier.

"When you saw your friends get injured, it was one of the things that would always stay with me," he said.

"One time, me and a colleague were doing a vehicle checkpoint and every two hours we'd switch.

"The [attacker] was able to sneak up, climb on the roof, cook a grenade and drop it, so they didn't get chance to move out the way.

"It was just carnage. One of my close friend's whole leg was just skin and blood.

"If they'd waited another two hours, I would have been there and the grenade would have landed right next to me.

"That kept getting in my head. I just kept thinking 'why not me? Why did it have to be the other guy?' That became a massive PTSD trigger."

He added: "There were nights where some of the lads would walk in to my screams and I'd be in full kit - helmet and everything - in bed, screaming and thinking somebody was there."

Luke said his flashbacks became particularly "brutal" and "aggressive" in 2015, while he worked as a training instructor for the Army.

He said: "There's been some stages where I didn't see light at the end of the tunnel.

"I didn't know where it was going to go or how bad it was going to get. When it first started happening, it was horrendous some of the stuff my mind was doing."

Luke said on some occasions, his hallucinatory flashbacks would come about while he was instructing new recruits.

"I remember once I was at a training camp and the recruits turned into men from Afghanistan with dishdashas [traditional robes] on," he said.

"They were chanting in Pashto and started to attack me, punching me as they were running round.

"Another flashback happened in Tesco and everybody in the cafe was dead, including my brother. They had all been shot, blown up - it was horrific."

Luke was admitted for inpatient care at psychiatric hospitals in Staffordshire and Surrey.

He said spending time in psychiatric units was very frightening.

"Other patients were running round, screaming, banging doors, trying to get in," he added.

"I used to barricade my doors and tape cardboard on to my windows, just so no-one could see me."

Luke said "fantastic" treatment, including eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), helped him "unwind" his nightmares.

Looking back on his time in the Army, Luke says he was most proud of helping turn war-torn areas back into communities.

"Sitting down with the elders, enjoying the curries and drinking tea with them, it was pretty nice," he added.

In his spare time, the father of one has modelled for gym brands, taken part in "tattooed muscle modelling" competitions and has plans to attend acting school in the future.

In his latest venture, he plays a "gangster's henchman" called Alonzo in Hustle and Cuss, which is being released later this year and will be available to stream online this summer.

"I thought I'd just be a background character but then they offered me some speaking parts," he added. "It was fantastic and they treated me like a part of the family.

"The premiere was a highlight, [wearing a] three-piece suit and I put my tie on. It was like I was a celebrity for the evening.

"I think I'd prefer to wear a suit than the body armour and helmet in future, definitely."

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