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IN TOUCH – Former British Army Soldier; then and now

TX:Ìý 28.12.2021Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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Train announcement

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Knocking at door

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Lundberg

±·´Ç…

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White

Craig?

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Lundberg

Watch the door.

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White

Hiya.

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Lundberg

How are you?

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White

How are you?

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Lundberg

Oh, I can tell you’re blind.

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White

[Laughter] Why?

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Lundberg

By the fact there’s a [indistinct words].

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Long time no see.

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White

It’s 14 years.

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Lundberg

Fourteen years!

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White

Yeah.

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Lundberg

Come in mate, watch your step.Ìý

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White

Okay.Ìý Well, it’s good to see you anyway.

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Lundberg

Yeah and you.

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Right, so, I’ve just got to open this door, so there’s a guide dog in there – Comet – he’s alright, he’s not daft.Ìý And you’ve got a little rat cat dog, ferret thing, it’s a little tiny – little tiny dog – little tiny dog, wait till you feel him.Ìý Yeah, as soon as you come in there’s a couch…

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White

Hello dog.

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Lundberg

Did you feel it Peter?

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White

Yeah.

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Lundberg

Little hamster, little gerbil – Milo, his name is.

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White

Over the almost five decades in which I’ve been presenting In Touch I’ve met some pretty impressive people but few more impressive than the man whose story we’re about to tell you tonight.Ìý

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We first introduced Craig Lundberg to In Touch listeners on Christmas Day 2007, the year in which just a few months earlier he’d lost his sight completely and without warning.Ìý He was only 21 at the time and what so impressed me, as I talked to him then, was the speed with which he’d come to terms with his situation and his determination, still, to make a good life for himself.Ìý

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The reason for our meeting, again, 14 years on was to discover how things had panned out for him.

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But first, this is Craig back then, describing what happened when he led his section of young soldiers on to a rooftop in Iraq searching for terrorists.

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Lundberg

So, I got my team together and I went up on a roof to help me mates out.Ìý Then we were in a fire fight for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, fighting roof to roof with the insurgents before I got hit.Ìý I got hit by two rocket propelled grenades, one hit the wall that I was behind and then one hit me practically on the chest.Ìý Lucky to be alive really.Ìý Me mate helped me up, I tried to carry on but obviously I was too injured, practically blinded instantly.Ìý

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My main aim was to make sure my team got off the roof in one piece.Ìý I didn’t really care about me.Ìý If I got injured or killed in the process of getting them off that roof then so be it, that’s just the way it was.Ìý That’s what my job entailed.Ìý And their lives were in my hands.Ìý So, all I thought about was I weren’t having it that an Iraqi was going to kill me, so, I was just determined to get up because I thought – I’m not getting beat – because I’ve quite a – a bit of a winner’s attitude as well, I don’t like losing.

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White

Craig, when you I first met you’d lost your sight for only a year, which was obviously the big thing we came to talk to you about but what struck me at the time and listening back was that you’d also lost your career – a career you’d only just discovered – and I just wondered how you coped with that loss of direction?

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Lundberg

By just being honest with meself, I couldn’t do no more – being a sniper, I couldn’t do no more being a leader of men because being a blind sniper is not quite effective unless the enemies going to run round with bells on, do you know what I mean.Ìý So, I come to terms with it quite quick, not saying it didn’t hurt because it did.Ìý And I probably threw meself into a lot of challenges after that to sort of compensate for that because when I was in the army I wanted to go for SAS and that’s probably me biggest regret not having the chance to do selection, to know was I good enough or wasn’t I good enough.Ìý And that’s probably the only thing that I regret about it.Ìý But actual moving on – no I just come to terms with it quite quick because that’s not my life no more, I wasn’t a soldier.

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White

But were you wondering how you could use that talent for leadership?Ìý Because I remember you said to me, at the time, I left school, didn’t have qualifications, suddenly found I could do this.

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Lundberg

Definitely, the skills that I’d learnt in the army at such a young age, joining the army at 16 and going to Harrogate and being a junior leader, I then applied that into the businesses that I now run and I applied that with me attitude and definitely sort of coming over adversity was definitely sort of planted in from a seed from the army, I think.

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White

But the businesses didn’t come straight away, did they, I mean, presumably, you were, again, at the time, learning how to use a cane, getting around, beginning to do all sorts of things.Ìý Initially, a lot of it was pretty sport oriented, wasn’t it?

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Lundberg

Yeah, well, at the time, I remember a welfare worker coming to see me and I said – right, well, I need to do something – I said – I’ll volunteer, I’ll do anything apart from I won’t make coconut mats, I won’t make broom handles, I certainly won’t make cups of tea.Ìý And she went – okay.Ìý And she found me a group called the Actioneers, working with a load of blind kids, they’re doing sport.Ìý And I got there and I realised how lucky I was, hang on – lucky is not the right word I don’t think – I don’t know, it’s a hard one because I think the debate goes from both sides of people who have lost their sight and people who were born with sight – who’s the luckiest.Ìý But I felt, me, personally, that I’d had 21 years of sight and then I was playing sport with these kids who were eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 who’d never had sight, who’d never seen a football and I was learning off these kids.Ìý Then that got me into blind football then, so I was playing blind football and then it went on from there.

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White

One thing I would like to ask you, because, in a way, we didn’t talk about this originally, but I mean you – it wasn’t just that you lost your sight, you had pretty horrific injuries, didn’t you, and as you said at the time, people told you afterwards that you shouldn’t have survived.Ìý Did you have any after effects from that?

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Lundberg

Yeah, no, there’s the mental side of it, as we’re all aware of PTSD and things like that.Ìý Luckily enough I haven’t struggled mentally, I’m not saying that I don’t have down times because I definitely do…

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White

But everybody does.

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Lundberg

… but everybody does, exactly.Ìý And I don’t think that I’ve struggled, unlike some soldiers, I consider myself really lucky in that way.Ìý Me injuries, physically – I broke me jaw, I lost three teeth, broke my cheek, me eyes are prosthetic and I broke my humorous, which obviously your upper bone in your arm, in three places, so I’ve got plates and skin graft.Ìý But, as it goes, apart from me eyes, no, I’m in good shape.

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White

Which is just as well because, as we said, sport became a very important thing to you, didn’t it.Ìý We mentioned playing football for England, you ran a marathon, I think, in the first year.Ìý What was that all about – doing all that sport – because you’re still doing it to some extent?

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Lundberg

I think there was a number of things.Ìý I think the marathon was because when I was in hospital the London Marathon was on at the time and I was like I’m going to do that.Ìý And I think that was sort of just proving to meself that I could still do it.Ìý I think I was still – it’s going to sound really stupid – but like still manly, during me, you know, still like – because don’t forget I’m going from being one of the youngest corporals in the British Army, being a sniper, being top of me game in a war zone and seen as elite and then, all of a sudden, me eyes are taken away and I’ve got this vulnerability about meself.Ìý With the football, I think it was just fitting in at the right time and the lads that I was with were very good for me within the first year to be around because they weren’t your typical sort of view of what blind people should be or should be doing or shouldn’t be doing.Ìý So, I learnt loads off them.Ìý The different approaches that blind people take to how they live their life.Ìý And they give me a lot of confidence.

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White

You’re doing Iron Man training?

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Lundberg

I’ve put meself down for an Iron Man, yeah, so I’m doing Iron Man Austria.Ìý Everyone goes – ooh Austria – and I was like – yeah, because Iron Man Bolton just doesn’t have the same ring to it and Iron Man Wales is like one of the hardest in the world.Ìý So, for your listeners who don’t know what an Iron Man is, an Iron Man is a triathlon, it’s a two-and-a-half-mile swim, it’s a 110 mile bike ride and then it’s a marathon – all after each other.Ìý

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White

So, all this is all very well but, of course, it doesn’t get you a job, which is where you were in 2007.Ìý I guess in 2008 you were thinking – what am I going to do.Ìý Did you have any idea what you were going to do?

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Lundberg

No.Ìý I was in a lucky position – okay, unlucky that I nearly had me head taken off, granted – but in a lucky position that I was getting compensated by the army.Ìý I didn’t get compensated nowhere near enough for what your eyes are worth but it is what it was.Ìý I’d been given this opportunity that this is my army career given to me in one go, I need to do something with it, I need to make it work.Ìý So, I had a look around me and I sort of thought – right, okay, what can I do?Ìý Well, builders are like soldiers, do you know what I mean, and I got into houses – I invested in houses.

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White

So, where does Craig the businessman come in then?Ìý I would imagine you didn’t know an awful lot about this stuff when you started.

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Lundberg

I knew nothing.Ìý It just come in from learning, speaking to other people, do you know what I mean, and I went – right, how do you do it, explain it to me.Ìý And then I just started viewing houses.Ìý I started with the builders.Ìý So, I done loads of things.Ìý So, I stripped all the walls in the properties, I knocked some of the walls down, the things that I could do I done and then the things that I couldn’t do, I got people in to do.Ìý And then I just learnt.Ìý And that’s all it is then – it’s just a process – which then obviously being in the army was fine for me, I’d just repeat it and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.Ìý And now I’ve got 22.

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White

Twenty-two houses?

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Lundberg

Well, shops, flats and houses, mixed, it’s a mixed portfolio.

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White

It’s a mixture.Ìý How do you do the practical side of this because for all your competence and capability there are things in these jobs that you need sight for.Ìý Do you rely on specific people?

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Lundberg

I’d like to say no and it’s just me, do you know what I mean and I’m the great one and I have done it all by meself.Ìý But that’s not true.Ìý Yeah, I’ve got a PA who works for me full-time, called Gary.

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Gary

I used to have a building company and I was just bored of it and just done enough.Ìý So, I applied for this job but didn’t actually tell me that he was blind and ought like that but just said a PA was needed.Ìý The fit was more apt because although he was looking for a PA, due to him having a property portfolio and my building knowledge and stuff like that, it just seemed to be the perfect fit.Ìý And yeah, eight years later, I still can’t get away.Ìý It is a long, long running joke that this job title is called varied because you name it, Gary’ll fix it, don’t worry.

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White

What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever had to do for him?

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Gary

Trek for six days in China.Ìý I was not expecting that when I signed up for this job.Ìý We went and done the Great Wall of China for Alder Hey.Ìý I thought like, you know, I’d be – oh yeah, just a bit of driving round, bit of paperwork, bit of that.Ìý Next minute I’m on an eight-hour flight to China.

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White

How would you describe the relationship now – it’s eight years, you say, it started as a PA, are you just a PA?

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Gary

It’s varied, it’s definitely varied.Ìý I work for Craig, Craig is my boss but it’s just a case of – we come in and whatever’s put in front of us in the day we will get through together.Ìý When I leave of a night, I know what I’m doing.Ìý By the time morning comes, it’s changed, I never know what’s happening.Ìý So, it’s tomorrow we’re going to do this, this and this, superb, I’ll come in prepared for it and he’ll go scrap that – we’re going to go abseiling off St John’s Tower.Ìý I’m like – whoa, hang on.Ìý You never know what’s going to happen.

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Lundberg

I’ve got him, who drives me around and then helps me with day-to-day things as well, like, sometimes taking me kids to school or we’ve got a truck and I own an estate agent’s which does lettings and sales.Ìý We’ve got approximately, I think, 170 houses that we manage for other people and then a sales department.Ìý I think we’ve got eight people that work for us altogether.Ìý My partner, Nicola, she’s the estate agent.Ìý We met through the estate agency.

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This is Pete.

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White

Nicola.

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Nicola

Hello, nice to meet you, are you alright?

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White

Nice to meet you.Ìý So, he’s got you in here working while he just gads about talking to journalists.

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Nicola

I’m used to it.Ìý I think I described him as a WAG – like a footballer’s wife, aren’t you?

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Lundberg

So, we got the shop together and it was just us.Ìý Then, as we built the shop and it grew, our relationship become more hostile?Ìý And it was working together, we’re both very strong minded.

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Nicola

We’re both alpha male, aren’t we, we both think that our idea is the best idea and I think when it came to the shop we have kind of things to deal with in our relationship that other couples don’t have to deal with.Ìý We didn’t kind of get a minute to just kind of be a young couple, as such and work just became a really difficult environment.Ìý And we then spent some time where we both still were heavily involved and I think over the past sort of 12-18 months we’ve come to a bit of a more mutual agreement where you don’t really have anything to do with the shop now, do you, like the day-to-day running I do all of it.Ìý And I do talk to you about things but only the same way that I would speak to like any other partner that maybe didn’t own it with me.Ìý

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It took a long time for us to get to that point, even, didn’t it?Ìý Because obviously Craig’s a landlord and his properties are managed here but he also owned the shop and it was that fine line between are you a landlord or are you an owner, what are you calling us as today, are you coming into the shop today as a landlord or are you coming in as a business owner.Ìý And that’s just part of it, it’s just our family, like, we don’t really have it any other way do we, it’s just the way we are.

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White

So, you’re a family man now.Ìý How do you view the sort of business of being a dad, is that any different to what you think it might have been like if you’d been able to see?

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Lundberg

Totally different.Ìý Being a dad is really hard, being a blind dad is really hard especially when you’ve got three young kids.Ìý So, I’ve got Sophia who’s aged three, Ben who’s aged nine and I’ve got Max who’s aged six.

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This is Max.Ìý This is Max, this one.

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White

This is Max, hi Max.

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Lundberg

Go on then, there you go, did you have a good day?Ìý You don’t know?Ìý Oh one of them days again.Ìý Do you want to know – do you want to know what it’s like having a blind dad?

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Max

Terrible.

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Gary

What’s so terrible about it?

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Max

Cos it is.

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Gary

What’s the worst thing about having a blind dad then?

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Max

Nothing.

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Lundberg

So, Max, what do you think about Ben then?

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Max

He’s terrible.

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Lundberg

He’s terrible?Ìý

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Hey Ben, did you have a good day?Ìý What did you do?

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Ben

We done some art and I didn’t get my detention.

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Lundberg

Ah, there you go.

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Ben

And also, I won the raffle.

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Lundberg

Oh, what did you win?

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Ben

This mini pencil.

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Lundberg

Shall we go home then?Ìý

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Car door shutting

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Ben

Hey dad, this morning…. toys.

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Max

And I got a yo-yo.

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Lundberg

Yo-yo.

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Ben

Yeah, and then I got one where it was a little fishing rod and off the end a magnet, you had two fishes with magnets attached to them.

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Lundberg

Oh okay.

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Ben

And then we shared like – there’s a little instrument, forgot what they were called.Ìý Oh do they call it a flute?Ìý Where it’s like dead long and then it’s got the holes on the top…

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Lundberg

Flute or a penny whistle.

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Ben

Yeah.

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Max

A penny whistle.

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Ben

Max, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what a penny whistle is.

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Max

I do.

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Lundberg

It was a penny whistle…

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Max

Can we go and buy it?

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Ben

I would imagine a penny?

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Lundberg

There you go guys.Ìý

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Door shutting

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Gary

Then we do it all again the other way down in the morning.

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Lundberg

I done a talk, I had the great honour of speaking at our local cenotaph this year and which was actually in Liverpool Cathedral and when I was asked to speak, you hear all this word all the time ‘sacrifice’ and I thought everyone goes on about the people that died or the people that were injured and rightly so, cos they have paid the ultimate sacrifice but it’s not just their sacrifice, like my kids sacrifice all the time.Ìý And they know no different, by the way, I’m just their dad but it’s different to me like sort of when you can’t read them a bedtime story or you can’t just pick them up and put them in a car and go – well, this is where we’re going.Ìý Being blind everything’s got to be a little bit more thought about or a little bit more organised.Ìý

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Things like when your little boy scores – scores a goal and he’s putting thumbs up at you and you’re not putting thumbs back at him.Ìý That hurts, do you know what I mean, because it’s not his fault, is it?Ìý But, at the same time, he gets the benefits of the things that we do do.Ìý We’ve just walked Hadrian’s Wall together, go to museums together and we – I do things with all three on me own.Ìý People go – well I can’t, even sighted, take all three kids out on me own and you’re like three kids on your own.Ìý So, it’s got swings and roundabouts.Ìý And sort of what I said in me speech was yeah, they sacrifice but I’m their dad.Ìý I might not see meself as a normal dad but I’m their dad at the end of the day.Ìý That’s what the speech was about, was it’s not just my sacrifice, it’s everyone that’s around me, it’s me mum, watching me struggle doing simple things, it’s me kids that I can’t do the things that I would have done if I could see, if I was still a soldier.Ìý There’s things that me partner has to now do, do you know what I mean, that we wouldn’t do if I could see.Ìý So, I know what I would have been like if I could have seen.Ìý So, that does frustrate me a bit.

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White

Do you ever think how different life might have been if you hadn’t been on that roof in 2007?

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Lundberg

I haven’t got time to think about it. ÌýI haven’t got time to think about if I could see or being born blind is worst, I haven’t got time.Ìý I get up in the morning and it’s sort of like – right, got to get the kids ready for school, got to do this, got to do that, I’ve got to get to work, I’ve got to let the dogs out, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.Ìý So, it's like I haven’t got time to think about it.Ìý So, it’s no is the answer because I haven’t got time to think about it.Ìý Would’ve could’ve should’ve.

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