'I wasn’t aware I was suffering': Marine A talks about troops' mental health

A former Royal Marine jailed for shooting dead a wounded Taliban fighter has expressed concern about troops’ lack of mental preparation before being deployed to war zones and revealed he is working with the marines to help them learn from his experiences.

Al Blackman, better known by his codename, Marine A, who is now out of prison on licence, said he accepted the killing was wrong and he took full responsibility. But he said he believed there was work to do to ensure troops received adequate training in dealing with the mental as well as physical challenges of the battlefield.

Blackman, 44, told the Guardian he continued to try to understand why he killed the fighter in Afghanistan in 2011. “Understanding why I did it is something I still struggle with,” he said.

There has been criticism over the support Blackman had from senior officers in Helmand, and some have said he was the victim of an establishment stitch-up. But he said: “I’m not pointing any fingers of blame at anybody. My situation was my situation. My actions were my actions.

“It would be easy to criticise [his superiors]. I don’t know what jobs they had. No one is sitting there twiddling their thumbs. For me to say they did a bad job and let me down is unfair. They had busy jobs. There was a lot going on in Afghanistan.”