Why this former soldier went from serving in the SAS to serving the Lord.
After escaping death in Afghanistan, Kevin Stewart was looking to outrun his demons – and found life-changing help from The Not Forgotten
“It was filled to the brim with enough explosives to flatten the whole area, my whole squad, and all the civilians nearby,” Stewart recalls. “So I can only put it down to divine intervention that it didn’t. I believe that with all my heart. I cheated death because God had a use for me.”
In the hours after the event, an old psalm he’d heard at school echoed through Stewart’s head: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Stewart was 16 when he joined the army in 1995. Fresh out of school in north Scotland he was seeking adventure. “I suppose there was a sense of duty too, a feeling I wanted to be part of something bigger,” says the former special forces soldier.
In the late 1990s, he left Scotland to tour in Northern Ireland, before being sent to Afghanistan at the beginning of the 2000s. The latter was where Stewart got his first taste of war.
“The hardest part, without a doubt, was seeing the effects of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombings – not just for soldiers, but on innocent civilians. That got to me and will never leave me,” says the 46-year-old.
“You could never switch off; the threat of IEDs and suicide bombers was constant,” Stewart explains of his time in the SAS. “You could have the best technology and best weaponry in the world, but if you’re in a place like Afghanistan, death could come from anywhere.”
After he left the army in 2006, Stewart says the nightmares continued to haunt him. “There’s a lot of trauma,” he admits. “Moral injury is like a physical injury in that you can continue to feel it. I get low moods, suffer with regret and guilt about what I did.” He pauses, admitting that he’d rather not go into too much detail about his experience at war and still finds it hard to talk about his combat experiences. “When I left the military I kept it all inside. I didn’t want to talk about anything.”
On the outside, Stewart’s life post-SAS looked good. Money was plentiful, allowing him to buy luxury cars and nice clothes. While he was offshore, he took up body building, even winning Mr Highland in 2017. “I was using my army experiences as fuel, for motivation, to push me through the pain threshold so I could keep achieving at the gym,” he says. “I learnt to channel that negativity into something positive while building my body.”
But it couldn’t last. A meningitis infection came out of nowhere and crippled Stewart. “I came very close to death,” he explains. “And just three months after I came out of the hospital, I pushed myself too hard training and suffered a horrific broken leg; my tibia, fibula and my ankle all broken; that’s when I started drinking.”
Stewart had always managed to outrun his demons since leaving the Special Forces, but unable to channel his inner thoughts into his fitness, they crept back into his mind. “All that focus went from being constructive to destructive,” he says. “With not being able to train or go to the gym, I was really suffering with what I call ‘the darkness’.
“I got to the stage where I didn’t want to be here,” Stewart admits. “I thought death had to be better than feeling like that. It’s so hard looking back because I could have been one of those soldiers who leave the service and end up taking their lives.”
It was at this stage of Stewart’s life he came across The Not Forgotten, a veteran’s charity supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Appeal which works with former servicemen and women who are experiencing loneliness, isolation and health issues to provide social, respite and challenge opportunities.
The challenge gave Stewart back a sense of purpose, self-discipline and motivation. Not only that, but while taking part Stewart chatted to other people who’d been through similar experiences. “It reminded me I’m still part of the army team, that I could talk to other people and they might understand what I was going through,” he explains. “The Not Forgotten really lived up to its name: when you leave the army and you go through that darkness you feel isolated and alone and they helped me realise that I’m not forgotten, that I still have something to give.”
As he started to open up, Stewart’s mind returned to that same old psalm which he’d thought about the day in Afghanistan where fate – or, as he chooses to believe, a higher power – had prevented the explosives in the truck from obliterating him.
“I’d forgotten about it for so long while I was in this dark valley, but by chance I picked up my old Bible from my army days and read that psalm again,” explains Stewart. “It all came back to me at once – that day – and it was like God was speaking directly to me, like He was with me, His rod and His staff to guide me.”
Stewart started attending church in 2019, hungry to learn more about God, revitalised and refreshed for the first time in years. “I had hope and strength, and that’s when I decided to give my life to Christ. I wanted to know more, what had happened, what all this was about, so I started a two-year access course at the theology college in Dingwall [a town in the Scottish Highlands]. I hadn’t been at school for 20-odd years, but I had this huge desire to learn.”
At the time, many rural churches in Stewart’s area were short of preachers, and given he’d always been comfortable speaking to people through his experience as a PT in the army, Stewart began to volunteer as a lay preacher.
“As I put my first sermon together, I was wondering ‘what am I going to preach about?’ and suddenly it came to me: that day in Afghanistan where I believe God saved my life,” explains Stewart. “There was no reason why that bomb shouldn’t have gone off. I can only put it down to divine intervention. It was God’s will for me and everybody else to live that day. I just put it down to God’s providence. It changed my perspective on life.”
Finding God has had a profound effect on Stewart. “It has allowed me to process what happened to me, the trauma of knowing that evil happens in the world,” he explains. “That allowed me to focus on what I can control and let go of the things I can’t. That has been profound. The moral injury will never leave me, but I can cope with it now.”
Now in the third year of his theology degree and going through the discernment and ordination process with the Church of Scotland, Stewart aims to rejoin the army as a chaplain. “I’ve just done a placement module within the army chaplains at Lark Hill in the south of England and the infantry training centre in Catterick. That was surreal because I was in Catterick myself 30 years ago as a recruit,” he explains. “I’ve gone from looking back at the battlefield to the pulpit. Through faith and with the help of The Not Forgotten I’ve found purpose in my life – serving others, bringing hope and also to remind people that no one is ever truly forgotten.”
The Not Forgotten is one of four charities supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal. The others are Prostate Cancer Research, Motor Neurone Disease Association, Canine Partners. To make a donation, please visit telegraph.co.uk/appeal2025 or call 0151 317 5247
.jpeg)