A WAR veteran has accused the Ministry Of Defence of lying to retired service people about how to access a pension for injured personnel.

Colonel David Benest retired from the Army Parachute Regiment in 2009, having served in the Falklands War, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland during 37 years of service.

Due to his physical and mental injuries, he qualified to receive a war pension, alongside the standard military pension. His injuries included being strangled following a faulty static line jump in 1986 and being knocked out following a parachute jump in America. He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2008.

He said: “I was assured that, given all that, I would be given a war pension. The doctor said it would take time but then nothing happened at all.”

In 2015, Mr Benest, of Manningford Abbots, discovered no application had been made and after a second medical examination payments finally began.

However, more than seven years after retiring, Mr Benest has been told that he will not get backdated pension payments from 2009 to 2015 of more than £15,000 because he did not make an application himself.

Now he is taking his case to court to fight for the backdated money he believes is rightly his, but lost out on because he believes he was misled by the MoD.

He said: “No one within the MoD has been prepared to help which, after 37 years of military service I find very, very unpleasant.

“It is not about my loss, it is about how many others in the Armed Forces have been simply lied to.”

MP Claire Perry wrote to Tobias Ellwood, the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, on behalf of Mr Benest, who replied: “Whilst the onus is indeed on the individual to claim under the war pension scheme, this is made clear within the documentation issued to all service personnel on leaving the Armed Forces.”

A n MOD Veterans UK spokesperson said: “The War Pensions Scheme (WPS) provides compensation for injuries and death caused by service before 6 April 2005. Information on our compensation schemes is made available when people leave the Armed Forces.”

A report by Combat Stress veterans’ charity found just four per cent of veterans with mental health difficulties were in receipt of a war pension.

The colonel believes that veterans are missing out on money to support them to live with their injuries because they don’t know about the application process.

During retirement,Mr Benest raised £5,000 for cadet charity The Ulysses Trust delivering newspapers in Manningford Abbots.

He said: “This is not what I ever expected from the Armed Forces.

“Military Covenant? Forget it.”