A FORMER sailor who was left virtually mute and battling depression after watching two of his comrades die in the icy waters of the Baltic Sea finally found his voice to propose to the love of his life.

    Matthew Rawlins, 37, from Plymouth, Britain, was forced to live with the pain of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after he witnessed fellow sailors drown while on a training exercise in 2002.

    The mental and emotional toll of the condition left him, in subsequent years, only able to communicate via hand signals, as his muffles were inaudible.

    However, his frustration and torment came to an end when he found someone who showed him that there was light at the end of the tunnel — his future fiancee, Amy Fletcher.

    Rawlins met Amy, known as AJ, 28, across a fire at a scout camp and he realized quickly there was something special about her.

    He said, “We hit it off instantly. It was an incredible moment and a life-changing one for me.

    “I had spent eight years struggling with my speech and after any sign of progress I was being knocked back again.

    “But when I met AJ everything just clicked.

    “She was the first person I had really been able to talk with and open up to. She was gently asking questions and we took things slowly but gradually my speech became fluent again.

    “That was the defining moment for me. We were sat around the camp-fire from about 9 p.m. to the early hours just talking and we had so much in common.”

    The couple met in Plymouth in 2010 and got engaged in May this year. They now plan to get married in the summer of 2017.

    Rawlins’ tumultuous journey with depression began after he helped a team of first aiders who fought to save German sailors who had capsized while being transferred to their ship.

    The small crew were traveling back after a “swap” during a U.N. training task force when their inflatable boat hit a wave and was caught underneath by a giant gust of wind.

    It flipped over and plunged the three Germans and two British Royal Navy personnel into the water.

    Rawlins was one of those on-board HMS Cumberland who gave CPR to both casualties for up to two hours, but sadly they were already dead by the time they came aboard.

    The three other casualties were brought back on-board but despite suffering from cold and shock they made full recoveries.

    Struggling to deal with the horror of what he had seen, Rawlins, who had joined the Royal Navy in 1999, said they all initially coped in the only way they knew how.

    (SD-Agencies)