Royal Air Force Sergeant Mark Prendeville, an aircraft engineer and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, was given shocking orders by a hospital in England upon visiting it after chemicals from a fire extinguisher got into his eyes during a training exercise.

They wanted him to leave the waiting room because they “feared his uniform would upset people from different cultures”, according to numerous reports.

And they did, making the proud military man sit in an empty corner of a room before staff at the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent moved him into an examination room.

Apparently it’s nothing new, as similar incidents have been reported in recent years in the region.

More from the Daily Mail:

In an explanation to his family, hospital workers were said to have claimed ‘they didn’t want to upset people’ because they ‘have lots of different cultures coming in’.

Sergeant Prendeville’s father, Jim, said: ‘Mark was moved because of his uniform – he was told that twice.

The words they used were: “We’ve lots of cultures coming in”.

‘Mark was quite annoyed, but he’s a quiet lad and didn’t want to cause a fuss.’

A good number of British military veterans have come out and voiced their outrage over Prendeville’s story publicly, including a former Chief of the Air Staff Sir Michael Graydon who called it “disappointing”. And this (also via the Daily Mail):

‘I would have thought, regardless of whether he had his uniform on or not, it was more important to deal with the situation, which was the chap had something very unpleasant happen to him, and he should be dealt with immediately. Moving him to other rooms in the danger of offending people strikes me of getting the priorities absolutely wrong.’