CIVVY #1

SAME YOU, NEW UNIFORM

CIVVYmagazine.co.uk MAY 2026 | ISSUE NO. 1 | £5.95

Experience CIVVY in Print

COLLATERAL DAMAGE John Robins on alcoholism and the armed forces

AT PUTIN’S PLEASURE British veteran’s tale of captivity

CRASH LANDING

Liz McConaghy on life post Chinooks

THE HOME FRONT

A salute to those left behind

Bear

Grylls

On surviving civvy street

MILITARY GAINS | CAREER TARGETS | LIFEST YLE RECONNAISSANCE

ROYAL NAVY

ROYAL NAVY

ROYAL NAVY

ROYAL NAVY

Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity is proudly at the heart of supporting our Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel and their families.

STANDING ORDERS

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

Out on your own, out of your depth?

Read on.

Welcome to the first issue of CIVVY.

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magazine has to earn its place on the shelf and a launch issue has to earn the right for a second to follow. So, rather than a manifesto, here’s what I’d like to tell you about what’s inside – and why I think it’s worth your time.

CIVVY is a magazine for the men and women who have served in the British Armed Forces, written almost entirely by people who have done the same. Not the official version of who we are. Not a softfocus tribute. Something more useful than that – a magazine that takes the transition out of uniform seriously, but takes itself rather less so.

In this issue, Andrew Parsons explains why building a business from scratch felt harder than commanding a regiment, and how a chance afternoon at a gin school turned into an award-winning distillery on a former RAF station. Toby Cart describes how a plan drafted in a forward operating base in Helmand has grown into a £1.2 million company designing and installing high-end gyms for elite military units, professional sports clubs and Everest record-breakers. Bear Grylls sits down for a searching exchange on identity, risk, family and what the word ‘civvy’ actually means to him. Colin

WEBSITE

MacLachlan walks us through the part of his story most interviewers skip – the PVR, the Hereford plumber’s CV he was handed as a blueprint for civvy street, and the thousand job applications in a year without a single interview. Liz McConaghy, the longestserving female crewmember in the history of the Chinook Force, gives an unflinching account of 17½ years on the airframe and the dark months out of uniform that followed.

And Shaun Pinner – a Brit captured at Mariupol, paraded on Russian state TV and sentenced to death – gives us the parts of that fight nobody ever asks about.

Around all of that, you’ll find careers, money, kit, health, travel and the quieter conversations that come with leaving service behind.

A small confession. CIVVY is independent – and independent magazines live or die by the people who read them.

If something here speaks to you, please subscribe, pass the issue on and mention us in the WhatsApp groups, meet-ups and social media where word actually travels.

That, more than anything else, is what will keep this magazine in print.

Until issue two – thank you for picking us up.

The Editor

EMAIL civvymagazine.co.uk

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CONTENTS CIVVY SITREP 06

News

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Grin and Bear it: TV survival specialist Bear Grylls shares a master class in strategic transition

A concise catch-up on the stories UK veterans should consider keeping in their arc of fire WAR STORIES 32

The other side of service

A ‘wife of ’ a Ukrainian volunteer shares her experience of what conflict is like for those left at home HEALTH 44

Science behind the letters

Experts from King’s College London’s Military Health Research team explore PTSD FINANCE 51

Caring for your coins

Pension advice from CIVVY’s resident money man and former soldier Nick Onslow THE CIVVY BAR 62

Best bar none

Join our mission to raise a glass to those who have swapped military service for drinks service RETAIL RECCE 64

Kit worth carrying

A tour of the new must-haves THEN & NOW 67

Mike Pearsall

From ships to servers – a Royal Navy veteran’s tale of transition

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18 Colin MacLachlan on his PVR, being presented with a plumber’s CV and a portfolio approach to civvy street

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Chinook crew ‘chick’ Liz McConaghy on helicopters, Helmand and helping others

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No laughing matter: Award-winning comedian and podcaster John Robins on his battle with booze and the Armed Forces’ uncomfortable association with alcohol

R&R 68

Malta

A visit to the Med getaway that proves good things do come in small packages 72

Take the high road

Come with CIVVY on a tour of 500 miles of raw wilderness, sea lochs and single-track road CIVVY CINEMA 78

pleasure: 38 AtMeetPutin’s the British Army

veteran held captive and tortured by Russia following the fall of Mariupol in Ukraine

Flights of fancy

From Maverick to MJ, a lowdown on the films worthy of your investment of time and money

48 Reps and resilience: Fitness entrepreneur Toby Cart on flexing his military skills to bolster turnover

MOTORS 81

In the driving seat

Ford, Honda and Renault race for your attention BRIEFING NOTES 88

Paperback writer

Prolific author Steve Higgs gives us chapter and verse on his growing literary legacy 92

Origin stories

A selection of books penned by service personnel-turned-scribes to add to your holiday reading list 94

Musa Qal’eh remembered

Veteran tells the story behind the story of a bloody Afghan siege THEN & NOW

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Officer-turned distiller Andrew Parsons credits a large measure of his business success to skills matured while in uniform

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Rich Burgess

RMP veteran on policing, PTSD and assessing service complaints and welfare issues

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CIVVY SITREP From new support funding to the continuing row over Northern Ireland legacy cases, there has been plenty moving in the veterans’ space. Here is a concise catch-up on the stories UK veterans may wish to keep in their arc of fire.

TARGETED SUPPORT

COVENANT CHANGES The Armed Forces Bill 2026 is one of the biggest pieces of legislation currently affecting the military community. A parliamentary committee report published on 29 April backed measures covering the Armed Forces Covenant, defence housing, the service justice system and reserve forces. The key point for

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

The Government says it is now spending “record levels” on veterans, with investment aimed at health, housing, employment and wider support. The Office for Veterans’ Affairs has also set out a new Veterans Strategy, published in February 2026, which aims to coordinate support across government, devolved administrations, regional leaders and the charity sector. One of the headline ideas is VALOUR, a national programme intended to make it easier for veterans to access help local to them.

veterans is the proposed strengthening of the Covenant, including closer attention to how public bodies support the Armed Forces community.

Implementation will be the real test – legislation is one thing, but veterans will want to see practical improvements in housing, healthcare, employment and social care.

EXTENDED REACH A network of veteran support centres is being rolled out under the VALOUR banner, with government funding opened up for local bids. The aim is to create recognisable access points for veterans who need help with issues such as health, housing, employment, finance, wellbeing and reintegration into civilian life. The Royal British Legion has welcomed the new strategy, while also making clear that delivery will matter more than announcements.

HOUSING HELP Homelessness continues to be one of the most pressing issues facing a minority of veterans. The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust lists continuing investment through the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme, including projects providing supported accommodation and specialist help. Alabaré, for example, has received funding for veterans’ accommodation across several areas.

Campaigners and charities continue to argue that earlier intervention at the point of discharge is essential if veterans are to avoid falling through the cracks.

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There is renewed political and charity-sector attention on the way military compensation is treated in the benefits system. The Royal British Legion’s ‘Credit their Service’ campaign argues that compensation for injury or bereavement linked to service should not be treated as ordinary income when meanstested support is calculated. A Private Member’s Bill currently before Parliament would require the Government to report on the potential merits of disregarding War Pension Scheme and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme payments when assessing Pension Credit and other means-tested benefits.

STRONG PUBLIC SUPPORT The Royal British Legion has confirmed that the 2025 Poppy Appeal raised £56.6 million, its highest total since before the pandemic. The money supports serving personnel, veterans and families through grants, welfare support and specialist services. For all the policy debate, the figure is a useful reminder that public support for the Armed Forces community remains substantial.

NORTHERN IRELAND UNEASE

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

PRESSURE FOR REFORM

The debate over Northern Ireland legacy legislation continues to divide opinion. The Government has moved to remove immunity provisions from the previous Legacy Act, saying this restores legal rights for victims and survivors while including protections to ensure veterans are treated fairly. On 7 May 2026, the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Government in a case linked to the Legacy Act and the Windsor Framework. For many Operation Banner veterans, the issue remains deeply personal, with concerns about repeated investigations and legal uncertainty sitting alongside the need for justice and truth for families affected by the Troubles.

FOCUS ON MENTAL HEALTH Op Courage remains the NHS specialist mental health and wellbeing service for veterans, reservists and service leavers in England. It is open to those who served for at least one day in the UK Armed Forces, provided they are registered with, or eligible to register with, a GP in England and can provide their service number. The service continues to be important for veterans dealing with trauma, anxiety, depression, substance misuse, adjustment difficulties or wider wellbeing concerns.

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BUGS IN THE SYSTEM Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

CIVVY SITREP

Veterans can now apply for and download a secure digital version of the HM Armed Forces Veteran Card through the GOV.UK One Login app. The card is designed to make it easier to prove veteran status and access relevant support or discounts. However, reporting earlier this year suggested take-up had been slow, and the digital card does not currently replace every function of the physical card. For example, it has been reported that it cannot be used as photo ID for domestic British Airways flights or for Veterans Railcard applications.

HOME SOIL

SALUTE TO OP TELIC VETERANS The Royal British Legion has announced a national event to mark 15 years since the end of UK combat operations in Iraq. The event, at the National Memorial Arboretum, is intended to recognise those who served under Operation Telic, remember those who died, and

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026 08

acknowledge the long-term impact of the conflict on veterans and families. It is a timely reminder that Iraq veterans are now a major part of the modern veteran community, many of them still of working age and navigating civilian careers, family life and health challenges.

The Invictus Games will return to the UK for the first time since the inaugural London games in 2014, with Birmingham hosting the eighth edition from 10-17 July 2027. Based at the National Exhibition Centre, the competition will feature around 550 wounded, injured and sick competitors across 12 adaptive sports – nine core disciplines plus three new additions: e-sports, pickleball and laser run. The choice of Birmingham carries weight. Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Selly Oak treated personnel evacuated from Helmand during the Afghanistan conflict, and the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre is also based in the Midlands. Organisers have committed to an Impact Strategy, with community engagement programmes running in 60 locations across the UK ahead of the Games.

The direction of travel is clear: the veteran community is changing. Today’s veterans are more likely to be of working age, more diverse and facing modern pressures around housing, mental health, employment, family life and digital access to services. The headlines show plenty of activity from Government, Parliament, the NHS and major charities. The challenge now is whether that activity becomes practical, joined-up support that veterans can find and use when they need it.

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Rebuild project

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y the time the dust settled on Fort Delimara, ten previously homeless veterans had clocked 900 hours of restoration work – and rediscovered something they thought they’d lost for good, purpose.

The numbers tell part of the story. Two weeks. Multiple historic military sites. £12,000 worth of labour at minimum wage. A 69 per cent improvement in mental wellbeing scores. But the real transformation happened somewhere between the masonry and the Mediterranean sun.

Nick Cogbill hadn’t left his house in six years. Now he was standing in a Maltese fort, trowel in hand, part of something again. “My confidence has gone through the roof,” he said. “This was a trip of a lifetime.”

The mission was the latest deployment from Alabaré’s Heritage That Heals programme – an innovative approach to veterans’ welfare that swaps clinical interventions for structured conservation work. The charity partnered with Heritage Malta and the Armed Forces of Malta to preserve historic military structures at Fort Delimara and an outpost at Dingli, giving British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force veterans a chance to rebuild both fortifications and themselves.

“After being housebound for six years, to come out and experience something

like this has been an adventure. I actually felt part of something, I felt valued,” said Nick, a beneficiary of Alabaré’s Homes for Veterans service.

For Jimmy Flurrey, who’d spent the last three years in isolation battling depression and alcohol misuse, the mission reignited something he’d thought was gone. “Being around the military family again has been really nice,” said the Royal Navy veteran. “A new passion has been ignited in me.”

The trip coincided with ANZAC Day on 25 April, when the group laid a wreath at the Australian High Commissioner’s residence. They also met with the British Deputy High Commissioner Tristan Gilchrist and Malta’s Minister for National Heritage, Dr Owen Bonucci – a recognition of the cultural and diplomatic weight their work carried.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SCAFFOLDING The programme isn’t just about good intentions. It’s backed by academic research from the University of Bangor and Archaeology Warwickshire, measuring impact through the nationally recognised SWEMWBS scoring (Shorter Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale). A rise of three points is considered substantial. The Malta cohort averaged 3.14. That’s not just a statistic – it’s the foundation for independent living.

WHAT’S NEXT? Alabaré has been invited back to Malta – a destination featured in this issue’s R&R section (page 68) – in 2027 for further restoration work, extending a partnership that’s proving mutually beneficial.

Heritage sites get preserved. Veterans get purpose. And the cycle of homelessness gets broken, one deployment at a time.

As Simon Frith, Alabaré’s partnerships lead, puts it: “Together, we’ve restored confidence, connection and hope for ten previously homeless veterans.”

The forts will stand for centuries. The men and women who fixed them have rebuilt something even more important – themselves. C Left, Jimmy Flurrey, who became a chef after a 12-year career in the Royal Navy civvymagazine.co.uk

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GRIN& IT! R A BE A master class in strategic transition

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or many military veterans, the move into civilian life is defined by reinvention. Rank disappears. Structure loosens. Identity shifts. The question becomes not who you were in uniform, but who you are without it.

Few modern Britons embody that reinvention more completely than Bear Grylls.

To the public, he is synonymous with survival television. To the veteran community, however, his journey represents something more nuanced; the disciplined conversion of military ethos into civilian enterprise, media influence and global leadership credibility.

This is not simply a story about adventure. It is a case study in strategic transition.

SERVICE AND SETBACK

Before the production crews and international recognition, Bear served in 21 SAS (Artists) (Reserve). The environment was uncompromising – selection

standards, operational readiness, mental robustness. It is an institution that does not reward ego and does not tolerate weakness.

Like many who serve, he encountered adversity. A severe parachuting accident during a freefall in Africa left him with a broken back and facing a lengthy recovery. For others, that would have marked an abrupt end.

Instead, it became a recalibration point. Within 18 months, he stood on the summit of Everest – one of the youngest Britons to do so at the time.

For veterans reading this, the relevance is obvious. Military careers are rarely linear. Injury, redeployment, restructuring – disruption is part of the territory.

The critical factor is what follows.

Bear’s post-injury ascent was not just physical achievement. It was narrative control. He refused to allow a setback to define the trajectory of his life. That instinct – to regain initiative – would underpin everything that followed. civvymagazine.co.uk

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MILITARY CAPITAL INTO CIVILIAN CURRENCY

Many veterans leave service with immense capability but limited understanding of how to monetise or reposition it. Bear did the opposite. He identified a niche – extreme survival – and professionalised it.

The breakthrough came with Man vs. Wild, a programme that blended fieldcraft with storytelling and reached global audiences. It wasn’t merely entertainment, it was competence packaged for prime time. Preparation, risk assessment, improvisation under pressure – these were military-adjacent skills reframed for civilian viewers.

From there, his portfolio expanded. Running Wild With Bear Grylls brought high-profile figures into austere environments, exposing them to controlled adversity. The formula was simple but effective: remove comfort, reveal character.

But television is only one flank of a broader operation.

Bear has built a publishing catalogue spanning autobiographical works, adventure writing and leadership material.

He has developed commercial partnerships in outdoor equipment and training. He is an in-demand keynote speaker who routinely addresses corporate boards, global brands and leadership forums. He has also served as Chief Scout, modernising an historic British institution and reinforcing youth engagement in practical skills and resilience.

The through line across these endeavours is consistent: credibility anchored in lived experience.

For veterans transitioning into civilian industries – whether finance, construction, tech or entrepreneurship – this principle matters. The marketplace rewards authenticity when it is paired with execution. Bear did not dilute his background, he leveraged it.

THE NEXT EVOLUTION

His latest major project, Wild Reckoning, signals a shift in tone and ambition.

While earlier television programmes focused heavily on 12

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physical survival, Wild Reckoning moves deeper into psychological terrain. It examines human decision-making under pressure, moral stress and the consequences of risk. The environment remains hostile – as viewers would expect – but the emphasis is increasingly on internal resilience rather than spectacle.

In operational terms, it mirrors a truth veterans know well: the hardest battles are rarely environmental. They are cognitive and emotional.

The series reframes survival for a modern audience. It is less about enduring the elements and more about what adversity exposes. Strip away comfort, remove certainty and character surfaces.

For veterans navigating transition, that theme will resonate. Civilian life may not involve extreme climates, but it brings financial risk, identity shifts and professional pressure.

The skillset required is familiar – composure, judgement and resilience.

LEADERSHIP BEYOND UNIFORM

One of the most instructive aspects of Bear’s civilian trajectory is how he has sustained authority outside military structure.

In service, leadership is underpinned by rank and appointment. In civilian life, authority is market-driven.

Influence must be earned repeatedly. Reputation is fragile.

Bear has maintained relevance for nearly two decades in a volatile media environment. That longevity is not accidental. It reflects disciplined brand management, calculated risk-taking and continual reinvention.

He has operated across sectors – entertainment, publishing, youth development and commercial partnerships – without fragmenting his core identity. The brand remains coherent: resilience, preparedness and courage under pressure.

For veterans building second careers, that coherence is instructive. Skills are transferable,

CIVILIAN LIFE MAY NOT INVOLVE EXTREME CLIMATES, BUT IT BRINGS FINANCIAL RISK, IDENTITY SHIFTS AND PROFESSIONAL PRESSURE. THE SKILLSET REQUIRED IS FAMILIAR — COMPOSURE, JUDGEMENT AND RESILIENCE.

but narrative alignment matters.

Whether entering corporate leadership, starting a trade business or moving into consultancy, clarity of positioning determines traction.

CIVVY REALITY

Transition is not a single event, it is an ongoing process. The loss of military structure can be destabilising. Camaraderie shifts.

Metrics of success change. The civilian workplace often lacks the immediacy and clarity of operational environments.

What Bear’s journey illustrates is not ease, but intentionality.

He did not drift into media.

He constructed opportunity from capability. He did not abandon his military foundation, he recontextualised it.

That distinction is critical.

Veterans frequently undervalue their operational experience because it feels routine to them. In reality, crisis management, adaptive planning, small-team leadership and disciplined execution are premium competencies in civilian sectors.

The challenge is translation – converting service capital into commercial capital.

WHY IT MATTERS

S L L Y

Britain’s veteran community is large, skilled and increasingly entrepreneurial. Former service personnel are launching businesses, entering politics, leading corporations and shaping communities.

Figures like Bear Grylls provide visible proof that post-service success need not be incremental or constrained.

Wild Reckoning reinforces the broader message; growth lies beyond comfort. Civilian life, like the field, rewards preparation and composure.

For readers of CIVVY, the takeaway is not about television ratings or summit records. It is about strategic reinvention.

Service teaches discipline, resilience and mission focus.

Civilian life demands application.

The uniform may come off. The edge does not have to. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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Image: Ruth Towell / Premier Christianity magazine

A debrief with a true civvy survivor 14

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Q& A

Which of your military attributes have proved most commercially valuable in civilian life – not just in survival situations, but in boardrooms, negotiations and long-term decision-making?

Looking back at my time in 21 SAS, the qualities I’ve tried to hold onto most are the ability to stay calm in a crisis and to be loyal and resilient in the storms. That ability to remain steady when others are flustered has proven so important in some high pressure moments and negotiations over the years. The media world can get ugly sometimes and staying calm and being loyal to those in my corner have been key to longevity and success.

Many veterans struggle less with capability and more with identity after leaving service. Did you experience any period of identity recalibration and, if so, how did you consciously rebuild your sense of purpose out of uniform?

One of the hardest times in my life was after I broke my back in three places in a parachute accident in Southern Africa. I spent months in and out of hospital and military rehabilitation at Headley Court. That time taught me the simple lesson that life is such a gift and that if we are lucky enough to survive a few narrow escapes, then we have a duty to try to get back up and grab life with both hands. Gratitude and humility are hard won lessons but the wild teaches them in spades over time.

The hardest and darkest times are often just before the dawn. Without that accident I don’t think I would have found the fire to go on to climb Everest or pursue so many other adventures and TV shows. It is the knocks and setbacks that build our resilience.

So yes, I experienced some identity recalibration – but it began in a hospital bed, immobilised, unsure of my future. Breaking my back forced me to detach identity from performance and anchor it instead to values: courage, faith, service, perseverance.

Your career has involved calculated risk at scale. How do you now differentiate between ‘operational courage’ and ‘civilian recklessness’?

Has your risk appetite evolved with age, family life and business responsibility?

Operational courage in the military is about serving the mission despite fear. That same spirit is so valuable in civvy life too. Over the years, there has been a significant amount of risk involved in my work, but those moments have taught me so much about what it really takes to stay alive. To not be afraid of taking calculated risks. To know when to hold and when to go. To commit despite the nerves.

Since having kids, I hope I’ve grown smarter with the risks and I have developed a good instinct of what is safe to do and what is not. I really try and listen to that voice. I also know that the wild and life rewards commitment and that once you commit to something then the way often opens before you.

In your experience, what is the most misunderstood trait veterans bring into civilian workplaces and how can former service personnel better translate that into something employers immediately recognise as being of value to them?

Maybe being too direct. Sometimes straight talking can be mistaken for bluntness or lack of diplomacy. In reality, it’s usually about efficiency and clarity. Soldiers are accustomed to removing ambiguity quickly. The key in transition is learning to maintain that clarity while maybe softening the delivery a little. It’s for sure an underlying strength, to have good decisive communication; and when refined, it becomes an enormous asset.

A number of veterans describe feeling that civilian environments lack the clarity and accountability of military life. How have you created highperformance cultures within your own teams that retain military sharpness without alienating civilian colleagues?

We hire and work with so many former soldiers because there is an inherent trust and team dynamic that is hard to replicate outside of the military world. I value that so much and the friendships.

As a civvy, there is maybe even more requirement for self-responsibility and keeping yourself accountable and up to speed. In the military, the mission is clear, roles are defined, ownership is non-negotiable – which is why a lot of veterans feel civilian life lacks the clarity and accountability that they’ve become accustomed to.

With my own teams, we try to keep that sharpness by making the objective simple and the responsibilities clear. Everyone knows the ‘mountain’ we’re climbing and what their role is. If something goes wrong, we fix it fast and learn from it – no blame games. But sharp doesn’t civvymagazine.co.uk

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mean harsh. You don’t need to bark to lead. Keep the clarity, keep the accountability, laugh at yourself and situations and above all lead with respect.

You’ve worked with global brands, broadcasters and high-profile personalities. In those environments, where status and ego can be significant, how important has quiet confidence – rather than overt authority – been to your leadership style?

Looking at today’s Armed Forces leavers – many of whom are in their late 20s or early 30s with strong operational experience – where do you think the greatest civilian opportunities lie for them over the next decade?

Opportunities for Armed Forces leavers are not just about entering a certain ‘sector’ – it’s about recognising the qualities they already possess and understanding where those qualities dominate. Modern civilian environments are increasingly volatile. Markets shift overnight.

Technology evolves monthly. Geopolitics disrupts supply chains. In that kind of world, organisations don’t just need qualifications – they need people who can operate in uncertain territories, which many veterans understand only too well. I’d always hire a veteran over a civvy – maybe that’s not very PC to say but it’s true. I know a veteran will be used to uncertainty and able to adapt to change and to tough moments. That matters in the modern world.

Quiet confidence is the goal of life always. The world is full of empty bravado and I think most veterans have a pretty good antenna for that stuff – what’s real and what’s not.

My experience of working with so many people at the top of their games, whether President Obama, Prime Minister Modi or Roger Federer, is that those at the pinnacle tend to have less ego than people might think.

They come on our Running Wild show not because they need or want the money or fame but because they MENTAL RESILIENCE want the experience that the wild can give them. The IS OFTEN FAR MORE empowerment. And the DEMANDING THAN quiet confidence that comes PHYSICAL ENDURANCE. with facing and overcoming hard stuff. I also notice how VETERANS FREQUENTLY they always love our team FACE QUIET INTERNAL and I’m proud of that. We have a crew that works so BATTLES DURING well because we try to leave TRANSITION, INCLUDING the egos behind – we work LOSS OF IDENTITY AND hard, we look after each other and we value kindness and UNCERTAINTY ABOUT humility over bravado and RELEVANCE. ambition.

Your new series, Wild Reckoning, appears to move beyond physical survival into psychological exposure. What parallels do you see between the mental resilience required in that format and the quieter battles veterans often face during transition?

Wild Reckoning is a show that aims to resolve deep personal rifts, including broken friendships, troubled family dynamics and couples facing life-changing decisions by removing participants from their everyday comforts. Mental resilience is often far more demanding than physical endurance. Veterans frequently face quiet internal battles during transition, including loss of identity and uncertainty about relevance. The parallels are strong. Both require honesty and courage. The wild is always such a great leveller and a true place to seek resolution and wisdom – sometimes our hearts have to get away from all the noise of everyday life to hear itself properly.

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If you were advising a veteran who feels under utilised in their current civilian role, what practical steps would you suggest to regain momentum without burning bridges?

If a veteran feels stuck in a civilian role, the first instinct might be to switch off. Frustration is natural, but disengagement quietly erodes reputation. Generally, if we deliver consistent, calm excellence, then that often shines through. When people see you deliver reliably, doors start to open. Momentum comes from raising the standard where you are, not from leaping before you’re ready.

You’ve built a globally recognised brand. For veterans considering entrepreneurship, how important is narrative ownership – shaping your own story rather than allowing others to define it?

In life if we allow others to define our story, we lose identity. It’s important to try to stand strong in the lifedefining moments. I often think we’re a bit like grapes: it’s only when we’re squeezed that we discover what we’re really made of. Finding that inner spirit during tough challenges reveals our character, builds resilience and shows the unique value that only you can bring.

Discipline is often cited as a military strength, yet civilian success can also require flexibility and emotional intelligence. How have you balanced

Image: Ruth Towell / Premier Christianity magazine

firmness of standards with adaptability in your post-service career?

In the military, everything is drilled and structured. Out in the civilian world, you quickly learn you need to be your own disciplinarian!

Service life fosters deep loyalty and tribe mentality. How have you maintained meaningful camaraderie in civilian life, and how important is that for long-term wellbeing and performance?

Our core crew who have worked alongside me for years in some of the toughest places on Earth are truly amazing and we pick those men and women very carefully. Our lives depend on each other almost every day. I always select crew on character before skills as skills can be learnt but character is harder. To have someone beside you who is kind, honest, hard working and who has your back is worth the world. As a team we always work hard, but at the end we will enjoy an evening out in some remote jungle village before heading home. That journey home is always special. Our crew have kind of grown up together, seen each other have families etc, and the power of those friendships is a huge part of why I do my job.

For veterans raising families while building second careers, how do you approach the tension between ambition and presence? Has your definition of success shifted over time?

I know all too well the difficult tussles of juggling work and family and being away a lot, especially as a dad.

It’s not easy, but it is about trying to make sure you know your reasons why and then really protecting the time at home when you are back. I have always tried to have clear priorities of family first. Trying to maintain a balance is key – we all have to earn a living but at the same time too much time spent away can harm everyone, and our children are only young once. It’s a dance that I don’t think is easy to master but my family know that when I am home I am all theirs. Sometimes I haven’t got this balance right. But any of my success has always been based on overcoming failure and getting back up again, and then being smarter! That’s the real key to success and I’ve been proud to have been able to dust myself off many times, learn, adapt and then go again. There is always a power to NGU: never give up.

Luckily my family have stuck with me and they are truly the great light in my life. I’m so proud of Shara and our three boys. Smarter and better than me in every way!

If you were stepping out of the Forces today, in 2026, with the benefit of everything you now know, what would your first 12 months look like strategically?

For those entering the civilian world, I guess it’s like reading a new map... same skills, different terrain. The

Left, Bear with his wife Shara

first stage isn’t about proving anything; it’s about learning the lay of the land, building the right connections and setting yourself up to climb steadily and smartly in the long run. Be adaptable, be willing to learn and try to follow your heart and what you really love. I know it sounds trite but it matters.

Finally, what does the word ‘civvy’ mean to you now? Does it represent compromise, opportunity or something else entirely?

The word ‘civvy’ is just a different kind of adventure.

The values still apply: discipline, loyalty, courage, service – those aren’t just military things, they’re human things. Civilian life isn’t easier or smaller, it’s just another mountain to climb and every mountain deserves the same respect. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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Always a little further There is a reason most profiles of Colin MacLachlan lead with the missions.

Over two decades in uniform he managed to be in the room for an unusual number of the late 20th and early 21st centuries’ most defining hostage situations – including a couple from the wrong side of the blindfold.

Operation Barras. The Stansted hijacking. Basra in 2004. The missions are well-documented and, if you want them in his own words, you will find them in The Pilgrim, the autobiography the Ministry of Defence spent the better part of a decade trying to keep out of print. This is not that interview...

C

olin joined the British Army at 15, served nine years in the Royal Scots and passed 22 SAS selection at the age of 23 – the youngest man to do so in two decades at the time. He spent roughly seven years in the Regiment before leaving in 2005 following a final tour of Iraq, during which he was taken hostage, beaten, stripped and subjected to a mock execution. He moved into close-protection work – Saudi Royal Family detail, A-list celebrity contracts, US news network protection – long enough to save the money to earn himself a first-class master’s from Edinburgh and an M.Litt (Master of Letters, Magister Litterarum) in Terrorism from St Andrews.

Since then, his life’s resume has been undeniably rich. Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins. Channel 5’s Secrets of the SAS. The Pilgrim. Co-founder of veteran and blue-light mental health charity Who Dares Cares. Co-founder of Stoic Events. Motioncapture and stunt work on Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Hood: Outlaws & Legends.

Ambassador for the Lee Rigby Foundation, Pilgrim Bandits and the NSPCC. A husband. A father of two.

What CIVVY wanted to know – and what most interviewers skip over – is the part that comes between the headlines. The PVR [premature voluntary release, for any long-standing civvies reading]. Being presented with a plumber’s CV as a blueprint for transition. The morning he was left sweeping out an empty hangar and asked to leave the Regiment. The thousand job applications in a year without a single interview. The voluntary unpaid project that became a national programme. The conversation on the back of a cigarette packet that became a charity.

He gave it to us straight.

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Was there ever a moment, early on in your career, when you came close to walking away from the Regiment?

Yes, and I know exactly where I was. I joined the Regiment at a notoriously bad time – it was during ‘the team’ phase, basically the counter-terrorism and ‘black kit’ rotation. I was left as the last man in the hangar to sweep up and lock up the armoury, and as I was leaving, the whiteboard just said ‘WED – PT/ CQB’, which didn’t have enough detail for me. So I went into the SSM’s office to ask what it actually meant in terms of timings, location and dress. After he told me, I asked to leave the Regiment as I wasn’t enjoying it. The guys just one Selection in front of me were giving me a hard time for the sake of it. He told me to give it at least two years – by then I would have a more rounded view of roles within the Regiment.

The rest is history.

You came back from Basra in 2004 and left the Regiment shortly after. How long was the gap between deciding you were done and walking out the gate?

I left the SAS in 2005, following on from my last tour of Iraq. I felt I was being put into senior roles but not given the support to carry out the job, which doesn’t often happen. I PVR’d and was out within six months.

A lot of people leave with a vague plan and a lump sum. What did your last six months in uniform look like?

I didn’t really have a plan. But when I felt I couldn’t

MY LAST FEW MONTHS WERE PRETTY MISERABLE. OUR SQUADRON WENT THROUGH A PERIOD WHERE IF YOU SIGNED OFF, YOU WERE KICKED OUT TO HQ SQUADRON – UNTIL THE RSM AND CO GOT THE SQUADRON HEAD SHED TOGETHER AND TOLD THEM THEY COULDN’T DO THAT.

trust the people above me to look out for my best interests and safety, I felt I had a decision to make.

My last few months were pretty miserable. Our squadron went through a period where if you signed off, you were kicked out to HQ Squadron – until the RSM and CO got the squadron head shed together and told them they couldn’t do that. I was supposed to have one last troop training exercise in Canada which was to be my farewell, and my head shed told me I wasn’t allowed to go. I was sent to the stores.

What did the Regiment do well in preparing you to leave and what did it get wrong?

It gives you some of the tools, in terms of being able to make a plan and the determination and willpower to see it through. But back when I left, it still had a lot to do to prepare people for civvy street. As an example, I was given a local Hereford plumber’s CV

and told to cut and paste accordingly, just filling in the main sections.

You went straight into close-protection work for the Saudi Royal Family and US networks. On paper it sounds like a soft landing. Was it?

Yes, I guess it was – in the sense that I was back working with the people from the squadron I’d worked with previously. I was just better paid and better supported.

Private security pays well but burns out fast. What made you decide it wasn’t the long game?

I always had a plan. In that sector, and particularly at that time, you couldn’t really stay in that highintensity role for too long – you were always rolling the dice. I just wanted to save up enough money to civvymagazine.co.uk

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Calum MacLeod – in 2016. How did the charity come into being?

Back then, I’d just done the first series of SAS: Who Dares Wins and my profile had been raised. A lot of people were struggling and reaching out, and I couldn’t get to them all or help everyone. Friends, colleagues and contacts were slipping through my fingers and I felt a bit helpless. I had lost my own brother to suicide and wanted to try to help. Cammy felt the same. As he would describe it, ‘on the back of a fag packet’ we drew up the initial plans for a community, which evolved into the registered charity, Who Dares Cares.

The charity’s ‘Walk, Talk and Brew’ model is deliberately low-key – no clinical setting, no forms.

Why does that format work for the men and women you’re trying to reach when more formal services often don’t?

put myself through university, and once I thought I had enough, I left.

You self-funded a degree at Edinburgh and a Master’s at St Andrews – an unusual path for a former NCO. What did it take to get through the door, and how did you find the academic culture once you were there?

I was rejected from university, then from colleges, and managed to fight my way through interviews to get into college, and then on to university. Once there [The University of Edinburgh], I nearly failed my first paper and had to learn how to write an essay properly – to learn ‘their way’ of answering questions, the structure, the marking criteria. Once I did that, it was just about resilience and outworking the competition. By the time I left Edinburgh, I wasn’t only Magna Cum Laude – First of the Firsts – I was the only student to that date to have won all three of the University’s academic awards.

What would you say to other 30-something veterans who left school at 16, have resettlement options and are privately wondering whether university is for people like them?

Do your research and make sure a degree is actually required for the role you’re aiming at, and know how you’re going to fund your way through it. I was poor all the way through uni and had children during it, which made the financial burden a real strain. Pick a subject you’re really interested in and curious about because that’s what makes you do the hard yards when you need to study.

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Quite often there’s a lot of ‘politics’. Questions, forms, waiting times, boxes you need to tick. There are even ways in which charities can’t help because you may have more than one ‘issue’ or challenge going on. We felt we didn’t want to exclude people for ridiculous reasons. We wanted to be fairly open and transparent, and we didn’t want any salaries or ‘hidden costs or expenses’, which some charities do.

Special Forces culture has a particular relationship with admitting weakness. How did you bypass the bit of you that didn’t want to ask for help and what would you say to a reader who recognises themselves in that sentence?

I think the very fact we class it as ‘weakness’ doesn’t help. Feeling stress about extraordinary situations and circumstances makes us human – it’s actually a very normal thing. I went along to Veterans First Point and told them I was ‘fine’, apart from having sleep issues, hyper-vigilance, studying people, sitting with my back to entrances and making plans in my head for improvised weapons and escape routes. They told me that was actually a symptom of complex PTSD. I said, “it can’t be, most of my mates are the same”.

They said, “yes, that’s because all your mates also have PTSD”. Sometimes we compare ourselves to our immediate surroundings and our peers, and we make that ‘normal’.

What does Who Dares Cares need from CIVVY readers right now – how can veterans support you?

In many ways. Signposting, spreading the message, sharing our posts, volunteering. Giving your time is the biggest thing you can donate. Donate money. Or just come along to one of our events.

On any given month you might be filming, speaking at a corporate gig, running a Stoic Events team-building day, working on a charity

project or doing motion capture for a video game.

Is that a deliberate strategy or did you stumble into it?

No, I didn’t mean it but subconsciously I much prefer having a very diverse work schedule. I don’t think I’m cut out to be an office-based, nine-to-five guy.

A lot of veterans have one civilian job and the nagging sense they should have more going on.

What’s the honest pitch for the portfolio approach?

I think whether we have one job or several, we all need ‘something else’. Whether that’s a sport, a hobby, a pastime, a second part-time job or something that stimulates us outside our normal working environment.

Stoic Events leans on Stoic philosophy – Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, the lot. How did a Royal Scots lad end up reading the Stoics, and what do they actually give you that the Army didn’t?

I think the Army did give me some of it. But it’s important to be able to endure – or ‘suffer’ – and to see the good in being able to do that. To be successful anywhere, you need to be able to go through difficult times, weather the storm and come through the other side. Some of our biggest achievements in life have been our biggest struggles, and that’s worth fighting for. I fear it’s a skill we’re slowly losing through the generations.

The Pilgrim was famously the book the Ministry of Defence tried to ban. Without re-litigating the legal case, what did that decade of pushback do to you, and was there a point where you were ready to walk away from the project?

No, I was never going to walk away – and I guess that underpins the resilience side of things. When I first wrote down my autobiography, which is only the first half of my life, I never meant to publish it.

I just put it aside. It was only many years later, when the show [SAS: Who Dares Wins] had aired and there seemed to be an appetite for it, that I decided to publish. Then, over the subsequent years, personnel changed, the line in the sand changed for what you could and couldn’t say, and it went back and forth quite a lot.

The book begins with a scene from what was a very troubled childhood, not service. Why did you make that call and have you had feedback from others who think the personal stuff doesn’t belong in a soldier’s memoir?

No, on the contrary. I’ve been blown away by people reaching out in support, saying they’d been through similar circumstances. Which probably throws up a different question of how these people end up surviving and thriving in a military environment.

I deliberately like to throw the reader off balance early and get the hook. When you first start reading The Pilgrim you automatically assume it’s either an interrogation part of Selection or the real capture in the Middle East. That’s deliberate.

You’re a father of two. What part of the transition did your family carry that you didn’t see at the time and what would you do differently with hindsight?

I wasn’t married at the time of my service, and I’m not sure that if I had been, it would have survived my period in the Regiment – many marriages don’t.

Transitioning was a strain in itself and trying to get through university made it a real struggle. But that made the success even sweeter.

When you put it all next to each other – the SAS years, the security work, the broadcasting, the charity – what are you most proud of?

My top three are these. My children. Having had the childhood I did, I recognise the importance of a decent start in life to give you the trajectory of your path – and my children are a real credit to themselves.

Passing Selection. I probably didn’t realise it at the time, but it was a major crossroads in my journey and shaped a lot of what came afterwards. I just thought it was another fairly difficult military course I had passed – albeit with a six per cent pass rate.

And finally, this is something not many people know. During my period struggling through uni, I applied for over a thousand jobs in the course of a year without a single interview. I feared I wasn’t going to find my way in life. I applied for a voluntary, unpaid role as a project worker and ended up teaching kids in troubled areas and schools about conflict resolution. It grew and grew until it was taken over by The Prince’s Trust and run throughout the UK as part of the XL Programme. It’s the third thing I’m most proud of today, and it came at a time when I was at an all-time low. The kids saved me.

A 24-year-old reads CIVVY, is two years from the end of their service, and asks you for one piece of advice. What is it, and what ‘words of wisdom’ would you refrain from sharing because you know they’ll already have heard them?

When your future is in your hands and not the military’s, it can be a scary thing, so think of the things that really light a fire under you – the things that inspire you to get up in the morning and be better tomorrow than you were today. Every day.

Then go and chase it. That’s when you’ll go the extra mile and it won’t seem like a job.

The advice I wouldn’t give is “think of where you want to be in ten years”. Who knows the answer to that? When did I ever end up down the path I thought I would? Make your own path, one step and one day at a time. Always a little further. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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MILITARY GAINS

SHE

D E T S U R T THE WAIT

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MILITARY GAINS

IMAGE: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

Liz McConaghy spent 17 years crewing Chinooks but her hardest mission came out of uniform.

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‘FIND WHAT YOU LOVE here is a particular sound that stops Liz McConaghy in her tracks. Twin rotors, AND GET PAID TO DO IT’ slightly out of phase, accompanied by the slap of air over Hampshire rooftops. She lives near enough to military bases that We meet over Zoom on a Thursday afternoon. She has Chinooks are often a feature of her daily soundtrack, just come off a call with a chap doing an oral-history yet the aviation alarm call still draws her to the window, archive of the Chinook Force – “he was just telling me phone in hand, to film the scene like a tourist stealing one more story…” – and apologises for being late. their first glance.

This particular Thursday is busier than Liz would “My mates take the mickey,” she says, laughing. “They like. The keynote diary is the day job now – corporate go, ‘you served on it for 17 years, get a grip’.” conferences, after-dinner gigs, schools, the occasional She will not get a grip. She does not want to. The veterans’ event – but she tries to limit the number of tandem-rotor helicopter represents a complicated love engagements to four or five a month. “I was finding it affair for the longest-serving female crewmember in quite hard to keep my emotions in check if I did more the history of the Chinook Force – 17½ years on the than that,” she confides. “It’s my story. It still costs me airframe, more than 3,000 flying hours, ten tours of something to tell it.”

Afghanistan, two of Iraq – and the relationship did not The emotional investment is, however, a necessary end on her terms. evil given that the personal training credential on her Her neck went, ironically CV is the one that is most in the relatively sedentary regularly exercised. “They surrounds of the Falklands, always say, find what you THE TANDEM-ROTOR after years of carrying a love, and then get paid to HELICOPTER REPRESENTS A helmet and night-vision do it. Well, I don’t get paid COMPLICATED LOVE AFFAIR goggles into hostile much to spin.”

FOR THE LONGEST-SERVING darkness. The medics A project management FEMALE CREWMEMBER IN THE grounded her. Then the qualification attained post HISTORY OF THE CHINOOK powers that be released her. service also features on her FORCE – 17½ YEARS ON THE She was 37 and her life plan resume but has, to date, had been torn apart. only been deployed once.

AIRFRAME, MORE THAN 3,000 “I was in for life,” she “A lot of veterans pick FLYING HOURS, TEN TOURS OF told CIVVY. “I joined project management AFGHANISTAN, TWO OF IRAQ on my 19th birthday, the because the planning side – AND THE RELATIONSHIP DID week after 9/11. My whole of military life translates NOT END ON HER TERMS. career path – it just led to well,” Liz says while telling this incredibly busy, diverse CIVVY how it led her 17 years. to working at a drone “I imagined what the rest of it was going to look like. company moving chemotherapy drugs around the I had wanted to make warrant officer. The aircrew term countryside – a role she loved. “That for me was a huge for that is master aircrewman and I used to joke ‘does amount of purpose. We were genuinely helping people.” that mean I get to be a mistress aircrewman?’. That’s Then Russia invaded Ukraine (again), and the firm’s where I saw it going. And then it was all snatched away mission set shifted. from me.”

“We weren’t using drones for medical purposes What followed she now calls life number two. The anymore.” first few months were a strange honeymoon – a bungee When asked if that put her off, she does not flinch. swing away from service made with the conviction that “Yeah. Ironically, I don’t shy away from war. I’ve been an exciting second chapter lay ahead. to war myself plenty of times. But when I was in a Then a year in, the longing for her former military war zone, we were there helping people. Recovering career began. Then a coronavirus-enforced lockdown. bodies. Moving people around. We weren’t an offensive Then insomnia. Then, in August 2020, an overdose weapon like an Apache. We were a defensive aircraft with serious enough to put her in intensive care for two days. defensive weapons fitted. It comes down to what drives Five years on, her first book – Chinook Crew ‘Chick’ you inside, and I very much like to help people. So yeah, – is a bestseller and she is currently editing a second it probably did put me off somewhat.” release. She is one of the most in-demand veteran keynote speakers in the country and hosts the Northern ‘NINE-TO-FIVE WOULD KILL ME’ Irish Veterans Awards every year. And she teaches spin classes on the side. Liz is, by any reasonable measure, thriving but is the first to confess it has not been a Ask Liz if she could ever go back to a normal nine-tostraight line. five and the answer is similarly immediate. “It would 24

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kill me,” she says. “I know I can cut my own shape and mould my weeks as I want them to look. Most people who leave the military struggle with that nine-to-five – because, let’s be honest, the military isn’t a nine-to-five.

No two weeks look the same. That’s probably what drew us to the job in the first place.”

She is alert to a particular failure mode in the veteran community and has seen evidence of it in her own family. Her older brother, who sparked her interest in the forces, left the Army as a warrant officer and very nearly took a job fixing coffee machines.

“I was like, ‘are you kidding me? You’ve got an incredible skill set, and you’re going to fix coffee machines?’. We underestimate ourselves because we’ve been in such a bubble. People always say those in the military are really worldly wise – you’ve travelled the world, you’ve been to war. The reality is we’re not. We live in a little bubble for most of our careers. The med centre is down the road. You don’t have to find a GP. You stay within your own periphery. There’s always another trade to fill the gap.”

Outside the wire, the gaps are yours to fill.

“Most of us just want to stay in our lane,” she says.

“We’re scared of the change. There’s a great saying – fortune favours the chameleon. If you can embrace the change, embrace the technology, you’ll always do well.

That’s why so many of us leave and underestimate our ability. It takes a couple of years to find your feet.”

A BUNGEE, THEN A BRICK WALL The first year out was the bungee – that pinging swing away from service, all the freedom and none of the fallout. The second year was the brick wall.

“I started to really miss the military,” she says. “I missed the bond. I missed that sense of purpose. Most of us who join, we don’t do it for the money or the lifestyle. We do it because there’s something inside us when we’re young that wants to make a difference. That seed is still there when you take the uniform off. So, unless you find a job that fulfils that purpose again, you’re going to struggle.”

For Liz, that struggle came during a Covid-enforced lockdown and an extended spell of insomnia.

“You know what you’re like after one bad night’s sleep,” she says. “Imagine the cumulative effect of weeks. I’d put my head on the pillow and I’d be running through weapon-stoppage drills. Really random thoughts. Things I never had to revisit ever again just bouncing around my brain.”

On the night of her overdose Liz was awake at four in the morning. She got her laptop back out and did the thing she had spent ten years carefully not doing. She started looking up the soldiers who had died in the back of her aircraft in Afghanistan.

“It’s the one thing we hadn’t really done when we were doing the job on MERT [the Medical Emergency

Response Team charged with flying injured personnel back to Camp Bastion]. You couldn’t over-humanise them. They were very precious pieces of freight. That was the term I used. Don’t think about who’s in the body bag, just get the body bag back to Bastion. And here I was, ten years later, looking them all up. Humanising them. Finding their backstories. Fathers, brothers, sons.

One of the chaps had proposed to his fiancée before he deployed and didn’t make it back. That was the start of the big slide.”

She took an overdose, made a phone call to the emergency services she has no recollection of and woke up two days later in an intensive care unit on an intubation machine. “Something inside me still wanted to fight,” she says – the only line about that night she has rehearsed.

Liz’s next words, while not prepped, are those she wants other veterans to heed.

“The darkest moments of your life can lead to the brightest times on the other side. But you’ve got to trust the wait. Sometimes you can feel like you’re in a dark room searching for the light switch. The light switch is still there. It will come on. You just have to take time to find it. And the people around you can help you do that.”

‘THE UNIFORM DOESN’T DEFINE YOU’ Asking for help, Liz says, was the bit she could not do.

“I never wanted to be a burden. It’s a military thing. It’s probably a human thing. It might be a female thing too.

We don’t want to ask because we’ll be seen as weak. But in the military, we’re bred from day one – weakness is failure. You have to pull your weight. Any weakness is frowned upon. civvymagazine.co.uk

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“But asking for help is not weakness. It’s the bravest thing you can do. I really wish I’d had the balls to ask.

All of that pressure I put on myself – nobody else made me feel like a burden. It came from inside.”

What Liz came to understand, slowly, in counselling and on the other side of the darkest of days, is the thing she now opens almost every keynote with. “For my whole career, I thought the uniform defined me. When I wasn’t wearing it, I felt invisible. It’s taken me a long time to realise that the uniform doesn’t define you. You define the uniform. Until you put it on, it’s a set of clothes on a shelf in stores. You’re the one that breathes the life into it – the fun, the humour, the banter, the skill set. That’s all from you and you can take that into the next role, wherever you go.”

‘I LEFT A PIECE OF ME IN HELMAND’ The fall of Kabul came almost exactly a year after the overdose. Liz woke up on successive mornings and watched reports on the news of further districts she knew intimately – places like Lashkar Gah, where her aircraft had flown in and out of 17 times a day – being retaken by the Taliban.

“I was struggling to process it,” she says. “Watching those pictures of the Afghans who couldn’t get out. It left

a huge mark on me emotionally. But when I’m able to look back now, it would be very easy to focus on the loss.

The 457. The limbs. The locals caught in the crossfire. If you focus on negative things, you only ever find negative thought patterns. So, I focus on the wins. If we got one girl an education, one girl who grew up and had a voice and went to university, that’s a win. If we let one little boy fly a kite on a street the Taliban wouldn’t let him fly it on, and made a friendship that has stood the test of time, that’s a win.

“Yes, some soldiers died in the back of the aircraft. But many of them survived. Some have gone on to climb Everest. Row the Atlantic. Hold Guinness World Records.

Become authors. They simply wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t survived in the back of our aircraft, which was a mobile operating theatre at the time.”

Liz did not, in the immediate years after she left service, surround herself with anything Chinook-related.

“I couldn’t wait to cut the bungee,” she says. “You could’ve walked into my flat and never known I’d been in the Royal Air Force.”

Now there is a Chinook in every room. A picture, a model, something pinned to a board.

“That says a lot about healing. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not in any more. Anger is a horrible emotion to carry. It’s like carrying a bag of rocks – it only gets heavier. So, I look back with fond memories instead.”

A MOTHER’S MUTED PRIDE While service took Liz to far flung locations, home is still very much Northern Ireland and a place she gets back to at least once a year, usually to host the Northern Irish Veterans Awards in Belfast – “a great scheme to be involved with” and one replicated in England, Scotland and Wales.

The perception of forces life in Ireland has shifted in her lifetime, but not as far as people on this side of the Irish Sea might assume. “When I joined in 2001, things were getting better, but it was still very much ‘don’ttalk-about-it’. My brother was Army. My mum and dad could very proudly tell people I was in the Air Force, but they would never tell anyone my brother was Army.

People see a soldier in uniform on the street with a rifle and they think Army. Ironically, I spent most of my career in the RAF wearing combats and MTP [MultiTerrain Pattern]. I deployed to war probably more than my brother did but I was never seen as a soldier.

“That’s a very strange, very naive perception. And it means a lot of Northern Irish veterans really struggle, because they can’t be quite so vocal about their time in service. They struggle with that identity, and they struggle taking that service life into civilian roles. We in England and Scotland take it for granted that we can quite happily go into an interview and talk about our time in the forces. People from Northern Ireland, until fairly recently, couldn’t do that.”

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A FOREWORD, NOT THE MAIN EVENT

– you have to stop at the gate, get a car pass, be escorted on. You bail out of the club very quickly.

“I don’t think anyone in that room is thanked for their service. We shy away from being thanked the way the Americans do. But that’s different from acknowledgement. It would be nice, when you leave, to be invited back to your last unit six months later. Just a check-in. Just to say, ‘I haven’t forgotten you, you’re still part of the family, the door’s open if you need us’.”

Liz has always insisted she was born to be a Chinook crewman – “I’ve said it for years, Chinook through and through” – but a former colleague recently presented her with an alternative theory.

“He said ‘listen, I don’t think that’s what you were put on this planet to do, I think that was a prequel for what you’re doing now’. And every day I get someone reaching out to me who’s read the book or heard a podcast or read an interview, and they tell me ‘WILL IT KILL YOU OR something I said about mental health really resonated.

MAKE YOU PREGNANT?’ They either look within themselves and reach out for help or they just realise they’re not broken. They’re not bent out of shape. They’re not alone. Other people feel CIVVY ends our conversation with Liz on quick-fire. the same way.”

The smell that takes her back to Bastion is the dry, arid, Liz’s next book – still in the early editing stage but desert air at the door of a TriStar at three in the morning, slated for release in spring 2027 – is built around sage with the inevitable note of Portaloo. The song she advice given to her by her mother and a line she has remembers most from a mission was Ride of the Valkyries, quoted for 40-plus years. piped over the intercom on the run-in to a base in Iraq “Everything in life is either a pleasure or an experience – “it was Apocalypse Now, it was great”. The book she and what you don’t enjoy, recommends most often that you will learn from. You isn’t hers is Mandy Hickson’s might not see the lesson at An Officer, Not a Gentleman – EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS the time, but there is a lesson penned by an ex-RAF fast-jet EITHER A PLEASURE OR AN somewhere.” pilot, the only female of her EXPERIENCE AND WHAT Each chapter of the as yet generation in the role (“she YOU DON’T ENJOY, YOU WILL unnamed manuscript will wasn’t allowed to order a pint LEARN FROM. YOU MIGHT end with a lesson, but the of beer in the officers’ mess.

NOT SEE THE LESSON AT Chinook ‘chick’-turnedOnly allowed a half. She used THE TIME, BUT THERE IS A author stresses it will “not to order two.”).

LESSON SOMEWHERE. be a preachy book” and The best piece of kit she more a case of “this is what I still uses is her MTP travel learned, have a contemplate”. pillow, bought in the PX in Iraq, that goes everywhere with her. And the trusty Leatherman – of which she has six, dotted around the TAKE THE STABILISERS OFF SLOWLY house (“Chinook treasure. People used to drop them in the back of the aircraft. We’d find them at the end of a tasking day. If no-one came back for them in a month, When asked what knowledge she would share if we kept them.”). granted an audience with the Minister for Veterans, Liz And the thing about civvy life that still makes her highlights two topics in need of thorough examination laugh four years in? and extensive revision. “[Civvies] sweat the small stuff. They lack perspective.

The first is funding.

My favourite saying in the military was ‘it won’t kill you “Mental health services [are] close to my heart. The and it can’t make you pregnant’. Probably not PC any waiting list at the charities is 12 weeks. The civilian more, but I still use it. I look at something and go, will world is 14 and rising. We’re talking 18 months to this kill me? Will this make me pregnant? No? Then give two years for some treatment. There needs to be more it a go.” funding, and the charities need bolstering. It shouldn’t Liz McConaghy was supposed to be a member of a be falling on charities to look after veterans’ mental Chinook crew. Then her body decided she wasn’t. Then health. If you give your life to service, you should be her mind very nearly decided she wasn’t going to be looked after for life.” anything at all. And then – because of, not in spite of, all The second concerns the way the military releases of that – she became the person she was always going to people from its embrace. be. The one at the front of the room. The one who tells “You’re in the club on the Friday. You hand your ID in. They chop the corners off it in front of you. You hand the story. The one who, slide by slide, makes a roomful of strangers put their phones down and listen. your appointment over. It’s a very hard stop at the edge.

“Something inside me still wanted to fight,” she says.

If you want to go back on the Monday to see your mates The understatement of the year. C – on the same camp you’ve been on for the last 17 years civvymagazine.co.uk

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LAUGHING MATTER The self-styled ‘King of Content’ on alcoholism and the armed forces

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ne of John Robins’ first proper drinks the centuries-old Royal Navy tradition of daily was in ‘uniform’ – a stubby of beer rum rations to messy mess dinners, spirits-fuelled given to him by a Scout leader during initiations and naked bars, drinking has – historically, the final throes of a summer camp in at least – been part of defence’s DNA. 1995. The 250ml of warm continentalAs recently as 2020, alcohol misuse was more style lager – drunk intentionally alone, sat on a prevalent among the armed forces community small hill 500 yards away from his 13-year-old peers than the general population and, consequently, you – proved a turning point in his relationship with don’t need to do a lot of digging to discover there alcohol, a precursor for “countless tens of thousands are a vast number of veterans fighting addiction. of drinks”, but did little to whet the sixers’ appetite John’s own battle with alcoholism is also now very for any parades and inspections beyond his days with public knowledge given it was the focus of his 2024 the 1st Thornbury Mohawks. nationwide tour, Howl, and the subject of his new Far from it, in fact. Post graduation, armed with Sunday Times best-selling memoir Thirst: Twelve an English Literature degree from Oxford University, Drinks That Changed My Life.

John was far more likely to have been heard reciting The Edinburgh Comedy Award winner’s assault Queen stadium anthems than swearing allegiance on the literary charts, best summed up by his close to ‘Queen and country’, and the critically acclaimed friend, fellow comedian Lou Sanders, as “the funniest stand-up comedian and book ever written about award-winning broadcaster wanting to drink yourself insists a career in the armed to death”, charts more than I DON’T LIKE BEING IN forces has never been on the 10,000 days of drinking CLOSE QUARTERS WITH cards since.

– from John’s earliest OTHER PEOPLE – I’VE LIVED “Absolutely not – I cannot experiences to his last drink ALONE FOR 10 YEARS – think of anything I would be in 2022 – and the journey less suited to, unless it was into sobriety that followed.

AND THAT’S A BIG FEATURE some kind of administrative “I guess I wanted to OF THE ARMED FORCES, role,” the radio presenter and explore what alcohol means YOU’RE ‘HUGGER MUGGER’ podcaster told CIVVY. “I and why, what it was doing WITH YOUR COMPATRIOTS. don’t really like doing things for me and what it was doing I don’t want to do and I’m to me,” the debut author guessing a life in the services is an awful lot of doing shared, explaining his motivation for writing Thirst’s things you don’t necessarily want to do, but have to warts-and-all analysis of alcohol addiction. “I was do. I also don’t like being in close quarters with other trying to make sense of it, I suppose. A lot of stuff I’d people – I’ve lived alone for 10 years – and that’s a big read about alcoholism was ‘I drank a lot, these bad feature of the armed forces, you’re ‘hugger mugger’ things happened, so I stopped and now life’s good’, with your compatriots.” and that wasn’t really my experience. I mean, I drank a lot and bad things happened, but I stopped and life AT THE DOUBLE was hard. So, writing was a way of working out why living without alcohol was difficult and why living While a deep dislike of having your personal space with alcohol was sometimes easier.” invaded is clearly incompatible with the realities of Although the reasons why some people drink to deploying on a ship, being strapped into a cockpit excess can be complex, John’s mission for his book is or spending hours on end in the hull of a tank, the relatively simple.

Taskmaster champion does have at least one, albeit “I guess one thing I would like is that the undesirable, character trait in common with many of information I didn’t have about what alcoholism is, is those who have stood, slept and scrapped shoulder-to- available, because I only learned what an alcoholic was shoulder – a thirst for booze. after the first time I’d said I was an alcoholic.

Care to admit it or not, the UK military has an “If you struggle to moderate, if you struggle to uneasy track record when it comes to alcohol. From control the amount you drink when you take a drink civvymagazine.co.uk

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of alcohol, and you struggle to abstain from alcohol for any significant length of time when left to your own devices, and without alcohol you feel you have some kind of spiritual malaise, then that’s what an alcoholic is.

“I believed it was someone who drank whiskey in the morning, but I don’t like whiskey, so that was me safe, as far as I thought.”

One thing Thirst is not, is a search for blame. When it comes to taking responsibility for his illness, John is clear the buck stops firmly with the one holding the beer or, as was often the case for him, the one doing a bad job of nursing a pint of rum and coke. He does, however, believe that certain environments and cultures can exacerbate underlying issues, suggesting that the link between alcoholism and the armed forces is no great mystery.

Show. “I’ve heard about what happens in Cyprus after people come back from tours. They go fucking mad for a month, or a week, or two weeks, and they have undercover psychologists looking for the ones on the beach that are a bit twitchy. That’s not care.

“So, the first thing you do is in areas you are creating problems, stop creating problems. You’ve got to give people other options. You’ve got to have provisions for mental health support. You’ve got to have provisions for PTSD therapy. You’ve got to have provisions for housing, returning to work and how to handle relationships.

“How on earth does someone who’s just come off a tour in Afghanistan, in 24 hours go back to sitting in a living room with their partner and kids? That is unthinkable to me that anyone is expected to do that and function normally.

“If you are providing all the tools to deal with difficult things, then that’s BAD TACTICS enormous. When you come back from a tour it should be “I’ve done Army gigs and AS A CULTURE WE USE a case of ‘what happened?’, my experience was the ALCOHOL IN A VERY ‘what did you see?’, ‘how are Army used alcohol as a way UNHEALTHY WAY. AND you feeling?’, ‘how are you of decompressing people ALCOHOL CAN BE GREAT. sleeping?’, ‘how are you feeling from trauma, and that’s an ALCOHOL CAN REALLY about seeing your family?’. incredibly dangerous thing MAKE LIFE FEEL BETTER Then, ‘how was it with your to do. You’re saying ‘right mates?’, ‘did you lean into lads, it’s been a hard tour, we SOMETIMES, BUT IT IS NOT alcohol?’, ‘are you having any know you’ve seen some awful A TACTIC FOR MANAGING intrusive thoughts?’. And for stuff, you’ve done some really YOUR EMOTIONAL PAIN. some people the response difficult stuff, go and get might be ‘do you know what, completely hammered’. What this is the job, I know the job, I’m okay’. But some you’re saying to very young, impressionable men is the people might go ‘I’ve been shit-faced since I got home way to deal with trauma is to get hammered and then we let them go back home with that message – the way and I don’t know what to say to my wife’ and ‘I don’t to deal with problems in your relationship, or problems want to work, I don’t want to leave the house, I just want to go back to be with my buddies because they’re with your job, or an argument in a pub is to get the only people who know what it’s like’. hammered and see what happens. That’s a disaster.

“Everyone’s different, but the first thing is not “As a culture, we use alcohol in a very unhealthy way. making things worse, and the second thing is trying to And alcohol can be great. Alcohol can really make life feel better sometimes, but it is not a tactic for managing make things better.” your emotional pain.”

Although noting there is no silver bullet or magical COLLATERAL DAMAGE hangover cure that can be introduced to help those in command support their current and past subordinates, There was no such flak targeted at those watching a John insists more can and should be done. loved one tussle with alcoholism.

“They shouldn’t be encouraging them,” insisted the “You can’t stop someone drinking and you can’t presenter of the mental health podcast How Do You make someone drink – it’s not your fault,” he asserted.

Cope? and co-star of The Elis James and John Robins “You can’t control it, you didn’t cause it, you can’t cure 30

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Image: © Idil Sukan

it and that’s why it’s such a horrible disease. People don’t stop because they’re being nagged, people don’t stop because they’re being given ultimatums, people don’t stop because the lives of those around them are becoming more and more difficult. People stop when they get to a point where the pain of drinking outweighs the pain of not drinking. And for some people, that point is death.

“However, you can point them in the direction of support and you can support yourself, which I would say is a really important thing.

“If someone in your family or friendship group is struggling with addiction, support yourself – there are resources for you too; for families of alcoholics, for children of alcoholics, for those living with alcoholism in their life.

“You do not have to put up with any behaviour that is unacceptable – that’s a golden rule. You do not have to make your life worse so that someone else can ruin their own. It’s perfectly possible to love someone and wish to the world that they could get better, but go ‘if you can’t do it for yourself, I can’t stick around to watch this unfold’.”

John considers himself extremely fortunate that so many of those he cares for ignored such advice during his three-decade war with alcohol abuse and that he has friends he can continue to turn to in moments of vulnerability. A luxury he knows not everyone has.

“I’ve spoken to ex-Forces people, and they loved the camaraderie and miss it like hell, but [active duty] is not a place where they were sharing their deepest, darkest fears and secrets.

Because I’m not sure I want that guy next to me… do I want the guy sobbing in charge of whether I live or die? It’s probably not appropriate to be emotionally vulnerable in moments of high pressure like a combat or training situation.

“I’m lucky in that I can call up a friend and say I’m having an absolute nightmare day. For me, a buddy, a comrade, is someone who walks with me whether I am putting on a brave face or not. It’s not someone I pretend to be a certain person with.”

Despite his protestations of not being a good fit for the military, and having a haul of comedy and broadcasting awards to testify his talents are better suited to the stage and microphone, John’s attributes are not as alien to the armed forces as he perhaps thinks. Beating an addiction, after all, takes fortitude shown only by a select few. C

Multifaceted: John Robins is a criticallyacclaimed and award-winning stand-up comedian, broadcaster and presenter. He is also an alcoholic. His book, Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life, is out now.

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The other side

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of service Main image: Residential buildings in Borodianka, Ukraine carry the scars of Russia’s invasion Right: Worth fighting for... Luka, Evgenia and Illya – a family threatened by war

Image: Александр Микрюков

Been there, got the tour T-shirt... but how much thought have you given to the experiences of those who stood behind the uniform when you deployed, the bombs dropped and bullets flew?

Evgenia Sekirina – ‘the wife of’ a Ukrainian drone pilot – shared some of the hardships of the home front with CIVVY...

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Evgenia’s husband Illya Sekirin had it all to lose – he was the CEO and owner of a successful tech company and lived in a spacious apartment in one of Kyiv’s best neighbourhoods with his then fiancée. However, despite his charmed existence and – as a naturalised Canadian citizen – being under no obligation to fight, he put his affairs in order and joined the defence of Ukraine. Trained as a drone operator, he served on the war’s frontlines and, as his experience and expertise grew, became an unofficial adviser to several members of the Stavka [Ukrainian High Command], a body chaired by President Volodymyr Zelensky. He advised on multiple operations; on drone strategy and tactics; and authored a paper that informed Zelensky’s decision to create Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. civvymagazine.co.uk

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BY EVGENIA SEKIRINA

D

id I ever imagine I would become the wife of a soldier?

Not for a moment. And yet, that is who I became.

War does not arrive politely. It comes like a wild, starving beast, tearing you out of an ordinary life and stripping away everything familiar. Sometimes it takes away everything – and everyone – you love most.

When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, our first thoughts were instinctive rather than philosophical.

Where do we go? How do we survive?

These are the questions that surface when certainty disappears and you have no idea how far the enemy will go.

We were fortunate. My mother lived in central Ukraine, an area that was comparatively calm in those first weeks.

Several weeks into the invasion, the My husband and I, his mother, and situation remained unchanged, and I saw our two cats took shelter there. Each growing unrest in his eyes. Waiting was morning I woke up hoping to read the unbearable for him. When he told me he same impossible headline: ‘War is over’. was returning to Kyiv, it felt as though The reality of war simply refused to settle the ground disappeared beneath my feet. in my mind.

Fear, despair, helplessness – these But the days passed, and with them, emotions arrived all at once. My life, more and more people across the country once again, was moving in a direction I stepped forward to defend their homes. could not control.

I understood – long People around me before he said it expected pride, but I UNDERSTOOD — out loud – that it pride came much LONG BEFORE HE was only a matter later. At first, my of time before my feelings were tangled SAID IT OUT LOUD husband would with anger, fear and — THAT IT WAS make his choice. tears – not because I ONLY A MATTER OF He had always lacked understanding, TIME BEFORE MY been interested in but because war had military history, already exhausted all HUSBAND WOULD closely followed of us. It invaded our MAKE HIS CHOICE. global politics and minds daily with its acted decisively brutal reality, draining when he believed something mattered. emotional and physical strength. We Once he made up his mind, persuasion were all broken in our own way by what was futile. This was his moment to stand was happening in our country – on the up for what he believed in, to contribute same streets where, not long before, his skills and knowledge – even though, we had walked freely and planned our as a Canadian citizen of Ukrainian futures. In moments like these, you origin, he faced significant obstacles to want to protect the one thing that still joining the Ukrainian armed forces as he feels real: your family, your hope for was deemed a foreign national. tomorrow. The instinct is simple: stay 34

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together, do not separate. And yet, I also knew this was his right. His decision. I had no power to change it.

Before the war, we lived in the very heart of Kyiv – not only geographically, but emotionally. Our life followed a rhythm we cherished: theatre evenings, opera performances, long walks through the city, observing people, architecture and atmosphere. We loved hosting friends, going to the cinema, filling our home with conversation and laughter.

My husband, Illya, worked from home in the IT sector. I, at the time, was preparing for what I believed would be the most important chapter of my life – motherhood. I was undergoing medical treatment to improve my chances of becoming pregnant, while also learning to drive and sitting my tests, as if quietly preparing myself for change.

Everything felt logical, achievable, close. A family. A home. A future that seemed to be waiting just beyond the threshold.

War erased that sense of continuity.

Because of the Russian invasion, our lives were put on hold – not by choice, but by force. We postponed not only daily routines, but the very idea of planning ahead. The future became something fragile, unspeakable.

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Time itself seemed to fracture into anxious days of waiting, where the past hurt and the future felt too uncertain to name.

Illya returned to Kyiv, and later went to the front. Some of his civilian work responsibilities were passed on to me – what I could reasonably take over.

I stayed behind, surrounded by our mothers, the cats and a silence constantly charged with anticipation.

My legs felt weak, but I made myself a promise: I would not abandon him – not in this war, not in this reality, not in this choice. Even if, in that moment, it felt as though he had chosen something other than me.

Because I chose him.

I knew all the possible outcomes.

Injury. Trauma. Disappearance. Death.

We never said these words aloud, as though silence might somehow protect us. But I lived those scenarios daily, rehearsing them in my mind, trying to prepare for the worst.

And yet, I clung stubbornly to hope.

To faith without guarantees. It was the only thing that allowed me to get up each morning and continue living.

Separation became survivable only through discipline and routine. Ordinary tasks created a sense of structure and

prevented emotional collapse. Life during war requires constant inner focus – you are here, but never fully.

In the early months, many men were mobilised. Civilians still had choices: to enlist or to continue working in support roles. Most of our friends believed the war would be short and fought by professional soldiers. I do not judge that choice. I watched how difficult those decisions were, made under complete uncertainty.

Over time, the war reached them too.

Many who initially remained in the rear eventually took up arms. Today, I know very few people who have not been personally affected. Everyone has someone close serving – a partner, a friend, a relative. This has become part of daily life, something we live with, even if we never truly accept it.

Illya and I stayed in touch whenever circumstances allowed. Sometimes it was a brief message, sometimes a few minutes of hearing his voice. I rarely knew exactly where he was or what he was doing – for security reasons and because war does not allow routine.

Knowing his location did not always bring comfort. Sometimes it made things worse, as place names triggered

Far left: Tech wizard turned trooper, Illya Top: ‘Visitors’ not welcome – the remains of a Russian main battle tank Above: Evgenia and Marcy, the subject of catty conversations during deployments

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Image: Serhii Nuzhnenko (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty)/the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

Left: A Ukrainian soldier walks past a captured Russian tank in the Kharkiv region, 14 September 2022 Right: Paramedics provide care to a wounded Ukrainian soldier at a first-aid post in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, on 22 November 2022 Below: Illya, flanked by his mother Valentina and Evgenia, at the outbreak of war

Image: Serhii Nuzhnenko (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)/the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

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news reports and my imagination filled in the gaps. Eventually, I realised that location mattered less than connection.

A message meant he was alive – and that was enough.

We learned to talk despite the war, not about it. About everyday things.

About home. About the cats. These conversations did not remove fear, but they briefly restored something invaluable: a sense of normality.

Media and social networks made everything harder. When someone you love is in combat, every headline feels personal. There is too much information, and it rarely brings reassurance.

Over time, I learned to limit my exposure and focus on what truly mattered – staying in touch. For me, that meant more than any official briefing.

I was not alone. Conversations with our mothers – sharing fear, grief and support – helped me endure. Among Ukrainians, the most common question became simply: “How are you?” Every day, you asked it or answered it. We felt like one exhausted body trying to keep itself alive.

I also adopted a large, gentle dog from a shelter. Caring for him restored a sense of purpose. His quiet presence brought light into dark days. Professional

psychological Those who PROFESSIONAL support also remain alive often PSYCHOLOGICAL became essential. carry a quiet SUPPORT ALSO BECAME sense of guilt for Step by step, I learned how continuing to live.

ESSENTIAL. STEP BY to live beyond It is a deceptive STEP, I LEARNED HOW constant waiting. feeling, but one TO LIVE BEYOND If asked what that also drives CONSTANT WAITING. kind of support action – to support matters most to those serving, to families of serving personnel, my answer refuse indifference. is simple: clear, stable communication.

I believe everyone in this war has a Even minimal but predictable role. A mission. Illya found his. I am information significantly reduces anxiety. proud of him and convinced that what No one should feel abandoned in we endured was not in vain. His work uncertainty. may save lives. Today, I am his support.

Systematic mental health support – His home front. His hope for peace. accessible, ongoing, without excessive And our son – born despite war and bureaucracy – is vital. Not only in separation – is proof that life is stronger. moments of crisis, but over time, because He reminds us why the future matters. emotional strain accumulates slowly.

War has taught us to live in From friends and family, what helped the present, to love life without most was presence. Listening without postponement, because tomorrow is judgement or advice. Sometimes that never guaranteed. Separation revealed alone is enough. both our weaknesses and our strength, Even now, as Illya focuses on a calmer giving us the courage to make decisions but no less critical role – developing that shape destiny. drone capabilities – the sense of threat We fight not only an external enemy, remains, hanging over us like a sword but our own fears. And we overcome of Damocles. The war continues. More them – because that is the only way people are drawn into it. More lives are to survive, grow and remain true to lost or disappear. ourselves. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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AT PUTIN’S PLEASURE Former Royal Anglian Shaun Pinner was captured defending Mariupol while serving with Air Assault Company, 1st Battalion, 36th Separate Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Naval Infantry, and paraded on Russian state television. He was sentenced to death by a court that wasn’t a court, in a republic that wasn’t a republic. Despite everything he remains, to use his own word, tenacious.

Behind bars (above): Shaun during his trial in Donetsk, which saw him sentenced to death.

Before the storm (right): A selfie taken on the training grounds of Oleshky Sands near Kherson, while serving as a Ukrainian Marine.

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our years on from the fall of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, Shaun Pinner is 52. He has partial sight in one eye, a bad back – the painful legacy of a train-laden IED being driven into his position and seven months in Russian custody – and is, by his own assessment, “a different guy”. He is also a published author, a war reporter with his own Substack, an adviser on SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] training for multiple NATO-aligned forces and is taking the Russian Federation to court in what – if it lands the way his lawyers predict – will be a landmark case.

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING Shaun arrived in Ukraine in 2018 having tired of the daily M25 commute and the mundanity of his waste-management work in England. His relationship of nine years had ended, and his son had gone off to university – a combination of circumstances which SHAUN HATES LOSING AND afforded him a degree of ADMITS HE’S THE TYPE OF freedom. “Single meant I PERSON WHO WON’T CONCEDE could do some things I’d AT MONOPOLY. SUCH A always liked to do,” he told SELF-DESCRIPTION LANDS CIVVY. “I’d always missed DIFFERENTLY WHEN IT COMES the military.”

FROM SOMEONE YOU KNOW Ukraine, at that time, WAS ELECTROCUTED FOR 60 was rebuilding its armed DAYS IN A DONETSK BASEMENT. forces in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and fighting in the Donbas and was hungry for personnel with NATO experience. Cue Shaun signing up to work as a sniper instructor with the National Guard on what was supposed to be a short-term exploratory assignment.

He didn’t come back to the UK for half a decade. civvymagazine.co.uk

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“I got an opportunity to go back [to a job in the military], so I wasn’t going to not explore it. I wasn’t keen on fighting Russians at the time – it’s not ISIS, and I knew exactly what they were capable of. So, I went on a twoweek break thinking I’d check it out. I didn’t expect to be married, living there and with family there five years on.”

Ukraine didn’t become home overnight. The language barrier was problematic and required learning a mix of Russian and Ukrainian. Doing so was essential because, as Shaun explained, you don’t get accepted in any army by what you say but by what you do and by whether you can take the piss being taken out of you and give it back in the local tongue.

“Once I could do that, that’s when I got more respect.”

His lingual endeavours were enhanced by a year of travelling around the country, meeting Larysa – who became his wife – and the community that formed around their marriage. And by the time the Russians came over the border in February 2022, Mariupol was very much where his heart belonged and the city’s Illich steel and iron works became his patch.

Asked to describe himself then, he reaches for tenacious – a term he uses more than once throughout our conversation.

“I hate losing,” he added, admitting he’s the type of person who won’t concede at Monopoly. Such a self-description lands differently when it comes from someone you know was electrocuted for 60 days in a Donetsk basement.

SOLDIERING OF THE EVERYDAY KIND Shaun volunteers, towards the end of the interview, that nobody ever asks him about the fighting that unfolded in Mariupol. They ask 40

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about the torture and the captivity – the headline grabbing chapters in his story – but the fighting, he quietly notes, was the hard part.

So, that is where we will begin.

Day-to-day soldiering in his unit before the full-scale invasion was – like soldiering in any army with a long, slow-burn war on its doorstep – a mix of patrols, rotations and learning. Despite arriving as an instructor, Shaun almost immediately found himself

From left to right: Shaun in Mariupol in 2022 in front of a ‘Danger, Snipers’ warning; parachute training with the Ukrainian Marines; learning to fast rope from helicopters during training; smoke break in a shell scrape at the Illich steelworks during the battle for Mariupol.

SHAUN WAS PART OF A COMMUNITY NOT A BRITISH MERCENARY AND BY THE TIME THE ENCIRCLEMENT CLOSED IN, THE MEN AROUND HIM WEREN’T A JOB HE’D TAKEN. THEY WERE PEOPLE HE SAW ON THE SCHOOL RUN. the one being taught: how to build hardened defensive positions of the kind only a military that has actually had to hold ground knows how to construct; how to chop wood; how to fish and catch rak – crayfish – by hand to supplement the rations; how to fillet what you’d caught.

“I was teaching guys basic infantry skills,” he explained.

“They could all shoot, they were super fit and motivated, but they were reliant on shooting apps and Google Maps. We had to go back to basics. Meanwhile, they were teaching me things my basic training in the British Army covered in about two weeks.”

The harder transition was institutional. When he moved from the National Guard to the Marines, he ran into the residue of Soviet doctrine – centralised command and the corporal who doesn’t have the latitude he’d have in a British battalion. “As a NATO soldier, that was very hard to deal with. I had some commanders who were embracing NATO tactics, which helped.”

The way you know you have a section that trusts you is the same in any unit the world over.

Nobody thanks you. They imitate

you. And the proof of acceptance in Shaun’s case was three of his lads suddenly walking around in British-style berets with the same crease he’d put in his own. “That’s how you can take your thank you.

They follow you, they copy you, they buy your gear.”

SEVEN-WEEK STAND In late February 2022, the 36th Marine Brigade was deployed forward of Mariupol – a coastal city which quickly found itself under siege. By April, Shaun’s unit had been pushed back into the Illich steelworks. The brigade he was part of fought, by his estimate, for seven weeks inside a 200-kilometre encirclement, against overwhelming Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic forces, until ammunition and food ran out and the order came down from the top to break out or to negotiate a surrender.

What he wants the public to understand about that fight is more about the bonds than the tactics. There were three Brits in the same Marine unit, a tight clique, who knew or had families in the city and shared beach days during downtime. Shaun was

part of a community not a British mercenary and by the time the encirclement closed in, the men around him weren’t a job he’d taken. They were people he saw on the school run.

When he talks about that brotherhood now, he reaches not for a battle scene but for the boring proof of it. The clones.

The berets. The fact that nobody in his unit thought of him as the Englishman anymore.

He is also unromantic about what it cost. “We lost 60 per cent of our guys. We lost all three BTRs [armoured personnel carriers].

Everyone was injured through shrapnel or killed. There weren’t many of us left.”

The public memory of Mariupol is dominated by Azovstal and the Azov Regiment, with good reason – theirs was the longer and more visible stand. The 36th Marines fought their seven weeks largely out of the world’s view. Shaun, however, is proud of what they achieved. “We couldn’t have done any more.”

THE BREAK-OUT When the order came, the unit had two choices: negotiate a surrender or try to break out and link up with a friendly position further along the Sea of Azov coast. For Shaun, surrender was never on the table. He had spent his career listening to men who had been detained tell him exactly what initial capture by an

irregular force in a war of national mobilisation looks like. He knew the answer was beatings, stress positions and electrocution… “if you’re lucky”.

His position in the steelworks was on the outskirts. He could move, so he took the order to break out, with his commander, and to make for the sister unit.

He didn’t get far.

He was captured roughly two hours outside of Mariupol. He was unhurt, had discarded his debit cards and took the decision to tell his captors, immediately, that he was English. His Russian was competent for everyday use, but he was very conscious of his tell-tale London accent.

“They’d be quick to pick up on that,” said Shaun, whose capture is recounted in his extraordinary first-hand account Live. Fight.

Survive, which is now being made into a film.

“It was pointless me trying to pretend I was Ukrainian. So, I’d come up with a plan to tell them I was English, hoping I’d get them on the back foot, add some value, and somebody would get praise for capturing me.”

That call, he believes, kept him alive and – despite the peril he found himself in – has no regrets about opting to break-out.

“I’d done SERE training in the British Army. I felt confident I could probably do 200 kilometres.

I knew the area.

“I just couldn’t get through that first line.”

TRAINING DIVIDEND CIVVY asked what helped in those first hours of being detained and what didn’t. Shaun’s answer is professionally pragmatic. He is a man, in a way many veterans will recognise, who has analysed his own captivity in the calm of the succeeding years in the same way he would assess any other operation.

What helped: SERE. Specifically, understanding the stages – that initial capture is the deadliest moment, that if you can get through the first hours alive your chances climb sharply, that unpredictability is the captor’s worst weapon and the captive’s worst enemy.

“I went in not planning to get through that initial capture alive – and then thinking, what am I going to do now I’m still here?

Understanding that I can’t train for pain, this is going to hurt and that whatever I tell them, they’re still going to electrocute me.”

The diplomatic muscle that SERE quietly builds in the people it’s taught well to also came to the fore. Shaun spent seven months as “an old man who married someone in Mariupol, with no idea about my background in the military, no resistance training or anything like that”. The Russians eventually began to clock the deception, but he held the line long enough to deny them – for an extended period – the propaganda gold of holding a Royal Anglian veteran. civvymagazine.co.uk

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As to what didn’t help, Shaun is brisk about discussing things that other men got wrong. “There were some other members of the group that did exactly what they told you not to do on SERE. I’m not too bothered about it. They came out with similar [stories] to me. You can’t get too hung up on making mistakes.”

CAPTIVITY He was held for seven months.

The first stretch was at a black site – 60 days consisting of 23-24 hours spent in a cell with no daylight, while interrogators worked with electrodes to his ears and subjected Shaun to beatings and starvation in a bid to get him to admit to whatever they needed admitting to. The confessions sought included being a Brit fighting for the ‘Nazis’ and that he’d brought his own weapons into Ukraine from the UK. None of the admissions being demanded were true and most had been scripted by – and for – RT (a Russian English-language news channel).

Throughout, Shaun was not classed as a prisoner of war. He saw no Red Cross representatives.

He saw no British consular staff.

He was put through a SIZO – a transit prison, essentially a prison within a prison – and held in general population with other men marked for sham processing.

Asked what he found hardest about the ordeal, Shaun is again professional in his assessment.

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It wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t the humiliation. It was hunger.

“By far, starvation’s the worst.

The pain is with you every day. Your energy levels are up and down. Food becomes a commodity. I literally thought at one point I was going to die of starvation before I ever got to any court.”

What kept him going was gallows humour, the kind every long-service soldier will recognise from any situation with a bad outlook when you have decent people around you. He recounts one shower – three men under a single dripping tap, 15 minutes allotted, eight minutes of actual water, then hoods back on before returning to the cell for a beating.

Shaun was the last back and heard one of the others breathing heavily in the corner, before commenting “I think I’ll skip the next shower day”.

“Once you lose your humour, you lose hope.”

Shaun talks about John Harding – the Sunderland-born Brit also captured in Mariupol, also tried in Donetsk, also sentenced to death – shouting ‘God save the King’ when the prison guards told them the Queen had died, the echo of it travelling down the cell block.

He talks about chess pieces carved from stones, boards scratched onto anything flat. About reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Great Gatsby cover to cover because they were the only English books on the wing. About

debriefing each new arrival like The Great Escape. About cleaning the cell’s Trainspotting-grade toilet when the dark thoughts came, because a few seconds of focused disgust would push everything else out of his head.

His mantra for remaining anchored was “if I’m going to go down, I want to go down at least fighting and not roll over”.

THE TRIAL He understood early that his trial would be pure theatre. And so it proved to be – a promised legal counsel he never met, statements taken while he was being beaten, an indictment paper with another defendant’s name on it and a judge who, on the first morning, had to postpone proceedings because the documents weren’t ready. And then pleading not guilty – prompting a 15-minute pause in proceedings, during which he was lobbied to change his plea to guilty if he wanted any chance of release, and on doing so, receiving the death penalty regardless.

Chastened by his time in court, he passed advice to others on the wing. To the next men through the door: plead not guilty. You’ll get the death sentence either way.

You’ll get the maximum years either way. Don’t dignify it.

What struck him most was the gap between what was being said and what was being done. The court used the language of law, but what was happening in it was far

Postcards from Ukraine (from left to right): The blue beret of the Ukrainian Marines; on duty in Pavlopil near Mariupol; images captured by a friend; Aiden Aslin and Shaun during their first parachute jump with the Ukrainian Marines.

from it. “I literally realised we were being hung out to dry.”

The frustration of that – the inability to be heard – is what he points to when he sees the photographs of himself in the dock, of looking “angry and pissed off”.

RELEASE He didn’t know he was going home until the plane door closed.

The night before, he and a number of others had been told they were going on ‘a long journey’. It was September 2022.

The drive from Donetsk to Rostovon-Don was its own punishment – 18 hours, no water, locked into a stress-position daisy-chain in the back of a lorry, no toilet and a goodbye beating heavy enough that his face was a bloody mess when they put him on the tarmac.

SERE. And the way my life went after my exchange – I was able to write a book, vent, talk about it in public meetings. All that’s therapy.”

His Army friends in Britain, on his first weekend home, bought him several bottles of vodka as a joke. His mother thought it was too soon. He said it was the perfect gift.

What Shaun won’t say is that he is ‘fine’. He confesses he hasn’t properly processed any of what he’s been through and can’t – the war is still raging, friends from the 36th Marines are still in captivity, and some will never see freedom.

His good friend Chris ‘Swampy’ Garrett – a demining specialist and veteran from the Isle of Man – was killed in an explosion while clearing mines near Izyum in May 2025, and the grief of that is, like

EVERYONE’S INTERESTED IN THE TORTURE, THE CAPTIVITY, BUT THE FIGHTING WAS, FOR ME AND MOST OF THE GUYS, THE TOUGHEST TIME. LOSING YOUR MATES. LOSING FRIENDS. THE CAPTIVITY I HAD NO CONTROL OVER – BUT I COULD MANAGE IT. I’D HAD TRAINING. He still thought he was being moved to another prison.

Boarded onto a plane, he was, however, met by Roman Abramovich and a Saudi delegation. The Saudis had brokered an exchange. Viktor Medvedchuk – the pro-Russian politician who would have been Moscow’s chosen replacement for Volodymyr Zelensky had the assault on Kyiv succeeded – was traded for Shaun, John Harding, Aiden Aslin and several others.

COMING BACK Despite his experiences, Shaun doesn’t have flashbacks. He sleeps.

He is, on the surface, okay – something he attributes to his training. “I’m a big advocate of

everything else, on hold.

“We don’t get a chance to process anything, because we’re still fighting this war.”

He is conscious that when the war in Ukraine ends – if it ends – whatever has been waiting will arrive.

NAME CALLING In the interim, barbs from ‘friendly’ forces are an unwelcome distraction. He has been called a mercenary by British tabloids and, at the time of writing, is still pursuing the Independent Press Standards Organisation to try to prevent any further repeats.

His objection to the moniker, and similarly the tag of ‘foreign fighter’, is understandable – he’s

a Ukrainian taxpayer, his wife is Ukrainian and he has legal residency in Ukraine.

“I’m not a foreigner. I’m not a jihadist.”

Russian state television has repeatedly labelled Shaun a Nazi, a slur that has, albeit more sparsely, also been used by various corners of the Western commentariat.

The journalists who irritate him most are, however, those – like US commentator Tucker Carlson – who have never actually been to Ukraine. He attributes his shift into journalistic territory to his brushes with the media; he was being written about and could not write back, so he learned how to.

And the fledgling reporter is already savvy enough to recognise that elements of his story are often overlooked.

“Nobody really asks me about the fighting – the seven weeks in Mariupol,” he concluded.

“Everyone’s interested in the torture, the captivity, but the fighting was, for me and most of the guys, the toughest time. Losing your mates. Losing friends. Still trying to get people motivated to fight even though we were in a 200-kilometre encirclement. The captivity I had no control over – but I could manage it. I’d had training, I was older, I’d had life experiences. The fighting we’ve still got to deal with.

“We’re going to be dealing with this for the next ten years. You know, if Russia collapses and we go to Mariupol, my God – imagine.

We’ve got to go through it all again. The mass graves. And now I’m taking Russia to court, I’ve got to drag this all up again. It’s not over for me. I don’t want to give up or let anybody down in Mariupol – those guys that never got out. I want to see a just peace and if that means pushing Russia out, then so be it. I want to keep doing it from where I can do it.”

Tenacious, he said.

He wasn’t joking. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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Mental health is a subject CIVVY intends to take seriously and this is where we start. We asked the experts at King’s College London’s Military Health Research centre to write us something straight on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — what it is, how common it actually is among veterans, what treatment looks like and what the evidence says works. The lead author, Professor Neil Greenberg, spent 23 years in uniform as a military psychiatrist, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. He sat on the committee that wrote the current NHS national guidelines on PTSD treatment and led on trauma and the military for the Royal College of Psychiatrists for a decade.

He and his colleagues – Emily Gillings, Seyra Karakaya and Alisa Danilova – have written what follows as researchers. The tone is academic and we’ve left it that way deliberately. However, if you read nothing else, the headlines are these.

Most veterans don’t develop PTSD. The ones who do can be effectively treated, and the NHS route through Op COURAGE is quick by NHS standards. And waiting tends to make it worse — for you, and for the people around you. Read on for the detail.

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PTSD

T

raumatic events are extremely horrific or threatening experiences, including real or threatened death, sexual violence or serious injury. In the UK, it is estimated that around one in three people will experience at least one of these events throughout their lifetime. People working in trauma-prone organisations, such as the military or the emergency services, tend to encounter trauma more often.

It is common for people to experience feelings of intense distress, anxiety or fear in the days and weeks after trauma. Such reactions are often the body’s normal way of responding to the trauma and they often get better without needing any specific intervention or treatment. In fact, most people exposed to a traumatic event do not develop a mental health condition.

There are a wide range of factors which influence how someone reacts, including how extreme the event was, how long it lasted, someone’s pre-trauma experience and the level of support available.

This means that two people can respond very differently to the same kind of trauma.

Recognising these differences is key to understanding what sort of support or help might benefit them after a traumatic event. For example, one person may find that the event they experience gives them a fresh perspective on life, providing a new-found purpose or sense of optimism which is sometimes known as post-traumatic growth. Less commonly, someone may find that the trauma leads to ongoing, worsening distress, potentially leading to a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (or PTSD).

Interestingly, recent efforts to better recognise these different trauma responses have explored wearable technology, where your physical data, such as sleep, activity and heart rate, may be able to detect PTSD development.

This has considerable potential but is still a work in progress. civvymagazine.co.uk

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Seeking help when you need it is a strength. No one would suggest that a person with a broken leg should simply ‘crack on’; the same goes for someone who has unfortunately developed a significant mental health problem.

WHAT IS PTSD? People who have PTSD experience three main groups of symptoms: 1.

Firstly, the event is re-lived in the here and now, maybe through intrusive memories, flashbacks or recurring nightmares.

2.

Any reminders of the event are avoided at all costs, such as through social isolation or keeping oneself constantly busy.

3.

A heightened awareness of danger means they might be jumpy, easily startled or always on the watch for potential threats.

Those who have PTSD find that these symptoms have a severe impact on their day-to-day life, with many finding it difficult to sustain relationships, concentrate at work or remain positive about the future. Unfortunately, people

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with PTSD often do not seek help until long after the traumatic event has occurred, by which time they are often also experiencing other problems such as depression or alcohol/substance misuse. There has been increased awareness that some people who experience ongoing, severe traumatic events from which they cannot readily escape may develop additional difficulties which can lead to what is known as complex PTSD. As well as experiencing the symptoms of PTSD, individuals with complex PTSD also have problems in regulating their moods, beliefs about being defeated, shameful or worthless, and difficulties in sustaining relationships.

HOW COMMON IS PTSD IN THE MILITARY? Both PTSD and complex PTSD are debilitating conditions which can have a huge impact on functioning life. Within the military, rates of PTSD have recently increased, rising from around six per cent in 20142016 to nine per cent in 20222023. PTSD appears to be more commonly reported by veterans than those still serving, with around 11 per cent of ex-serving regular personnel reporting symptoms of PTSD, compared to seven per cent of currently serving members. The risk is even higher for personnel who have served in combat or combat-support roles,

such as infantry, artillery, engineers or signallers. Around 13 per cent of serving personnel in these roles, and up to 18 per cent of veterans, report symptoms consistent with PTSD. However, research has also shown that good unit cohesion and supportive leadership strengthens resilience and facilitates adaptive coping, therefore reducing the negative effects of traumatic exposure.

Mental health difficulties such as PTSD, depression and anxiety disorders are often more common amongst ex-service personnel than those still serving. This can be partly explained by combat exposure, but are also likely to be linked to the challenges of transitioning to civilian life.

Adjusting to a new career, changes in social support and ongoing health problems can all make recovery more difficult. In some cases, veterans may have developed complex PTSD. Research suggests this is more likely among veterans who left service for medical reasons, experience loneliness, have limited social support or carry significant unpaid caring responsibilities.

This is not to say that mental health decline is inevitable; in fact research shows that most veterans enjoy good mental health once they leave the military. We know that there are several factors which can help to protect veterans’ mental health. Social support is the greatest of them, including

family, friends, other veterans and community networks. On top of this, meaningful employment, adopting a non-veteran identity, community roles and volunteering can all help to promote psychological resilience.

GETTING SUPPORT Although the number of veterans experiencing PTSD continues to rise as more veterans of recent conflicts leave service, many take a long time to seek help for its lasting impacts. Even after veterans find their way to healthcare providers, up to 60 per cent may drop out of treatment before any meaningful recovery can occur. Stigma may be a major factor behind this. Military culture traditionally emphasises strength and resilience. Having lived and breathed this culture can lead service personnel to believe that seeking help, or even admitting signs of distress, is a form of weakness. Whilst this belief is incorrect, it can lead to untreated mental health difficulties which worsen over time. Seeking help when you need it is in fact a strength. For instance, no one would suggest that a person with a broken leg should simply ‘crack on’; the same goes for someone who has unfortunately developed a significant mental health problem.

Early help for any health problem is likely to lead to a better

outcome and a decreased chance of long-term problems.

Fortunately, the treatment of PTSD has become increasingly effective over the years. The most common approaches are Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). Both methods focus on reducing trauma symptoms and improving overall quality of life. Evidence suggests that around three quarters of people who develop PTSD, who were functioning reasonably well beforehand, are likely to recover with treatment. Military veterans in the UK are able to access evidence-based treatments for PTSD more rapidly than those who have never served. The NHS offers specialised, rapidly accessed mental health services, such as Op COURAGE, designed for veterans, whether they be exregular or ex-reservists. There is a range of service charities such as Combat Stress, Walking with the Wounded and Help for Heroes, which can also provide free and accessible evidence-based support for veterans. Importantly, when someone recovers from PTSD, it is not just a good outcome for them, but for their family, friends and work colleagues. So, whilst it is not yet possible to rewind people’s lives and undo their exposure to trauma, for the vast majority of those who develop PTSD, effective ways to heal and recover are readily available. C

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Reps & Resilience Toby Cart left the British Army with a sizeable mortgage and no job lined up… but with a business idea honed in Helmand. Thirteen years on and his company is hitting £1.2 million in turnover and planning its own flagship gym. The fitness entrepreneur tells CIVVY how he flexed his military instincts to build a civilian success story.

T

here is a particular kind of clarity that comes from sitting in a forward operating base in Afghanistan with not much to do but train and think. For Toby, then serving with the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, that clarity took the form of a gluteus maximus-sized gap in the fitness market.

Having been a regular visitor to military gyms in the UK and overseas, the gunner had noticed he only ever saw two brands of CrossFit equipment – and one was considerably higher quality than the other.

He began to research the sector and realised there was a significant price difference between the two, with nothing available in between.

Most soldiers would have filed the thought away and forgotten about it. Toby, born and raised in Bristol, started drawing up a business plan.

It was a plan that – on hanging up his uniform – he initially set aside in favour of sampling the corporate route to prosperity with a stint in sales at Sky. The pull of building something of his own, however, quickly proved stronger than the security of an assured salary. So, in 2013 he borrowed £25,000 through the Government-backed Start Up Loans programme, purchased initial stock, developed an e-commerce website and launched UK Supreme Fitness.

What happened next is the kind of story that business school case studies are made of.

On his first day of operating, Toby posted a promotional link to his website on the CrossFit Facebook page. Within a few hours, the South West’s largest CrossFit gym – spanning 7,000 square foot – had been in touch. They were planning a refit. A few days later, the first order landed. UK Supreme Fitness was up and running.

That first client proved transformative. Word spread fast in the CrossFit community and Toby had the nous to capitalise; he hit the road, attending as many CrossFit Games and events as possible to build contacts and generate word-of-mouth. He was selling

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as much as he was installing, and the two skills – earned at Sky and in the Army respectively – turned out to complement each other rather well.

DISCIPLINE AS DIVIDEND Ask Toby what the Army gave him for civilian life and he doesn’t reach for the standard script about teamwork and leadership. His answer is more precise than that.

“I learnt resilience, discipline and problem-solving.

These have all been essential skills in starting and developing a business that has survived big challenges and grown.”

Those challenges were real and numerous, from near-misses in the early years and the brutal disruption of Covid to the grinding slog of a decade building a brand from nothing in a competitive market. The founding ethos – military precision applied to civilian commerce – has remained the company’s lodestone throughout.

Today, UK Supreme Fitness designs, manufactures and supplies high-quality gym equipment and flooring while delivering complete, bespoke training facilities from concept to completion. The approach is no-nonsense and performance-first, and the resulting client roster speaks for itself. The company supplies and installs facilities for military units including the SAS, SBS, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force alongside CrossFit gyms, strength and conditioning centres, schools, universities, professional sports clubs and corporate wellness facilities. Among the more eye-catching commissions is the home gym of Nirmal Purja, whose ascent of all of Earth’s 8,000-metre plus mountains in under seven months was documented

by Netflix in 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible.

HIGH-PROFILE CONTRACTS The business – which boasts customers in Switzerland,

MILITARY GAINS

I LEARNT RESILIENCE, DISCIPLINE AND PROBLEMSOLVING. THESE HAVE ALL BEEN ESSENTIAL SKILLS IN STARTING AND DEVELOPING A BUSINESS THAT HAS SURVIVED BIG CHALLENGES AND GROWN.

Dubai and Finland – has also secured significant public sector wins. The firm recently won one of its biggest contracts, supplying 25 gyms for East Sussex Fire and Rescue.

The deal is a neat illustration of how far UK Supreme Fitness has travelled from that first Facebook post. Emergency services are serious, safety-conscious buyers. Delivering multiple gyms to multiple sites requires the ability to project manage complex installations to exacting standards – precisely the kind of operational discipline that Toby’s military background hardwired into the company culture.

The business’ reach into professional sport is equally telling. A project team fitted out the training environment of former England rugby captain Dylan Hartley – a detail that places UK Supreme Fitness, which employs six staff and operates a warehouse,

Toby Cart, founder of UK Supreme Fitness, with office dog Nessie

show gym and office in Bristol, well beyond its CrossFit niche roots.

THE FLAGSHIP The ambition that sustained Toby through an Afghanistan deployment and a decade of entrepreneurial grind has not diminished. Having hit £1.2 million in turnover, he is now planning to open a flagship operational gym in his home city that will generate additional revenue from memberships and fitness classes.

For a veteran entrepreneur who taught himself business from books read in a forward operating base, it is a considerable ambition. But don’t bet against the aspiration being attained – Toby has form for realising goals under difficult conditions. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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CARING FOR YOUR COINS ON t e e r t s y Civv Meet CIVVY’s money man Nick Onslow, a chartered financial planner at Progeny Wealth who completed 25 years of service in the British Army before establishing a career in financial services.

“I joined the military as an apprentice tradesman at the Royal Army Apprentice College at Worthy Down in 1983, and I finished as a regimental administrative officer in the Adjutant General’s Corps (SPS) in 2008. I know how daunting it is to leave the military as when my time came it was in the midst of the banking crisis and I had a young family to support. It was an incredibly scary period as my chosen industry was in turmoil and

recruitment was at a standstill.

“I learned quite quickly that applying for jobs was difficult and what I needed was the help of a recruiter who understood the military and could convert my skills into civvy speak.

My persistence paid off and I joined the Bank of Scotland Investment Service as a trainee financial adviser in 2009.

Since then I have worked for a number of banks and wealth managers, which felt more like being posted every few years than changing jobs.”

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We all need a financial plan that considers what we want to do in our lives and how much money we will need to make it happen. Initially, on leaving the military my focus was on the here and now and I lived month-tomonth trying to balance my family’s finances. As I became more established in my second career, I was able to better consider my fiscal future.

Pensions are without a doubt one of the most complex areas of financial planning, but also one that everyone needs to ensure they do have a plan for.

Here is an overview of some of the main types you will come across…

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MILITARY FINAL SALARY PENSION

one piece of advice I would offer all CIVVY readers is to become a member of the Forces Pension Society – an independent, not-for-profit organisation which acts as a pension watchdog for the Armed Forces community. Membership costs £47 per year and is money well spent.

This was the only pension I had when I left the Army and because of my length of service it was payable immediately.

The term ‘final salary pension’ simply means that – based on your salary/rank and years served – the military promises to pay you an index-linked income for STATE PENSION the rest of your life. Additionally, if you were to die before your spouse it would It is also vital as part of your financial also pay out at a reduced amount for plan that you understand how much the rest of their life. These are often your state pension will pay and at what referred to as ‘gold-plated pensions’ date you will receive it. As of today it by the media and are incredibly rare is worth £241.30 per week or £12,548 outside of the public sector. per annum. Everyone needs to have Being ‘indexmade 35 years(linked’ means that ish) of National the pension will EVERYONE NEEDS Insurance rise every April contributions to TO HAVE MADE by the Consumer receive the full Price Index amount, which is 35 YEARS(-ISH) (inflation). Final credited through OF NATIONAL salary pensions are years of working INSURANCE often referred to or by receiving as ‘defined benefit certain state CONTRIBUTIONS schemes’ in civvy benefits.

TO RECEIVE THE speak.

You may be Not all those aware of the FULL AMOUNT who leave the WASPI (Women military receive Against State Pension Inequality) campaign. It their pensions immediately. If you did not, your pension may often be referred focussed on women born in the 1950s not being aware that their entitlement to as a ‘preserved pension’ and your to the state pension had changed from income for life becomes payable at a age 60 to 65. later date, which varies from scheme to Since October 2020, the age of scheme but is usually at the age of 60, receipt has increased to 66 for both 65 or 67. men and women and over the next two All pension payments are added to years, for people born after April 1960, your other income and taxed at your it is rising to age 67. It is expected to highest marginal rate of income tax. rise further in the future as a result of This is typically 20 per cent but for people living longer. higher earners (those on salaries over It is vital that you check your £50,270 a year) this can rise to 40 or 45 entitlement to ensure that the National per cent.

Insurance you have paid during your On top of your income for life, you service has been credited correctly. This will also receive a tax-free lump sum, is a straightforward process that can which is normally three times your be completed via gov.uk/check-stateannual pension. pension. You can also complete a BR19 Military pensions can be difficult form or call 0800 731 0175. to wrap your head around and the

PRIVATE PENSIONS This area of financial planning is huge and I can’t cover everything here, but I think it is important to point out that it is plagued by a lot of jargon and technical language, so don’t worry if you encounter terms you’ve never come across.

The uncomplicated way to think about it is this: you either have a guaranteed income for life where your employer takes all the risks, or you have a pot of gold where the risk is all based on the investments you choose and their performance over many years.

If you are lucky enough to move to another employer that offers a final salary scheme, it will work in an equivalent way to the Armed Forces Pension Scheme. How much you will get will depend on the scheme rules, but it will normally offer a guaranteed income for life, along with spousal/ dependants’ income if you die first.

Like many people, I wasn’t lucky enough to have a civvy employer that offered this type of scheme and needed to open a private pension through them. You will hear the words ‘private’, ‘stakeholder’ or ‘self-invested’ pensions but they are all similar things – it’s just the stash of cash that you are trying to grow for the future to provide you with an income in retirement.

Another term you may hear is ‘auto enrolment’, which usually relates to a UK government initiative requiring employers to automatically place eligible staff into a workplace pension scheme, with contributions from the employer, employee and tax relief.

These typically add up to eight per cent of your gross (pre-tax) salary, with the employer contributing at least three per cent and employees paying the remaining five per cent (inclusive of tax relief ). Your employer can pay more, but they don’t have to.

INVESTMENTS I was overwhelmed by the investment choices available and, to be honest, initially got it wrong. As there are thousands of investments on offer my guidance is to consider taking some professional financial advice. Most employers use a pension firm to run investment schemes and they should be able to help.

WITHDRAWING FUNDS The basic rules are that you can take up to 25 per cent of your pot of gold tax free and the remainder is taxed at your higher marginal rate of income tax.

You can either choose to withdraw the money as you need it like a

bank account, referred to as income drawdown, or you can buy a guaranteed income for life similar to the Armed Forces Pension and this method is referred to as an annuity.

It is important to note that access to private pensions is increasing from age 55 to 57 in April 2028, keeping the gap between the state pension at 10 years.

DEATH BENEFITS You will be asked to fill in an expression of wishes form that tells your pension provider who to pay any money left in the scheme to when you die. It goes without saying it is important that you do so. You can nominate anyone you choose but if you have a spouse or dependants, you will need a very good reason why they haven’t been nominated. It is important that you reconfirm the ‘who’ on a regular basis in case your circumstances change, for example in the event of divorce, death of a dependant or birth of a new child.

The age at which you die will have financial implications on those receiving the money. If you die before age 75, your beneficiaries will not normally have to pay any income tax on the money they receive, however, there are thresholds where the money does become taxable.

If you die on or after age 75, the benefits paid will be subject to income tax.

As it stands now, private pensions aren’t subject to Inheritance Tax, however, from April 2027 they will be added to your other assets and, if you are above your individual threshold, death taxes of 40 per cent may be payable. C Tax rules and legislation can change.

Any information given is based on my current understanding of law and HMRC practice. The information in this article should not be regarded as legal, tax or financial advice. You should take advice if you are in any doubt how this affects your personal circumstances.

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The future demands creativity.

And creativity thrives at Falmouth.

Study online We support students from all backgrounds to access our online courses. Because creativity is in everyone.

Serving in the Armed Forces gives you valuable experience and skills beyond academic qualifications, and now you can channel that experience into an innovative university degree.

See more about online study on our website.

falmouth.ac.uk/online

Leah Jones @falmouthuni

Photography MA (Online)

e s i Penny-w

Help in surviving the horrors of the UK’s economy

T

he numbers don’t lie. Food inflation, energy bills, the cost of filling the car – we’re all feeling it. For veterans on a pension, those still finding their feet in civvy life or anyone juggling a young family on a single income, the squeeze is real. So, when somebody offers to knock nine per cent off a meal out, five per cent off the weekly shop or more than half off a cinema ticket on a Saturday afternoon, it adds up. And that, without resorting to a PowerPoint presentation, is the premise behind Rewards for Forces.

Peter Raith (right), who founded the scheme back in 2004, says it was the first national discount service of its kind for the British armed forces community.

He’s not a veteran himself – “just a civilian” – but he’s spent more than two decades in military publishing and discount schemes, including a seven-year stint running the official MOD Defence Discount Service.

“The companies in the old MOD brochure weren’t really offering any discounts at all,” he told CIVVY. “They were just promoting themselves. I thought we could do something better.”

WHO IT’S FOR The spectrum of the initiative’s beneficiaries is wider than you might think: serving personnel across all three services, veterans, reservists, cadets, MOD civil servants, members of the Royal British Legion and, crucially,

partners and service widows and widowers. Visiting US and Canadian forces personnel are also eligible. In brief, if your household has a connection to the military, the scheme is built for you.

HOW IT WORKS Sign up at rewardsforforces.co.uk, provide a one-off proof of service – a Veterans ID Card, for example – and that’s it. Your details are verified, then deleted. No plastic card to lose, no monthly fee, no admin.

The basic free tier alone is worth the five minutes it takes to register. Access to a thousand-plus national and local offers across more than 30 categories – motoring, holidays, insurance, kids’ stuff, home utilities, dining, weddings, even golf and football clubs – plus a Cinema Rewards programme offering up to 57 per cent off tickets at over 380 UK cinemas. For a family of four, that one perk alone could pay for itself several times over in a single trip.

The premium tier costs £5 a year and unlocks the bigger names: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Asda, Iceland, B&Q, Netflix, Spotify, Costa, Google Play, Nintendo et al. Readers of this magazine can use the code CIVVY for 20 per cent off – bringing premium membership to about £4 a year.

The discount itself arrives as a code on your phone within seconds. And here’s the part that matters for the weekly shop: the discounts stack. A Morrisons More card, your military discount and Rewards for Forces can be applied at the same till.

Still not sure it’s worth it? The site has a savings calculator that lets you tot up your likely annual benefit based on how you actually spend, which is worth a fiveminute punt before committing a fiver.

Plenty of ‘discount’ schemes are just affiliate operations, taking a cut on

every transaction. Peter is, however, upfront: Rewards for Forces doesn’t take a percentage. Businesses pay a flat fee to be listed and the full discount goes to the member.

“Blue Light Card and the Defence Discount Service work the other way,” he says – pointing out that the two are run by the same company. “I think it’s wrong; charging veterans to access deals when they’re essentially the same operation.”

BEYOND THE UK The scheme has a full reciprocal partnership with Australia. If you’re heading Down Under, you can sign into the Australian site through Rewards for Forces and use local offers. New Zealand and Canada, on the other hand, are oneway relationships – their veterans can use UK discounts when they visit, but baseaccess rules mean Brits can’t use theirs in return. A US partnership is in the works.

THE BIGGER PICTURE What struck CIVVY, talking to Peter, was the philosophy beneath the spreadsheets. He told a story about being at a SeaWorld show in his early 20s, during which the announcer asked every serving and former member of the UK and US military in the crowd to stand.

As those present took to their feet, the whole audience applauded.

“It planted something,” he said. “We should be doing more.”

There’s an argument that the British instinct – the slight discomfort most veterans feel when an American thanks them for their service – is a healthy one.

We don’t want fuss. But quiet, practical recognition? A few quid off the shop, fast-track boarding on a flight (Peter’s still pushing the airlines on that one), more than half off a cinema ticket on a Friday night?

That’s a different proposition. And in this economy, it’s one worth taking up. C

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Help power the world’s digital infrastructure At Salute, we deploy and manage some of the world’s most advanced data centres — the critical infrastructure behind the digital world. As our business continues to grow globally, we’re looking for the next generation of data centre professionals to join us.

No matter your military background, we can help you transition your skills into a rewarding civilian career.

With Salute, you’ll find: A truly international and fast-paced working environment Clear career progression in a rapidly expanding industry Structured technical and personal development training Strong peer-level support from people who understand the transition from military to civilian life Opportunities to travel and work alongside world-class teams

If you’re mission-focused, adaptable, and ready for your next challenge, a career in data centres could be your next step.

salute.com/careers

CALL TO ARMS

Digitally adept While the idea of plugging into data centres – the powertrains safeguarding the digital information on which modern societies rely – may not automatically compute when considering a ‘second career’, industry insider Angela Paterson is adamant that armed forces veterans have all the necessary attributes to help technology maintains its march.

A

s digital infrastructure continues to expand at extraordinary speed, the conversation across the industry entrusted with its wellbeing is increasingly focused on workforce readiness. How do companies find, develop and retain the talent needed to support the next generation of data centre operations? For Angela Paterson of Salute, the answer starts with changing the way the sector thinks about talent itself. “Too often, hiring conversations begin and end with direct data centre experience,” says Salute’s vice president of people and culture. “But if we only hire people who’ve already worked in the industry, we’re limiting the future of the workforce before it even begins.”

Instead, Salute has built its workforce model around identifying potential, aptitude and mindset – particularly within the veteran community.

“Veterans already possess many of the qualities that make someone successful in a mission-critical environment,” Angela explains. “Discipline, focus, teamwork, accountability and a safety-first mentality are ingrained from day one in military service.”

That alignment becomes even more relevant when looking at the technical demands of modern data centre operations.

Many veterans leave the military with hands-on mechanical and electrical experience gained while operating and maintaining complex infrastructure, communications systems and power environments under pressure.

“When you think about the realities of a data centre environment, there’s a natural overlap,” she says. “These are people who understand process, precision, reliability and what it means to work in safety-first environments where failure simply isn’t an option.”

According to Angela, those missioncritical skills often transfer more naturally than many employers realise.

“There’s sometimes a misconception that military experience doesn’t directly translate into civilian technical roles. In reality, many veterans have spent years working on critical systems in highly structured operational environments. The ability to learn quickly, adapt, follow procedure

organisation, they invest more into it.”

The broader challenge, however, is that many veterans still remain overlooked by traditional hiring models.

“A lot of job descriptions unintentionally create barriers. Companies ask for very specific industry experience when what they actually need are people with the right mindset and capability to learn.”

That’s why Salute continues to advocate

WHEN SOMEONE LEAVES THE MILITARY, THEY’RE NOT JUST LEAVING A JOB. THEY’RE LEAVING BEHIND IDENTITY, STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY AND PURPOSE. COMPANIES THAT UNDERSTAND THAT ARE THE ONES THAT RETAIN TALENT LONG TERM. and remain calm under pressure is hugely valuable in this industry.”

But while technical capability matters, Angela believes culture plays just as important a role in long-term success.

“The industry can be fast-moving and high-pressure, so culture becomes incredibly important. People want to feel supported. They want to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.”

That sense of belonging can be especially meaningful for veterans transitioning into civilian careers.

“When someone leaves the military, they’re not just leaving a job. They’re leaving behind identity, structure, community and purpose. Companies that understand that – and intentionally create environments where people can continue to grow and contribute – are the ones that retain talent long term.”

At Salute, building that environment has become central to the company’s approach.

“We’ve always believed that strong teams are built through trust, mentorship and shared values. That applies across the board, whether someone comes from a military background or not. When people can see a future for themselves within an

for stronger partnerships between employers, military transition programmes, apprenticeship pathways and educational institutions.

“The workforce challenge isn’t going away. The industry is evolving too quickly for companies to rely on the same hiring pools they’ve always used.”

For Angela, the future of the data centre workforce will depend on organisations becoming more intentional – not only about who they hire, but how they support them once they arrive.

“Technical skills can be taught.

What’s harder to teach is resilience, professionalism, accountability and leadership under pressure. Veterans already bring those qualities with them.”

And as demand for digital infrastructure continues to grow, Angela believes companies willing to invest in people before they are the ‘perfect’ candidate will ultimately build the strongest teams.

“The future workforce won’t come from the same places it always has. It will come from companies willing to recognise potential earlier, remove unnecessary barriers, and create cultures where people genuinely want to stay and grow.” C civvymagazine.co.uk

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Crossing The Line of Departure Andrew Parsons served over 23 years as a Royal Signals officer. He commanded his regiment, deployed on operations across the globe – including two tours in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles and a tour of Afghanistan on Op Herrick 5 – and qualified as a mountaineering instructor, a role which saw him lead a three-month expedition in the Canadian Rockies. He missed his daughter’s first Christmas while deployed. He lost two marriages to his service. And when the time came to leave, he found a resettlement system that missed the mark. This is the story of what happened next.

T

here is a particular kind of restlessness that follows military service. Not the fidgety, can’t-sit-still variety, but something deeper: a need for purpose, for challenge and for the feeling that what you’re doing matters. Speak to Andrew ‘Andy’ Parsons for five minutes and you’ll recognise it immediately. It’s the same energy that drove him through nearly a quarter of a century in the Royal Corps of Signals. And it’s the same energy that, after leaving the British Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel, refused to let him settle for anything less than building something of his own.

CALLING TIME Andy’s decision to turn in his uniform wasn’t taken lightly given his enduring affection for the military’s “camaraderie and sheer sense of adventure”.

“You’re surrounded by people who are entirely committed to the mission and to each other, with the utmost standards of professionalism, and utterly reliable,” Andy told CIVVY, enthusing about the Army’s attributes. “There’s nothing like it.”

Nor was the call to leave based on a single, eureka moment.

“It was gradual,” he said. “When you’ve served for nearly a quarter of a century, you eventually reach a point where you feel you’ve done your bit. I’d commanded my regiment and knew I’d never have the privilege of directly leading soldiers again – I was destined for staff jobs. I was trying to save a marriage.

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It was a period of Armed Forces redundancy. All the cards came together, and I took the opportunity to leave on my own terms.”

What he found waiting on the other side was a resettlement system that, for someone of his rank and experience, fell well short and was “hugely flawed”.

“There were basically two tiers – private soldier to lieutenant colonel, and full colonel and above.

I needed to be in the second tier, and the system completely missed the mark for me. The best thing I did was the AMAC [Advanced Management Achievement Course] at Manchester Business School, which gave me a fabulous new toolset. But I only found out about it by accident. The system didn’t signpost it, and many others may have missed it.”

What did help was the transition support provided by the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, which ran a “first class” workshop followed by one-to-one mentoring for Royal Signals soldiers and officers. It was so influential that Andy subsequently joined the Worshipful Company, gained his Freedom of the City of London, progressed to Liveryman, and then ran their resettlement programme for five years.

FINDING YOUR FEET Unlike many veterans, the retired commanding officer didn’t go through a prolonged period of drift. He moved into IT and telecoms consultancy – a logical pivot from his Signals background – and found that

MILITARY GAINS

YOU GO FROM AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE YOUR IDENTITY, YOUR TRIBE AND YOUR DAILY STRUCTURE ARE CLEARLY DEFINED, TO A WORLD WHERE YOU HAVE TO BUILD ALL OF THAT FROM SCRATCH. BUT I FOUND THAT HUGELY EMPOWERING.

the technical and leadership foundations he’d built in the Army made the transition smoother than it might otherwise have been. The consultancy work gave him a solid commercial footing and, critically, taught him how the civilian business world operated.

But there’s a distinction between adapting and thriving, and while Andy experienced the latter, he’s clear-eyed that the shift can catch many veterans off guard.

“I didn’t find it too hard,” he added. “You go from an environment where your identity, your tribe and your daily structure are clearly defined, to a world where you have to build all of that from scratch. But I found that hugely empowering. You live and thrive entirely on your own wits. There’s no playbook. No Army handbook.”

From Signals to award-winning spirits: Andy inspects one of the specialist stills at The Sky Wave Distilling Company

THE LEAP The business that would follow wasn’t part of any grand plan. Andy and his partner Rachel Hicks – a former BBC journalist and television newsreader – had always sought out local craft gins on their travels but could never find one that perfectly matched their palates. The gift of a day at a gin school, which they duly took up “purely out of interest” and with no ambition beyond enjoying an interesting afternoon, changed everything.

“We started dabbling, applying a bit of science and a lot of tasting, and we hit absolute gold with a recipe,” he recalled. “We ordered a two-litre test still from Portugal on the way home. The rest is history.”

And that history is certainly worth drinking in. civvymagazine.co.uk

59

MILITARY GAINS

Six months after first wetting their lips, the couple had perfected their recipe through more than 40 iterations and more than 300 tasters, and The Sky Wave Distilling Company was born. A further 18 months on and the fruits of their labour, Sky Wave Signature London Dry, was crowned The World’s Best Contemporary Gin at the World Gin Awards – a fortnight before COVID brought the entire hospitality industry to an unceremonious standstill.

With every potential outlet for their awardwinning product forced to close its doors as the UK locked down, it would have been easy for the fledgling company to have stalled. Andy and Rachel, however, had other ideas and quickly established an alternative – digital – route to customers and found themselves delivering “emergency gin supplies” to homes within a five-mile radius.

“We pivoted online within a week,” explained Andy, reflecting on the resulting remarkable upturn in sales. “That’s not luck. That’s the military mindset.

The plan went out the window, so we made a new one.”

By the end of social-distancing restrictions, the company’s turnover had increased by 400 per cent and a move to a bigger premises – at Bicester Motion, a former Second World War RAF bomber station in Oxfordshire – followed. Being headquartered on the UK’s best-preserved wartime RAF site, in its beautifully restored North Tanker Sheds, is somewhat serendipitous and suits the ethos of adventure and heritage that Andy holds dear.

MILITARY LESSONS The officer-turned-distiller is certainly quick to credit a generous measure of Sky Wave’s success to the skills he matured during his Army career. Experience of logistics, planning and resilience are obvious boons, but Andy also points to something more specific: “My Signals background gave me an aptitude for science, engineering and fine attention to detail. We adhere strictly to a production process with zero margin for error. You either get it right or you don’t. That precision is pure military discipline.”

Where the Army left gaps was in marketing, branding and commercial sales.

“In the military, you don’t have to sell your unit in a commercial sense. Learning how to tell our story, engage with buyers and build a premium brand from the ground up was a steep learning curve.”

So too was the shift from having authority by virtue of military standing.

“It’s humbling, but also incredibly liberating,” he said. “You can’t rely on the rank on your chest [in business]. You have to rely on the quality of what you produce. Earning credibility through results rather than assumed authority makes the success much sweeter.”

And such success is well within the means of other military alumni, according to Andy. “Veterans bring 60

CIVVY Magazine

an unparalleled ability to solve complex problems under pressure. We don’t panic when the plan goes out the window; we adapt, we execute and we get the job done.”

The chief challenge for some is articulating those traits in terms understood by civilian investors, customers and employers to ensure they are not sold short. The latter group, Andy believes, have a responsibility to do the right thing if they count veterans among their staff.

“Pay them what they’re worth, even if they don’t know it yet,” he implored. “If an employer cheats a veteran on salary, they’re stealing from them and should be called out.”

TOAST YOUR IDEAS When asked what he’d say to a veteran with a business idea who hasn’t yet taken a step towards realising their aspirations, Andy keeps it simple: “You already possess the resilience, the risk-management skills and the work ethic to succeed. Do your reconnaissance, make a plan, but eventually, you just have to cross the line of departure. Take the leap.”

Seven years on, Andy’s own business has won more than 86 international medals, grown to a 12-person team with a senior management that is 75 per cent female, and is expanding into export markets across Europe. He still works as a senior associate consultant alongside the distillery. He’s still active in the defence and veteran community. He still identifies, proudly and without hesitation, as someone who has served.

“I will always identify as a veteran. The service permanently shapes your values: integrity, hard work, and looking out for your people. It gives you a baseline of resilience that means when business gets tough, you know you’ve survived far worse.”

And his advice for his 21-year-old self, fresh out of Sandhurst?

“Take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Enjoy the adventure, because it goes by in a flash. Carpe every single diem. Only ever regret the things you never had the courage to do. And make a difference – it is better to light a candle than to sit complaining of the dark.” C

Andy, pictured centre, leading proceedings at Buckingham Palace

FOR L EADERS WHO N E VER ST AND STILL

At Alliance Manchester Business School, our short courses transform cutting-edge research into practical tools, empowering leaders to take on tomorrow with clarity and purpose.

Our Advanced Management Achievement Course (also known as AMAC) is a focused three-week journey for military service leaders. Building from core business fundamentals to realworld application, this course gives you the language, tools, and con�dence to thrive in a commercial environment after leaving the Armed Forces.

DISCOVER OUR FULL PORTFOLIO OF COURSES ambs.ac.uk

THE

BAR

Best bar none CIVVY is on a mission to celebrate veteran-owned businesses by curating a bar menu featuring exclusively British Armed Forces-matured beverages.

Whatever your favourite tipple, we’re confident that your next toast can be made with glasses charged by those who have swapped military service for drinks service.

First up, we have three top-shelf offerings, which – in the ‘spirit’ of camaraderie – we encourage readers to sample in a show of support for former colleagues.

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If you swapped defence for distilling, are a brigadierturned-brewer or an ex-military mixologist, drop a note to contact@ civymagazine.co.uk EMAIL US

Sky Wave Signature London Dry Gin

Expedition Spiced Rum, Jerry Can Spirits

The Irish Lion, Black Alpha Irish Whiskey

WHY BUY? Co-founder Andrew Parsons served over 23 years as a Royal Signals officer and it’s hard to doubt the deliciousness of a tipple named the World’s Best Contemporary London Dry Gin by the World Gin Awards.

WHY BUY? Co-founders Dan Freeman and Rhys Williams both served in the Royal Signals (from 2012-2024 and 2011-2016 respectively), wanted a proper drink and – when they couldn’t find one – decided to make it themselves.

WHY BUY? The Irish Lion is a tribute to quiet strength, resilience and the spirit of those who step forward when it matters most. Inspired by Blair Mayne, soldier, rugby Lion and one of the most respected leaders of his generation, this whiskey honours the character he embodied on and off the field.

TASTING NOTES: Fresh and zingy on the nose; its aroma starts your mouth watering before you’ve even tried it. On tasting, it bursts with a delicate crisp, citrusy flavour, followed by a long smooth juniper-led body, ending with quite an intense warm and spicy finish, making it very moreish and unusual.

It has a smooth mouth feel and lingers like a velvet glove on your tongue.

BEST SERVED: …with a neutral tonic such as Navas or Schweppes (at a ratio of one part gin to two parts tonic), over lots of ice and garnished with a slice of red grapefruit.

TASTING NOTES: Built for sipping, this long and warming newcomer uses Caribbean rum as its base and is rich in botanicals. Made in small batches, it opens with a natural sweetness before ginger heat, cassia bark and layered baking spices provide a welcome kick. Clean and gently dry, its rest on bourbon barrel chips provides subtle notes of soft oak and caramel.

BEST SERVED: …poured over a large ice cube (the slow dilution opens up the spice complexity) and garnished with an orange peel twist.

TASTING NOTES: Honeyed sweetness and soft orchard fruits on the nose, layered with fresh apple and subtle citrus. The palate brings green apple, gentle spice, vanilla caramel and oak, with a smooth, warming and exceptionally balanced finish.

BEST SERVED: …neat to appreciate its full character, or with a few drops of water or ice to open up the softer fruit and spice notes.

PRICE: £44

PRICE: £35

PRICE: £69.98 (proceeds will support veteran causes through Combat Stress and War Years Remembered)

ORDER: skywavegin.com

ORDER: jerrycanspirits.co.uk

ORDER: blackalphawhiskey.com civvymagazine.co.uk

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RETAIL RECCE

KIT

wor th carrying

WELL WORTH THE TIME Ignore Garmin’s Call of Duty launch video – the Tactix 8 [47mm AMOLED] doesn’t need it. This is one of the best-built watches on the market and after time on the wrist it genuinely earns its place.

The 47mm sits below the chunkier 51mm in the range and boasts a titanium bezel, sapphire lens, 40m dive rating and a bright display you can easily read on a grey Scottish hillside. The multi-band GPS is pin-sharp, the battery holds a genuine 16 days in smartwatch mode and you get on-wrist calls, a surprisingly useful LED torch, offline topo maps and the full Garmin training suite. Everything works and it works well.

What earns the Tactix bragging rights over a Fenix 8 is its tactical suite – it’s the real deal. Stealth mode kills wireless comms and GPS storage. The kill switch wipes the watch at a tap. Night vision mode plays nicely with NVGs. Add MGRS dualgrid, jumpmaster, waypoint projection, rucking with pack-weight tracking and a preloaded applied ballistics solver, and the package lines up with how a lot of us actually train and navigate.

It’s not cheap and the stock 22mm strap is undersized on a case this chunky – most buyers will swap to a nylon within the week – but neither of those knocks the pleasure of wearing it. If you use the tactical features, it’s hard to beat.

Verdict: Brilliantly built, seriously capable and a proper bit of kit. Worth every penny if you’ll use what it does.

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A PREMIUM RATE RECORD BREAKER Apple’s latest flagship isn’t the kind of upgrade that shouts at you. It’s the kind that earns its keep quietly, day after day, until you realise you haven’t reached for a charger since breakfast. The iPhone 17 Pro Max sets a new benchmark in the Apple line-up – largest display, biggest battery, longest battery life and the most storage Steve Jobs’ empire has ever crammed into a mobile.

In real-world testing, the Pro Max lasted over 21 hours on a 4K video looping test, beating the previous generation by more than an hour – a new endurance record for an iPhone. For anyone who knows what it’s like to run a phone into the ground by midday, that’s not a small thing.

On the camera side, Apple has finally done what photographers and videographers have been asking.

All three rear cameras now share the same 48-megapixel resolution, and the new 18MP Center Stage selfie

camera brings a genuinely fresh approach to front-facing shooting.

The headline addition for video is the ability to shoot 4K120 Dolby Vision – the kind of capability that, not long ago, you’d have needed dedicated kit for. Whether you’re shooting a weekend away with mates or trying to capture something worth keeping, the Pro Max delivers without fuss.

The new aluminium unibody design aids heat dissipation – a practical fix for anyone who’s had a phone throttle mid-session – and the whole package runs on Apple’s A19 Pro chip with faster charging than its predecessor.

Verdict: It’s not cheap. At £1,199 for the base model, it’s a serious commitment. But if you want one device that handles comms, photography and endurance without compromise, this is as good as it gets.

GOOD THINGS DO COME IN SMALL PACKAGES Tipping the scales at under 250g, the DJI Mini 4k is a diminutive drone that slips into a daysack pocket and asks nothing more of you than a battery charge and somewhere to take off. That ‘mass’ matters: it dodges the heavier end of UK law, though you’ll still need to register with the CAA before launch (under a tenner a year and sorted online in minutes).

For around £229 (or £329 for the Fly More Combo with two extra batteries, a charging hub and a shoulder bag), you get the same compact workhorse DJI has been quietly shifting since 2024. A 1/2.3inch sensor pulls crisp 4K UHD at 100Mbps, the three-axis mechanical gimbal keeps it steady in a moderate breeze and a single battery gives you 31 minutes of flight.

RAW stills, QuickShots, panorama and a 4x digital zoom round it out, and the O2 transmission system holds a clean signal well past anything

you’d legally need it to. It isn’t the Pro model, however – there’s no obstacle avoidance, no subject tracking and once the wind passes about 20mph you’ll hear the motors arguing with it. And like a mogwai, you’re strongly advised to not get it wet.

One caveat worth flagging: DJI has just launched the Mini 4K’s successor, the Lito 1, at £299. While the newcomer is better on paper, until stock and pricing settle, the Mini 4K remains the smarter buy – particularly if you’d rather not bin £300 the first time you put one through a tree.

As a transition project, a familyholiday toy or simply a new way of seeing the hills you used to TAB across, it’s hard to argue with.

Pocketable, capable and cheap enough to forgive your mistakes while you learn its quirks.

Verdict: First drone? Stop reading.

Buy it. civvymagazine.co.uk

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EXPERIENCED, EXPERT, LEGAL ASSISTANCE

FIGHTING FOR YOU Howe+Co Solicitors are a leading London law firm specialising in complex litigation against the Ministry of Defence.

We provide a free consultation service for all veterans who consider they have a claim. These can be injury claims or discrimination claims.

Please contact us using our email address below.

GET IN TOUCH howe.co.uk military.veterans.claims@howe.co.uk Phone: + 44 (0) 20 8840 4688 Address: Howe+Co Solicitors, 1010 Great West Road, Brentford, TW8 9BA.

CAREER CHANGE

&Now

Then Mike Pearsall, former Royal Navy Warfare Officer

1. WHERE DID YOU SERVE, AND WHAT DID YOU DO?

I served in the Royal Navy from 2003 to 2010, primarily as a Warfare Officer. I deployed to the Gulf and twice to the Falkland Islands, and completed two circumnavigations, including anti-piracy and counter-narcotics operations globally.

2. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR WORK NOW, AND HOW DID YOU GET THERE?

In the last couple of years, I’ve established my own successful IT consultancy with two friends.

The journey to get here hasn’t been easy though; there have been a lot of occasions where I felt at a disadvantage, through not having properly translated my transferable skills and not having a full appreciation of my worth or what I was capable of outside of my training in the mob. I wouldn’t say there was a single moment when it all clicked – it’s very much been a gradual learning curve.

3. WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING TO GET PAST?

I struggled with the softer approach of civilian management

and to begin with I always felt like I was biting my tongue to avoid getting into trouble with HR! The thing that has struck me most about civilian work though is how you cannot rely on people to get things done on time and correctly. On ship, I always felt like everyone had each other’s back. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a different culture.

4. WHAT’S THE BIGGEST LESSON YOU TOOK FROM LEAVING?

My last day in uniform was disappointing. After handing back my S10 respirator and my ID card – and watching it get unceremoniously cut up in front of me – there wasn’t so much as a thank you or a goodbye. It felt like there was zero gratitude and very much a case of ‘if you’re not with us…’ and ‘you’re on your own now, mate’. I get the impression that is improving these days.

5. BEST THING ABOUT CIVILIAN LIFE?

I didn’t have kids when I was serving, but I now have even more appreciation for those who did and those that do. I

can’t imagine missing so many birthdays, Christmases and other milestones away from my two boys.

6. HARDEST THING TO LEAVE BEHIND?

It might sound cheesy, but I literally still dream about being onboard. My twenties were full of adventure, travel and excitement, so the mundanity of family and work life today can still be a struggle, even after all this time.

7. ONE TIP FOR SOMEONE JUST LEAVING THE FORCES?

Make a new support network.

Right now, you’ve got a network of oppos that you take for granted. Unfortunately, once you’re a civvy, you’ll probably lose touch with them, for a short time at least, and they won’t be able to relate to your new journey just yet. So, reach out to people you know who have left or are leaving. Find other veterans, either locally or in similar target careers, and connect with them.

The great thing about the veteran community is that we’ve all been where you are today, so we’re all happy to help you on your way. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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Good things come in small packages 68

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here is a moment, stepping off the plane at Malta International Airport, when the heat hits you like a warm towel and the air carries the faintest trace of sea salt – and you understand, immediately, that you have arrived somewhere genuinely old. Not old in the way that a Victorian railway station is old.

Old in the way that makes you feel, briefly, like an accomplished archaeologist.

Malta has been doing this to visitors for roughly 7,000 years. The Phoenicians came. Then the Romans. The Knights of St John followed, transforming a windswept archipelago into one of the most formidable fortresses in the Mediterranean. And yet, for all that accumulated history pressing down on every limestone corner, the place remains startlingly easy to visit and, crucially, startlingly affordable.

A country where a cold Cisk lager costs less than two euros, the locals speak excellent English and dinner for two rarely tops 30 quid – Malta is the kind of honest discovery that travel writing was invented for.

THE ISLAND THAT REFUSED TO FALL

7,000 YEARS IN 60 SQUARE MILES

All images: © Visit Malta

Ancient, English-speaking, sun-drenched... and kinder to your wallet than you’d ever expect.

Walk the bastions of Valletta and the weight of the Second World War is palpable in a way that few places in Europe can match. Between 1940 and 1942, Malta endured more than 3,000 air raids – more bombing, in some reckonings, than London suffered during the entire Blitz. The Axis powers understood that knocking Malta out would cut Allied supply lines through the Mediterranean and potentially change the course of the war. The island refused to yield.

In April 1942, King George VI awarded Malta the George Cross – the highest civilian honour in the land – in recognition of what he called “a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history”.

Today that cross appears on the Maltese flag, a small but permanent reminder of what the population endured. The Malta at War Museum in Vittoriosa, set within the actual wartime tunnels dug into the city’s ancient fortifications, brings all this back with remarkable immediacy. You descend into the rock and emerge having understood something profound about resilience.

Malta is smaller than the Isle of Wight, a fact that makes its historical density almost absurd. The island contains the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra temples – Neolithic structures older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids – that rise from clifftops above the southern coast with an unhurried permanence. The Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni is an underground burial complex carved entirely by hand in around 3,600 BC; the carving was done with antler picks and flint tools, and the acoustics inside are so extraordinary that certain frequencies seem to vibrate in the skull rather than the ears.

The Knights of St John arrived in 1530, displaced civvymagazine.co.uk

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R&R from Rhodes by the Ottomans, and proceeded to build one of the great fortified cities of the world.

Valletta – founded by Grand Master Jean de Valette after the Great Siege of 1565 – became the first planned city in Europe. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1980. Stand on the Upper Barrakka Gardens at dusk, look across Grand Harbour towards Vittoriosa and Senglea, and you are looking at a view that has barely changed in four centuries.

It is, without exaggeration, one of the most arresting urban panoramas in Europe.

Smaller than the Isle of Wight yet home to more UNESCO heritage sites per square kilometre than almost anywhere on Earth – Malta rewards the curious traveller at every turn.

SPEAKING YOUR LANGUAGE, SPENDING YOUR POUNDS

Below: The Citadella in Gozo.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: UNESCO Ggantija Temples, a view of Valetta, The Grandmaster’s Palace and the Fort St Angelo.

Here is the practical matter that makes Malta so unusually accessible for British visitors: almost everyone speaks English. Not hesitant, phrasebook English – fluid, natural, often-accented English that reflects four decades of British colonial administration ending in 1964. Road signs are bilingual. Menus are bilingual. Your hotel receptionist may, frankly, speak better English than you do. The island joined the Commonwealth upon independence and that relationship has never felt distant.

The cost of living is meaningfully lower than the UK. A pint – a Cisk, the local lager, which is better than you might expect – costs roughly €1.80 at a local bar. A three-course meal at a decent restaurant rarely exceeds €25 a head. Public transport is cheap and surprisingly comprehensive. Even in peak summer, a comfortable hotel in Sliema or St Julian’s – the main tourist areas, cheerful and well-provisioned – can be secured for well under £100 a night.

THE SUN AS A GIVEN, NOT A GAMBLE British summers are a negotiation. Malta’s are not.

June through September delivers reliably clear skies, sea temperatures climbing into the high 20s Celsius, and the kind of blue that paint manufacturers have been trying to replicate for centuries. The beaches are not enormous – this is a small island – but the water is crystalline and the island’s coves, particularly on Gozo, Malta’s quieter sister island to the north, offer swimming that would be considered exceptional anywhere in the world.

The shoulder months – May and October – are arguably the finest time to visit. Temperatures settle in the mid-20s, the crowds thin, the light on all that golden limestone softens to something almost operatic, and the island’s historical sites can be explored in something closer to comfort than endurance.

FIVE THINGS WORTH KNOWING BEFORE YOU GO l The Valletta ferry from Sliema takes seven minutes and costs under €2 – never take a taxi across the harbour. l Book the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni weeks in advance; entry is capped at 80 visitors per day. l Gozo is easily reached by ferry from Cirkewwa (45 minutes, €4.65 return) and is markedly quieter than Malta proper. l The Maltese eat late – restaurants often don’t fill until 9pm, and the best village feasts (festas) run well past midnight. l Rent a car for at least one day; driving in Valletta is needlessly stressful, but the south of the island is practically unreachable without wheels.

There is a particular pleasure in discovering somewhere that has not yet been smoothed into interchangeability – a place where the hotels are good but not characterless, the food is honest rather than curated, and the history is so thick on the ground that you can feel it underfoot. Malta is still that place. It will not always be.

The afternoon ferries still run to Gozo. The bastions are still there. The George Cross still flies. Go soon, and go before everyone else works out what the Maltese have known all along; that this is one of the finest small countries on Earth, and it happens to offer excellent value for money. C 70

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WHAT THINGS COST

(approximate, based on summer 2025)

Pint of local lager: €1.80 (UK equivalent: £5.50) Three-course dinner (per head): €20–25 (UK equivalent: £45–55) Return bus fare (island-wide): €1.50 (UK equivalent: £3–6) Museum entry €7–10 (UK equivalent: ~£15–20) Mid-range hotel (per night): €70–90 (UK equivalent: £130–180) Return flight from London: £80–140 (advance booking)

Malta is served by Air Malta, Ryanair, Jet2 and easyJet from most UK airports. The official tourism website is visitmalta.com.

The island uses the euro (€). civvymagazine.co.uk

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The North Coast 500 - Britain’s greatest road trip Five hundred miles of raw wilderness, sea lochs and single-track road

T

here is a particular kind of stubborn British pride that asserts our islands can match anywhere in the world for dramatic scenery. Mostly this is fond self-delusion. On the North Coast 500, it is the plain and verifiable truth. The route – launched in 2015, looping north from Inverness around the top of Scotland and back – passes through landscapes so improbable, so extravagantly wild, that first-time drivers frequently pull over simply because they cannot concentrate on the road.

No passport. No airport. No currency exchange.

Just fill the tank in Inverness, point the car north, and surrender to 500 miles of Britain at its most elemental.

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THE ROUTE AT A GLANCE The NC500 begins and ends in Inverness, running clockwise up the east coast through Black Isle and Easter Ross, swinging north through Caithness to the very top of mainland Britain, then tracking west and south along the wild Atlantic coast through Sutherland and Wester Ross before returning via the Great Glen. The loop covers 516 miles, though the true distance – including detours to headlands, beaches and distilleries – will almost certainly be considerably longer.

Suggested route stages: Day 1: Inverness to Dornoch or Golspie (east coast, easy driving).

Day 2: North to Wick and Duncansby Head, overnight Thurso.

Day 3: Along the north coast to Tongue and Durness.

Day 4: South through Assynt to Lochinver or Ullapool.

Day 5: Wester Ross – Torridon and Applecross.

Day 6: South to Inverness via Loch Carron and the Great Glen.

Most people who do it in five days wish they had taken seven.

The Kylesku Bridge spanning Loch a’ Chairn Bhain in the Scottish Highlands

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R&R The northwest corner – from Durness down through Assynt and into Wester Ross – is where the NC500 earns its international reputation. Durness itself sits above white sand beaches that could plausibly be mistaken for the Caribbean, were it not for the temperature and the complete absence of anyone trying to sell you a cocktail. Smoo Cave, a vast sea cavern carved from limestone just east of the village, is one of those geological accidents that does not seem quite real until you are standing inside it.

Nearby Balnakeil Bay is a place of genuinely affecting beauty – wide, deserted, backed by machair grass and dune.

THE ROAD THAT EARNS ITS NAME

Above: View of Torridon Hills, top, and the harbour in Ullapool.

A LANDSCAPE THAT EARNS ITS REPUTATION The east coast leg, heading north from Inverness through Easter Ross and into Caithness, is the route’s quietest stretch – gently rolling farmland, the occasional whisky distillery, the remarkable sands of Dornoch, where Madonna once chose to baptise her son (for reasons the locals still find mildly baffling). It is tempting to rush this section. Resist the temptation.

The Flow Country – the vast blanket bog of Caithness and Sutherland, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site – is one of the great under-visited landscapes in Britain; ancient, austere and alive with curlew and golden plover.

Duncansby Head, a few miles east of John o’ Groats, is the real northeastern extreme of mainland Britain – more dramatic and far less touristy than its famous neighbour. The sea stacks here drop straight into the Pentland Firth, which funnels some of the most powerful tidal races in the world through the gap between Scotland and Orkney. Stand on the headland on a windy morning and you will feel, with some conviction, that you have reached the edge of something.

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Wester Ross contains what many NC500 drivers consider the route’s centrepiece; the Bealach na Ba, the mountain pass to Applecross. The road climbs from sea level to 626 metres through a series of hairpin bends that would not look out of place in the Alps, before dropping to a remote coastal village with a legendary pub, an improbable beach and views across the Inner Sound to Skye and Raasay that have been justifying the drive for as long as there has been a road to drive on. It is the kind of place where people make unilateral decisions to change their lives.

The pass is unsuitable for large vehicles and caravans – check conditions before committing. The alternative coast road to Applecross is gentler and, frankly, also beautiful.

Torridon, just to the south, is older still – the Torridonian sandstone mountains are among the oldest rocks on Earth, formed over 800 million years ago. Beinn Eighe, looming above the loch, was Britain’s first national nature reserve, established in 1951. The walking here is serious – this is not gentle countryside – but the rewards are proportionate.

WHAT IT COSTS AND HOW TO DO IT RIGHT The honest answer to the cost question is... as much or as little as you like. The NC500 has attracted a glut of luxury lodges and boutique hotels in recent years – some of them outstanding – but the route is equally well-served by independent B&Bs, camping and glamping sites, and self-catering cottages at very reasonable prices. Wild camping is legal in Scotland under the Land Reform Act, which opens up options that simply do not exist south of the border.

Fuel costs are the one area where the NC500 punishes complacency. Petrol stations are sparse in the far north and west, and prices reflect the distance from any refinery. Fill up whenever you see a forecourt, keep the tank above half, and do not assume you will find a pump before Ullapool if

When every day feels like a battle, Forcesline is here to back you up.

We’re not here to judge – we’re here to listen, so you never have to battle alone.

Contact Forcesline.

We’re open 09:00–17:00 Monday to Thursday, and 09:00–16:00 on Friday

0800 260 6780 Talk to an advisor via our live chat service

ssafa.org.uk Forcesline is a free, independent helpline, that’s outside of the chain of command for the Armed Forces and their families.

Registered as a charity in England and Wales Number 210760, in Scotland Number SC038056, and in the Republic of Ireland Number 20202001. Established 1885.

R&R THINGS WORTH KNOWING

Above: Glenelg in Western Scotland, top, and Bealach Na Ba - the road to Applecross Opposite from top: Knockan Crag National Nature Reserve, Highland cattle on the Applecross to Shieldaig Coastal Road and Keiss Castle.

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you leave Durness on fumes. The same philosophy applies to food shopping; the excellent local shops in Lochinver and Ullapool are well-stocked, but the gap between them is expansive.

EATING AND DRINKING The NC500 has done wonders for Highland hospitality. The Applecross Inn remains the gold standard – fresh langoustines from the bay, a roaring fire and a view to justify the entire drive – but the competition has improved dramatically since the route’s launch in 2015.

The Kylesku Hotel, perched above the loch of the same name, serves local seafood that would attract serious attention in any city. The Lochinver Larder produces pies – extraordinary, award-winning pies – that have become a genuine pilgrimage destination in their own right. And the Drumbeg Hotel, should you happen by it on a quiet evening, is the kind of quietly excellent local pub that makes you wonder why you should ever leave Scotland.

Whisky, inevitably, demands plenty of attention (and later consumption). The Balblair, Glenmorangie and Dalmore distilleries all sit on or near the east coast leg; the Clynelish distillery near Brora produces a coastal single malt that rewards the detour considerably. None require a booking and all offer tours for under £20 a head. It is advisable to have a designated driver or to pace yourself with the quiet conviction of someone who has several hundred miles of single-track road still ahead.

Drive anticlockwise. The majority of campervans and motorhomes tackle the route anticlockwise, so going in the same direction means meeting them head-on less often in the passing places – a meaningful qualityof-life improvement.

Book accommodation well in advance for July and August. The NC500’s growing popularity has made last-minute stays genuinely difficult in peak season, particularly anywhere between Durness and Ullapool.

Single-track roads require patience and courtesy.

Passing places are for passing – not parking, not photography, not waiting for a better view. Locals use these roads daily and are not uniformly charmed by dawdling tourists.

The midges are real! From June to August, particularly in still and damp conditions, they are formidable. Smidge repellent – made in Scotland, more effective than anything else on the market – is not optional. Neither is an understanding that still evenings near water will involve negotiation.

Mobile phone signals disappear for long stretches.

Download offline maps before you leave Inverness.

Offline OS Maps and Google Maps both work well.

And also be sure to download the route notes from northcoast500.com.

Allow more time than you think you need. Almost everyone who drives the NC500 in five days wishes they had taken seven. The route rewards spontaneity – a sign pointing to an unnamed beach, a distillery that wasn’t in the plan, a walk that takes twice as long because you kept stopping to look.

The weather is part of the experience. A moody, rain-lashed Assynt is not a disappointment. It is the Highlands doing what the Highlands do, and it is frequently more dramatic and more memorable than the sunny version would have been.

There is something clarifying about a journey through landscape on this scale. The NC500 strips away the accumulated noise of ordinary life – the notifications, the obligations, the grey ambient pressure of the working week – and replaces it with something simpler: a road, a view, a decision about where to stop for the night. By the third day, most drivers and passengers find they are sleeping better than they have in months.

The route returns to Inverness along the southern shore of the Beauly Firth, the Highlands giving way gradually to something more recognisably urban, the mountains retreating into the rear-view mirror.

Most people, pulling into the car park, feel a specific, low-level grief that will recur whenever the weather turns dull and the expansive catalogue of stunning photographs resurface.

The solution, the NC500’s veterans will tell you, is simply to start planning your next visit. C

WHAT IT COSTS

(approximate, 2026 prices)

Accommodation per night (budget: camping/hostel/B&B): £25–50 Accommodation per night (mid-range hotel/lodge): £90–160 Fuel for the full loop (average family car): £120–180 total Meals per day (self-catering or pub lunches): £20–30 Meals per day (eating out, mid-range): £40–70 Whisky distillery tour: £10–20 per person Activities and entry fees (per day): Free to £50 Estimated total: 7-day trip for 2 people (budget): £700–900 Estimated total: 7-day trip for 2 people (mid-range): £1,400–2,000 The NC500 begins and ends in Inverness, accessible by train from London in approximately eight hours, or by air from most UK airports via Inverness Airport. Full route information, accommodation listings and maps can be found at northcoast500.com. Wild camping is legal across most of Scotland under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 — but leave no trace. The Bealach na Ba pass is closed to large vehicles; always check road conditions at trafficscotland.org before departure.

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Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

CIVVY CINEMA

Flights of ncy Fa Welcome to the CIVVY Cinema, which has four films currently showing – watched and reviewed without the studio press release doing the talking.

No star ratings, just honest calls on what’s worth your investment of time and money.

If you’re a film fan and want to join our reviews team, get in touch through the usual channels. Previous experience not necessary, strong opinions essential.

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Top Gun — 40th Anniversary Forty years on, Top Gun remains absolute nonsense in places – shiny, macho, sun-baked and emotionally unsubtle – but it is also still one of cinema’s great adrenaline delivery systems.

Back in cinemas from 13 May for its anniversary run, Tony Scott’s fighter-pilot classic puts Tom Cruise’s Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell through the grinder at the US Navy’s elite fighter weapons school, where bravado, rivalry, grief and professional excellence collide at high speed.

For veterans, the appeal is obvious but complicated. This is not a documentary about service life. It is a recruitment-poster fantasy with a Kenny Loggins soundtrack. Yet it still captures something recognisable: the strange bond between competitive professionals, the weight of a mistake, the importance of trust under pressure and the way grief

can sit behind swagger. Goose’s death still lands because the film understands, beneath the aviators and beach volleyball, that confidence can be cracked in a second. The aerial photography remains the reason to see it on a big screen. Modern blockbusters often look bigger, but not always better. Top Gun has a physicality that cuts through; cockpits, carrier decks, real metal, real speed. For anyone who saw it first time around, this is a nostalgia hit. For younger readers, it is a chance to see why the film became such a cultural landmark – and why Top Gun: Maverick had so much emotional runway decades later.

CIVVY verdict: Big-screen military nostalgia with more heart than it is often given credit for. Dated, yes. Still thrilling?

Absolutely.

The Christophers

Mortal Kombat II Nobody walks into Mortal Kombat II expecting subtlety, and that is probably for the best. Released in UK cinemas in May, the sequel brings back the fantasy-fighting chaos, now with fan-favourite champions and Johnny Cage joining the battle against Shao Kahn’s threat to Earthrealm.

This is a film built for viewers who grew up feeding coins into arcade machines or battering controllers in front of a mate’s telly. The plot is, frankly, secondary. What matters is the tournament structure, the recognisable characters, the brutal choreography and the sense that everyone involved knows exactly what kind of film they are making. Reviews have broadly noted the same thing; the story is thin, but the fights are energetic, gory and

often knowingly ridiculous.

For a veteran audience, the fit is not ‘military’ in any serious sense. It is more about decompression. Sometimes the best cinema after a long week is not worthy drama but loud, daft, highly-stylised combat where good, evil, loyalty and rivalry are painted in primary colours. There is a team dynamic here, a warriorcode quality, and enough oldschool 90s energy to appeal to those who remember the original games and films.

It is not for everyone. The dialogue can be clunky, and anyone hoping for emotional depth will leave hungry. But as a Friday-night action blast, it does the job.

CIVVY verdict: Bloody, daft and made for fans. Not clever, but rarely boring.

Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers is the curveball of this issue’s selection. Released in UK and Ireland cinemas on 15 May by Picturehouse Entertainment, it stars Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, James Corden and Jessica Gunning in a story about creativity, legacy and greed. Picturehouse describes it as “a sharp and remarkable tale of creativity, legacy, and avarice”, while Sight and Sound called it a surprisingly warm film about approaching death and the loss of talent.

On paper, that may not scream ‘veteran audience’. But it earns its place because CIVVY should not only be about combat, kit and action. Many veterans are navigating second careers, family change, ageing parents, identity shifts and the question of what they leave behind. The Christophers speaks to that territory: what your work

means, who owns your story and what happens when reputation becomes a battleground.

McKellen is the obvious draw, bringing gravitas without making the film feel stiff.

Soderbergh, meanwhile, keeps things agile. This is adult cinema in the proper sense: witty, thoughtful, character-led and interested in people who have lived a bit. It is the sort of film that gives you something to talk about afterwards, rather than simply sending you home with ringing ears.

It will not satisfy anyone after a full-throttle blockbuster. But for readers who enjoy a smart, well-acted drama with bite, The Christophers is well worth seeking out.

CIVVY verdict: Intelligent, mature and quietly resonant – a strong choice for readers who want more than spectacle.

Michael There are some artists whose lives are almost too large, too strange and too contested to fit neatly into a cinema biopic.

Michael Jackson is one of them. Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson as his famous uncle, arrives with huge built-in appeal, a stack of unforgettable songs and no shortage of controversy.

The film was released in UK cinemas on 22 April 2026, and its opening was enormous: it reportedly took £11.6 million across the UK and Ireland in its first three days, making it the biggest UK opening for a music biopic and outperforming the equivalent performance of Bohemian Rhapsody.

For CIVVY readers, the obvious question is whether this is more than a jukebox nostalgia trip. In places, it is. The film

is strongest when it focuses on discipline, performance and the cost of excellence. Jackson is shown not simply as a natural genius, but as someone forged by pressure, family expectation and relentless rehearsal. That theme will resonate with many veterans: the idea that talent alone is never enough, and that elite performance often comes with private damage.

Jaafar Jackson is the film’s biggest asset. The physical resemblance is startling, but it is the movement that really sells it. The stage sequences have energy, precision and spectacle, and the familiar songs still do much of the heavy lifting.

When the film recreates the Motown 25 performance, the arrival of superstardom feels genuinely cinematic. Even those who have mixed feelings about Jackson may find themselves

caught by the sheer force of the music and choreography.

Where Michael struggles is in its caution. The film focuses mainly on Jackson’s rise and ‘imperial phase’, reportedly ending around 1988, before the later allegations and scandals that would dominate public debate about his legacy.

That choice makes the film more accessible, but also more limited. It creates a tension the film never fully resolves.

As a celebration of musical genius, Michael is glossy, emotional and often highly watchable. As a full portrait of a complicated public figure, it feels incomplete. It wants the audience to marvel, dance and remember the hits, but it is less willing to sit in the discomfort of the bigger story. Still, as a cinema experience, there is plenty here. The production is polished, the performances are committed, and the soundtrack is almost impossible to resist. It is just worth going in with eyes open: this is not the definitive Michael Jackson story. It is the authorised, crowd-pleasing first act.

CIVVY verdict: A slick, powerful and often thrilling music biopic, lifted by Jaafar Jackson’s performance – but too careful to feel complete. civvymagazine.co.uk

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Veteran-Owned British Rum Built Without Compromise Between us, we served 17 years in the Royal Signals. We wanted a proper drink to share with mates.

Something with character, made by people who give a damn.

We couldn't find it.

So we made it ourselves.

JerryCanSpirits.co.uk

Whiskey With A Purpose Founded by veterans and crafted in Northern Ireland, Black Alpha Irish Whiskey is a premium Irish whiskey brand built on heritage, resilience, and service. Every bottle carries the motto “For Those In The Arena”, a tribute to those who step forward when others step back.

Produced in Northern Ireland, Black Alpha combines authentic military roots with premium small-batch craftsmanship. Supporting the armed forces community remains central to the brand, with donations from online bottle sales going to Combat Stress, the UK’s leading veterans’ mental health charity.

The Dara A smooth and approachable 5-year Double Wood Irish Whiskey, The Dara blends Single Malt and Single Grain whiskey matured in bourbon casks before finishing in virgin oak. Expect bright citrus notes, gentle spice, and soft oak character.

Dara 16 The Dara 16 is a premium 16-year-old Irish Single Grain whiskey matured in ex-bourbon casks and finished in Oloroso sherry hogsheads. Rich, rare, refined, and beautifully presented, it is a standout addition to any whiskey collection.

The Irish Lion The Irish Lion honours SAS founding figure Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne DSO. & 3 Bars. Developed in partnership with the War Years Remembered Museum and with the blessing of the Mayne family, this special release blends sherry-matured single malt with Calvados-finished single-grain whiskey. £5 from every sale is donated to War Years Remembered.

With distinctive whiskeys, authentic provenance, and a commitment to supporting veterans, Black Alpha is proving that great whiskey can stand for something more.

blackalphawhiskey.com

MOTORS

Capri sun rises again T

hose of us who remember the original Ford Capri will recall its iconic and distinctly British presence on the road. Most men who could afford one bought one – usually in canary yellow, preferably with a black vinyl roof. Those who couldn’t stump up the price tag of just under £1,000 sneered with barely concealed jealousy at friends and colleagues lucky enough to own one. And when it came to the opposite sex, any Capri owner was firmly considered boyfriend or girlfriend material.

When news of the new Capri broke, we briefly considered going full nostalgic – digging out Ally’s flares and tank top and Lorraine’s yellow hot pants – though on reflection, perhaps that was a step too far.

Our test car arrived in canary yellow (Vivid Yellow, to be precise), though that’s where the similarities ended. Not that that meant we should be disheartened – after all, the new Ford Puma is far better than the original.

Starting with the looks: the once-sporty coupé has been reborn as an electric crossover, with sleek lines, sweeping curves and a commanding front grille. We both agreed it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Polestar 2 – a car we both love – so, so far, so good.

Inside, there’s generous head and legroom, reduced slightly by the large panoramic sunroof, though as neither of us tops six feet,

it’s a trade-off well worth making. Storage is plentiful, with a generous boot if that matters to you. The interior doesn’t quite reach luxury territory and some materials feel a touch plasticky, though not distractingly so.

The sports seats, however, were a highlight – comfortable, supportive and easy to get in and out of.

The Capri comes loaded with technology, centred around a 14.6-inch touchscreen that houses the main controls. We discovered by happy accident that the screen slides sideways to reduce glare – and in doing so, reveals additional storage and USB points.

Out on the road, acceleration is strong – 0-62mph in 5.3 seconds, the ride is impressively smooth and the steering precise and responsive.

The model we tested was the dual-motor, four-wheel-drive variant with 335bhp and a claimed range of 390 miles. In mixed realworld conditions, that figure may come close to achievable.

Prices start from around £48,000; our test car, with options, came to approximately £56,000.

ALLY AND LORRAINE SAY: Loved the squarish steering wheel, and as the week progressed we found ourselves enjoying the Capri more and more. We just wish we could have had it a little longer.

Ally Ballingall is an awardwinning broadcaster and President of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers.

A respected voice, Ally hosts the Scotland the Drive podcast.

Lorraine Ballingall is a member of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers and Co-ordinator of the Scottish Car of the Year Awards. She is also a contributor to the Scotland the Drive podcast.

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MOTORS

Honda’s HR-V

gets Jazzy

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I

t’s hard to believe the Honda HR-V has been a fixture on our roads since the late 1990s. While it was always reliable, functional and practical, it was never going to win any beauty contests. The third-generation model, however, is a different proposition entirely – a smart, stylish small SUV that finally looks the part. It’s front-wheel drive and a self-charging hybrid, so there’s no need to plug in.

Inside, the HR-V feels genuinely premium, a real step up from its predecessors. The mixed leather and fabric seats are comfortable and well-finished, and there’s plenty of space up front – generous legroom, good headroom and no shortage of storage. The rear is equally comfortable, as confirmed by our granddaughters, though admittedly they don’t require much in the way of head or legroom just yet. The boot offers 304 litres of luggage space, expanding to a very useful 1,290 litres with the rear seats folded flat.

All HR-Vs come well equipped as standard, with 18-inch alloy wheels, front and rear parking sensors, LED auto headlights, adaptive cruise control and a nine-inch touchscreen with integrated sat-nav, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Mid-level Advance trim – likely to be the best seller – adds an automatic tailgate (a genuine convenience when your hands are full), dual-zone climate control and a heated steering wheel. Rangetopping Advance Style models go further still, with a contrast roof colour, LED active cornering lights, an upgraded audio system and wireless smartphone charging. We also appreciated the retention of real dials and physical buttons – a welcome alternative to all-digital controls.

Power comes from a 1.5-litre petrol engine paired with two electric motors. On the road, the HR-V pulls away smoothly and nearsilently, with responsive steering and excellent all-round visibility. The ride is relaxed and composed – and we both genuinely enjoyed driving it, right up until the moment you put your foot down. Push hard and the revs climb sharply, accompanied by a pronounced roar from the engine that rather breaks the spell.

The model we tested was the Advance Style Plus, priced at £39,525.

ALLY SAYS: Honda’s well-earned reputation for reliability makes the HR-V a solid choice for anyone in the market for a well-rounded small SUV. That said, the segment is competitive, and some rivals may offer more in the way of outright performance.

LORRAINE SAYS: I thoroughly enjoyed our week with the HR-V. Aside from the engine noise under hard acceleration, there was very little to fault.

Impressively practical and economical too – we saw around 50mpg over the course of the week.

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MOTORS M

any readers will have no memory of the original Renault 5 – the three-tofive-door hatchback that arrived in 1972 and made an immediate, outsized impact on the car-buying public. Lorraine was barely out of primary school at the time, though already desperate for a licence having spent two months in Canada, where you could get behind the wheel at 14.

Comebacks are nothing new in the automotive world – the Fiat 500, the MINI, the Capri – and they don’t always recapture what made the original special. In some cases, a new name altogether might have served them better. The new Renault 5, however, feels like Renault have got the balance just right. This isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake – it’s a car with genuine broad appeal.

The first and most significant change, of course, is that it’s gone fully electric – a bold move in an already crowded small EV sector. What sets the Renault 5 apart from its rivals, both established and newly arrived, is a compelling combination: striking, head-turning design, a range of genuinely adventurous colour options, real versatility and – perhaps most importantly – a price point that makes it accessible. It comes as a five-door as standard, riding on 18-inch wheels that suit the car’s proportions well.

Inside, the seats are comfortable and the front cabin is well-proportioned, with good space for driver and passenger alike.

The rear is a touch more restricted, though perfectly adequate for children or smaller adults. The interior feels modern and wellconsidered – screens are easy to navigate, the infotainment system is excellent, and while there is some plastic in evidence, nothing feels cheap or poorly finished. Boot space divided opinion – we thought it on the small side, though friends who came for a closer look were more than satisfied.

On the road, the Renault 5 handles with real confidence. Visibility is good, the various driving modes are worth exploring and the performance – nippy, responsive and genuinely enjoyable – caught us pleasantly off guard. Safety provision is solid across the range, with parking sensors fitted as standard and a four-star Euro NCAP rating.

Pricing starts from around £21,500 after the government grant, with even the top-of-the-range model coming in at under £30,000 – representing remarkable value in the current market.

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A French fancy

ALLY SAYS: The Renault 5 is a genuinely fun car to drive, it looks fantastic and turned heads across every age group. The range is decent and the pricing is seriously competitive. My only gripes? No builtin alarm and no under-bonnet storage – minor points, but worth flagging.

Aside from that, a clear thumbs up.

LORRAINE SAYS: I remember taking driving lessons in 1977, and even then the Renault 5 was firmly on my wish list – if we had such things in those days. Several decades on, the new model would still make the cut. We were told that the criss-cross interior roof lining – a particular favourite of our granddaughters, who are never shy with their opinions – is made from recycled bottles. A nice touch.

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MOTORS C

onflict in the Middle East has once again exposed just how vulnerable the global fuel supply chain really is.

With tensions around the Strait of Hormuz – the waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes – drivers across the UK and beyond are bracing for another round of pump price pain.

For anyone still running a petrol or diesel car, it’s a familiar and unwelcome pattern: geopolitical instability thousands of miles away translating directly into higher costs on the forecourt within days. And while the broader economic picture looks uncertain, with energy shocks raising the spectre of recession, there’s one corner of the automotive world that tends to benefit from exactly this kind of turbulence – the electric vehicle (EV) market.

Every time oil markets wobble, the case for ‘plugging in’ sharpens. EV sales in the UK reached a record high in March, with 86,120 vehicles sold during the month, and Motorfinity – which offers

Armed Forces members and service veterans significant discounts on new cars – reported that the number of enquiries they fielded about electric models was 234 per cent higher than the same period in 2025.

CIVVY took advantage of a rare break in calls to the specialist provider to ask Luke Chambers, one of the company’s sales account managers, to sell us the electric dream…

RANGE REALITY “Range is definitely everyone’s biggest concern, but the reality of what you need – as well as what the modern cars can do – are often far different to what you’d expect. Most people’s daily average trip might only be about 20 miles. When you consider that one of our best-selling EVs has a combined range of 300-400 miles, it’s easy to see how an EV can fit into your lifestyle, even if you’re making a longer journey visiting family. There are more than 80,000 public charging points

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in the UK, with government grants available to save £500 on installing a charger at home too, so it could be easier than you think to make the switch.”

LONG-TERM COSTS “Savings on fuel cost has always been a big benefit, and this has been highlighted in recent months, where charging up an EV has sometimes been around 78 per cent less than filling up the tank. The savings extend to ongoing maintenance costs too. EVs typically only have around 20 moving parts, compared to 2,000 in traditional vehicles, so there is less risk of forking out for costly fixes. Servicing is still required, but tasks like oil changes, transmission fluid services and fuel system maintenance are gone, so you can spend more time enjoying your car and less time and money keeping it running.”

THE PERFECT TIME “In 2025 the government launched a grant to help people save up to £3,700 on a new EV, with the biggest savings to be made on cars with the lowest emission scores. Lots of manufacturers have applied this discount to their vehicles and many have taken advantage of the savings already.” motorfinity.uk/civvymag

Luke Chambers, Sales Account Manager at Motorfinity

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PAPERBACK Wri ter

Over the past eight years Steve Higgs has become one of the world’s most successful independent authors, with readers devouring over a billion of his pages digitally. The former Army captain – who joined the REME in 1988, gained a late entry commission in 2010 and hung up his uniform in 2012 – has just published the first book of his bestselling crime series Albert Smith’s Culinary Capers in paperback for the first time. The prolific writer gives CIVVY chapter and verse on his growing literary legacy…

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I

didn’t set out to become a best-selling novelist in much the same way one doesn’t set out to invade France because, frankly, that would require a plan, some foresight and a vague understanding of what you’re doing. I had none of those things. If you’d asked me in my early years what I’d end up doing, I’d have said something practical. Something sensible.

Possibly involving spanners. Certainly not sitting in a staying awake. But writing a book? That seemed shed making things up for a living. absurd. That’s the sort of thing done by pipe-smoking And yet, here we are. intellectuals in tweed jackets, not someone who As a child, I was not what you’d call academically knows the inner workings of a gearbox. gifted. Or even academically present. Most lessons Except, as it turns out, it isn’t. Because one day, I passed me by in a blur of daydreaming and clocksimply started. watching, punctuated by the desperate hope that the Now, military life prepares you for many things. bell might ring early. But there was one exception: Being shouted at. Being cold. Being wet. Being creative writing. For reasons I still don’t entirely shouted at while cold and wet. What it doesn’t understand, I was rather good at it. At ten years explicitly prepare you for is writing a novel. But, old I won a county-wide writing award, which, in and this is crucial, it does give you something far hindsight, was probably the universe waving a small more valuable: the ability to keep going long after flag and saying, “oi, you… any sensible person would this way”. have stopped. Which, as Naturally, I ignored it. it happens, is exactly what I CAME FROM A MILITARY I came from a military writing a book requires.

FAMILY. TWO OLDER family. Two older siblings My grammar, for SIBLINGS WERE ALREADY were already in uniform and example, was dreadful. the idea that I might do Truly dreadful. I owned IN UNIFORM AND THE IDEA anything else simply didn’t a book called Grammar THAT I MIGHT DO ANYTHING occur. So, at 17, an age when for Grown-Ups, which I ELSE SIMPLY DIDN’T OCCUR. most people are still working consulted with the sort of out how to operate a kettle, I desperation usually reserved joined the Army as a mechanic in the Royal Electrical for bomb disposal manuals. Apostrophes were treated and Mechanical Engineers. And, rather annoyingly for as hostile elements. Commas wandered about with no the narrative, I was good at it. clear purpose. It was chaos.

I advanced quickly. Promotions came.

And then there was the small matter of actually Responsibilities followed. And before long, I found writing the thing. myself fully embedded in a life defined by discipline, One hundred thousand words. That’s not a structure and the occasional bout of creative suffering. book, it’s a campaign. You start full of enthusiasm, The Army, as it turns out, is very good at turning you convinced it will all be over quickly, and then, into someone who can function on minimal sleep, somewhere around the middle, you realise you’ve questionable food and a general sense of impending made a terrible mistake and there is no way out except doom. But all the while, in the background, there was forward. this irritating itch: writing.

I failed spectacularly. My magnum opus was, in It never went away. many ways, a disaster. But only the first time.

Fast forward nearly 25 years and there I am, Because here’s the thing about military life: it does perched on a bar stool in the officers’ mess, staring not tolerate defeat. You can be exhausted, hungry, at a laptop like it’s some sort of unexploded device. thoroughly fed up and questioning every life choice I’d written the odd article for military magazines. that led you to this moment, but you do not stop. You I’d spent countless hours on guard duty inventing regroup, you reassess and you go again. elaborate stories in my head, mostly as a way of So, I did. civvymagazine.co.uk

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N E W R E L E A S E F RO M H E L I O N A N D CO M PA N Y

The Russia–Ukraine War has produced many surprises, but none more profound — or more consequential for the future of armed conflict — than the explosive ascent of the drone. In Rise of the Machines, Illya Sekirin offers the first comprehensive, insiderinformed study of how unmanned systems have come to dominate the modern battlefield.

Rich in operational detail, strategic insight and first-hand testimony, Rise of the Machines is an essential guide to the conflict that is redefining twenty-firstcentury combat. It shows not only how drones changed this war, but how they will shape all wars to come.

An unparalleled account of how drones reshaped every level of war: tactics, operations and strategy.

DRONE WARFARE IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: TACTICS, OPERATIONS, STRATEGY

ILLYA SEKIRIN

EDITED BY

ANDREW SIMMS

"To all those in armies that take themselves and their future capabilities seriously (and, for that matter, to all those with an interest in such things), I commend this book in the strongest terms and urge you to read it."

Major General (Retd) Dr Andrew Sharpe

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I left the Army and entered civilian life, which is a strange and confusing place where people commute, drink artisan coffee and expect you to explain yourself. I took a job. I learned new skills. I endured the peculiar indignity of no longer being the one with all the answers.

Naturally, my writing stalled. But the story wouldn’t leave me alone.

So, I forced it.

Late nights. Early mornings. Weekends sacrificed.

Words dragged out of my head like reluctant recruits from their beds on a particularly early and wet morning. And eventually, in June 2017, I published my first novel: Paranormal Nonsense… to the rapturous sound of absolute silence. It landed with all the impact of a damp sock, which, as it turns out, Above: Steve in civvies with his wife, is entirely normal. Because writing the book is only and in uniform (front centre) at the half the battle. The other half is making sure people School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in Bordon, Hampshire. know it exists. And that, I discovered, is a war of an entirely different kind.

Social media. Websites.

Newsletters. Marketing.

It’s like being handed a I DID SOMETHING THE ARMY completely new theatre of WOULD PROBABLY DESCRIBE operations with no map Pork Pie Pandemonium: AS ‘BOLD TO THE POINT OF and being told, “off you go Albert Smith’s Culinary RECKLESSNESS’ WHEN I Capers by Steve Higgs is then”.

QUIT MY JOB TO BECOME published in paperback by So, I did what the Army Vinci Books at £9.99.

A FULL-TIME AUTHOR. had trained me to do: I refused to accept defeat and knuckled down. With effort came more books. Then more again. I didn’t not found a wife and had children, but when other wait for inspiration, because inspiration is unreliable authors ask me how I produce a book almost every and tends to wander off at inconvenient moments. single month, the answer is always the same: I was in Instead, I treated writing like a job and showed up the Army. The discipline that brought you all those every single day. successes in uniform is transferable to whatever your And slowly things began to change. next challenge might be.

A few sales. Then a few more. Reviews started People still ask if I miss life in the military and to appear. Some kind, some less so, but all useful. to some extent I do. The camaraderie. The shared Readers asked for more and told others about the fun purpose. The knowledge that you’re part of something books they had found. And like any good campaign, bigger than yourself. Writing, by contrast, is a solitary momentum started to build. business. It’s just you and the blinking cursor, locked In September 2019, I did something the Army in a daily battle of wills. But it has its rewards. would probably describe as “bold to the point of Every message from a reader. Every review. Every recklessness” when I quit my job to become a fullnote saying a book made someone laugh or helped time author. them escape for a few hours – those things matter.

As I write this article in April 2026, I do so while More than I expected they would. taking a break from my 151st novel. Yes, you read I didn’t set out to become a best-selling novelist. I that right. My life is quieter now, or would be had I simply refused to retreat until I got there. C civvymagazine.co.uk

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BRIEFING NOTES

Their words, in their own words.

The CIVVY library is open for visitors and will serve to showcase titles written by military veterans to those seeking some holiday reading material more engaging than an anthology of Defence Instructions and Notices.

Who better to sell you their stories than the authors themselves?

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stor

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

Origin ies

Woodentop: Her Majesty’s Foot Guards, Adventure Drinking, and Northern Ireland AUTHOR: Tim Neely joined the British Army in August 1987, fresh out of school and aged just 16. After enduring nine months of infantry training at the Guards Depot in Pirbright, he earned his place in the ranks of the Irish Guards and went on to complete multiple tours of Northern Ireland.

PUBLISHER’S SPIEL: Tim delivers an unflinching portrayal of life as a young soldier, told with characteristic honesty and selfdeprecating humour. He presents a gripping, visceral narrative of his time in the British Army, revealing both the triumphs and the hardships of professional soldiering. Woodentop: Her Majesty’s Foot Guards, Adventure Drinking, and Northern Ireland is a raw and unforgettable memoir that captures the culture, camaraderie, chaos and constant danger of serving during the Troubles.

because I was tired of seeing books about Special Forces soldiers on the bookshelves; I think it gives civilians, and especially young men, the wrong impression of the Army. The truth is that 99.9 per cent of soldiers don’t have those ‘Andy McNab’ experiences, and though maybe not as ‘exciting’, our stories can be just as interesting and are definitely more relatable.

I wrote this book to try and make sense of what happened to me between the ages of 16 and 24, and to try and understand the ambivalence I sometimes still feel towards the Army and my service.

Woodentop is not a criticism of the Army – after all, I wanted to be a soldier – but it is honest, genuinely honest. I served from 1987 until 1996 and it was a completely different world – one with completely different attitudes – and this is reflected in the book, so be warned!

WRITER’S SALES PITCH: I decided to write Woodentop

ORDER: Via Amazon or direct from helion.co.uk

AUTHOR: In March 2022, Illya Sekirin – a Ukrainian born, naturalised Canadian – volunteered to fight for Ukraine and was trained as a drone operator. In addition to frontline service, he worked as a translator for the Ukrainian General Staff and became an unofficial adviser to several members of the Ukrainian High Command.

PUBLISHER’S SPIEL: The Russia-Ukraine War has produced many surprises, but none more profound – or more consequential for the future of armed conflict – than the explosive ascent of the drone.

In Rise of the Machines, Illya offers the first comprehensive, insider-informed study of how unmanned systems have come to dominate the modern battlefield. Rich in operational detail, strategic insight and first-hand testimony, Rise of the Machines is an essential guide to the conflict that is redefining 21st-century combat.

Image: Vadym Pliashechko / State Border Guard Service of Ukraine / the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

WRITER’S SALES PITCH: In writing Rise of the Machines, I set out to meet four goals: to present a case study on the development of drone and electronic warfare technologies during the Russia-Ukraine war; to showcase the theories on drone tactics and operations I advised the Ukrainian High

Command to adopt; to explain my personal involvement in the drone war, first as a pilot then as a military adviser, including a detailed overview of the operations in which I was involved; and to sketch out the potential role of drones in future conflicts.

My book is intended for a wide audience, but the information provided on its pages do not give the enemy any insights that he doesn’t already know. While many of my ideas on drone warfare would have been invaluable to him at the beginning of 2024, he has since largely come to the same conclusions. Sharing this knowledge with Ukraine’s steadfast supporters, however, could still make a huge difference in preparing the West for – and thus deterring – an armed conflict with the hostile coalition of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Order: helion.co.uk

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

Rise of the Machines – Drone Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War: Tactics, Operations, Strategy

Faultlines of War AUTHOR: Ryan Mayo joined the British Army in 1990, aged 16, initially serving with the Royal Artillery. He later completed P Company and went airborne with 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, and served until 1996. He is now a selfpublished author, who writes gritty, character-driven military thrillers drawn from lived experience, veteran accounts and his time as an adult instructor with the Sussex Army Cadet Force.

WRITER’S SALES PITCH: The Faultlines of War series came from a simple truth I carried long after I left the Army: the fighting doesn’t always stop when the shooting does. Service leaves marks, some visible, most not, and I wanted to write stories that felt honest about that reality without turning soldiers into superheroes or cardboard cutouts. I’ve always been drawn to the human side of conflict; the bonds, the dark humour, the exhaustion, the pride, the fear you don’t show, and the way duty can sit alongside doubt. During my own time in uniform, and later through friendships with other veterans,

I heard the same themes again and again: the memories people keep quiet, the moments that still wake them at three in the morning, and the way families carry the weight as well. Those conversations stayed with me, and writing became the place I could put them down with respect. What I hope readers get is immersion; boots-onthe-ground realism, emotional tension, and characters who feel like real people making hard choices. Yes, there’s action, danger and threat, but the heartbeat of the series is what war does to identity, loyalty and relationships across generations. Each book is designed to stand alone, but together they build a larger legacy story; the kind where courage and consequences walk side by side, and where survival doesn’t always look heroic.

Order: ryanmayo.uk

If you’ve swapped service for a stab at literature and have a fiction or non-fiction release to champion to the veteran community, we want to hear from you, drop a note to contact@civymagazine.co.uk civvymagazine.co.uk

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Through the eyes of warriors Former Army officer Derek Plews worked as a journalist in Northern Ireland before becoming a UK Civil Service press officer. As a reservist, he deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 and subsequently completed tours of duty in Iraq. He is the author of Shamrocks Among the Poppies – a harrowing account of the siege of Musa Qal’eh – the story of which he shares here...

T

he Colours of the Royal Irish Regiment, two banners, woven in silk of the finest quality, are emblazoned with the battle honours awarded to it – and its antecedents – reflecting a glorious history that spans more than 300 years.

One of the earliest is Martinique, in 1762. The most recent is Iraq, in 2003. Others include Barrosa (1811); Sevastapol (1854); Egypt (1882-1884); South Africa (18991902); Somme (1916 and 1918) Ypres (1914/15/17/18); North Africa (1942-43); Italy (1943-45); Normandy Landings (1944); and Korea (1950-51).

But there is no place on the banners for Musa Qal’eh 2006, even though the fighting that took place there, during that long, hot summer and early autumn, was on a par with some of the other actions listed, both in terms of the ferocity

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of the combat and the steadiness and fortitude displayed by the soldiers.

Of course, the lack of a Musa Qal’eh battle honour can be easily explained. The Royal Irish Regiment did not serve there as a formed unit in 2006. The bulk of the battalion was in barracks, behind the imposing grey stone walls of Fort George, near Inverness, recovering from an operational tour in southern Iraq and preparing to deploy to Afghanistan 18 months later.

But nearly 60 Royal Irish soldiers, formed into two rifle platoons, and two mortar detachments, did find themselves in the blast furnace that was northern Helmand that year, fighting for their lives under the title of Easy Company, 3 Para Battlegroup, 16 Air Assault Brigade.

Barrosa and Somme platoons were composites, put together from the cream of the first battalion in response to a call for reinforcements for an under-strength 3 Para facing a

growing Taliban insurgency.

The story of Easy Company has been well told by the man who commanded it, Adam Jowett, a Parachute Regiment officer, in his excellent work entitled No Way Out. But as I read it, two things occurred to me. The first was that it was an officer’s account, based on his own recollections and experiences.

The second was that there was room for another version, told from a different perspective: a soldiers’ eye view, from closer to the coalface, reflecting the contribution made by the Royal Irish Regiment Rangers and NCOs who formed the bulk of the fighting force, and told in their own words. At the same time, I felt a new account represented an opportunity to plug a gap in the regimental historiography.

And so, Shamrocks Among the Poppies was born.

The title reflects the Royal Irish Regiment’s tactical recognition

WAR STORIES

reports and letters, I had to persuade them to speak to me face-to-face (or at least on the phone). And then I had to get them to open up. I found myself falling back on interview techniques I had been taught as a trainee journalist, more than four decades earlier.

I was warned, early on, that the Musa Qal’eh cohort were a ‘a difficult bunch’. That was not far wrong.

Many of the soldiers who fought there found it cathartic to talk about their experiences. But they were reluctant to engage with people unless they believed they would understand what they had been

Below left: Mortar fire controllers Corporal John Harding (left) and Lance Corporal Rab McClurg, Musa Qal’eh, 2006.

Below: Royal Irish Regiment mortar detachments at Musa Qal’eh (from left to right) – Corporal John Harding, Ranger Ricky Armstrong, Ranger Adam Dunlop, Ranger Jason Mooney, Corporal Danny Groves, Lance Corporal Rab McClurg, Ranger David McFarland, Ranger Smith, and seated, Ranger Dougie McLaughlin and Ranger Crockard.

Image: Danny Groves

based in Northern Ireland, could get easy access to much-needed, lifesaving therapy.

As a military historian more at home with the battlefields of the First World War and engaging with events through the prism of dusty documents from deep in the vaults of the National Archives and other repositories – at a range of more than a century – I found the process of researching and writing a contemporary history to be quite different from my previous experiences.

For example, many of the witnesses were still alive. So, instead of reading their long-forgotten

Image: Danny Groves

flash, a green shamrock on a black background, and the fields of opium poppies that could be seen by the defenders, from the walls of the District Centre in Musa Qal’eh, as they fought off repeated Taliban attacks.

The book was originally conceived in three parts. The first would deal with the decision-making that took the British Army to Afghanistan in 2006 while it was still heavily engaged in Iraq. The second would explain why ministers and senior military commanders agreed to send a relatively small force to undertake a potentially massive task. And the third would be an account of the fighting at Musa Qal’eh – why we went there; why we allowed ourselves to become fixed there; the consequences of those decisions in terms of the fighting and the resulting casualties; and how the siege was finally resolved. In my mind, the book would end with the survivors climbing into the back of Chinook helicopters, at a remote desert landing zone, for the short flight back to safety.

But as I began to interview veterans, it became very clear, very quickly, that the book could not end with a helicopter ride back to civilisation. For many of the soldiers who fought at Musa Qal’eh, the combat was still going on... in their minds. And it was still claiming victims. Some found the daily battle with their demons was just too painful to bear and ended it, or attempted to end it, by their own hands.

So, the final section exposes the impact of high-intensity combat on the mental health of some of those who experienced it – a significant proportion of whom have since been diagnosed with various psychological issues including post-traumatic stress disorder (pages 44-47) – and how the nation initially failed to ensure that veterans, particularly those

civvymagazine.co.uk

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Image: Stephen Gilchrist

through. Many civilians, with no experience of military operations, found their accounts difficult to comprehend.

Luckily, I had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although I had not seen the fighting they had witnessed, I was given the benefit of the doubt.

But not before they checked me out, sending one of their number to conduct a close target reconnaissance at my kitchen table, over several cups of tea.

Having passed the test, however, they allowed me in to their circle and talked openly about what they had seen and done, and how it had affected them, at the time and later.

I feel privileged to have been taken into their trust.

I was equally pleased with the level of access I was given to former senior MOD decision-makers and policy officials. I had been a Defence civil servant and ex-colleagues helped to smooth the way by providing contacts, making introductions and (presumably) providing assurances of my good character and positive intentions. I found that after 20 years, some senior officers were happy enough to rake over the coals of their advice and the decisions that were based on it.

Politicians were less forthcoming.

Two Defence Secretaries who were involved in the decisions that sent British troops to Helmand failed to respond to my requests for interviews.

However, evidence provided by them (and others) to various House of Commons Defence Committee inquiries, and the copious records of the Chilcot Report, lessened the impact of those refusals.

The result is a book that is part geo-political odyssey, describing the long process that led the British Army to Iraq in 2003 and to Afghanistan three years later; and part an eye-witness account of some 96

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of the toughest fighting British soldiers had experienced since the Korean War, told through the words of the men who fought there.

It begins with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his vision of the UK as a global leader; his decision to align with archconservative US President, George W Bush – a man who should have been his political nemesis; and how that critical relationship drove decisions for war – in Iraq and later in Afghanistan. It also describes in detail the background and highlevel decision-making process that led to the UK opting to re-invest in Helmand Province in 2006. And it sets out how generals and ministers may have ignored the growing

are a catalyst for crime in the UK, so too was the case in Helmand. The province was a battle zone before the soldiers of 16 Air Assault Brigade arrived there. It was a lawless place where the drug traffickers and their armed militias held the real power and often dispensed it from the barrel of an AK47 assault rifle.

Even the provincial Governor, Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, was believed to have been deeply immersed in drug-running.

Announcing the deployment of British troops, in January 2006, Defence Secretary John Reid referred to the drugs menace emanating from Helmand as part of the justification for the move. His words were music to the ears of the Taliban, who

NINETY PER CENT OF THE HEROIN THAT WAS BEING INJECTED INTO THE VEINS OF BRITISH ADDICTS AT THAT TIME WAS REFINED FROM AFGHAN OPIUM. AND JUST AS DRUGS ARE A CATALYST FOR CRIME IN THE UK, SO TOO WAS THE CASE IN HELMAND. Taliban threat on the ground in order to justify sending such a small force to undertake such a potentially huge task.

The poppies in the title are a reference to the view from the rooftops of the District Centre at Musa Qal’eh. But they are also there as a reminder of what much of the fighting in Helmand was all about.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2006 Helmand Province was the opium capital of the world. If it had been a country, Helmand would have been right at the top of the UN list of opiumproducing nations, closely followed by the rest of Afghanistan. Ninety per cent of the heroin that was being injected into the veins of British addicts at that time was refined from Afghan opium. And just as drugs

used them as part of a sophisticated information campaign, aimed at turning the poppy-growers of Helmand against the UK force. The British, they claimed, were coming to burn their poppy fields, leaving them destitute and unable to repay the loans they had taken from the opium barons to rent land and buy seed. So, even before the first British boots hit the Helmand sand, large swathes of the local population had been turned against them and were ready to take up arms to drive out the invaders and their Government of Afghanistan allies.

The result was penny-packets of soldiers – too small in number to do anything but protect themselves – being sent to Sangin, Now Zad, Kajaki and Musa Qal’eh, as the north exploded in bloody battle. C

Easy Company, 3 Para Battlegroup, including the Royal Irish Regiment’s Somme Platoon, Barrosa Platoon and mortar detachments. This photograph was taken after the ceasefire in 2006.

Shamrocks Among the Poppies: Musa Qal’eh 2006 – A Bloody Siege And The Failures Behind It is available from helion.co.uk

CAREER CHANGE

&Now

Then Rich Burgess, Royal Military Police veteran 1. WHERE DID YOU SERVE, AND WHAT DID YOU DO?

I started out in 2001 in the RAF Regiment. Shortly after, I transferred to the Royal Military Police (RMP) as I wanted more variation. I served in the UK, Germany and Cyprus on general police duties and an attachment to the Special Investigations Branch. I also deployed on Ops Telic and Herrick.

2. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR WORK NOW, AND HOW DID YOU GET THERE?

In April I became the assessment team manager with the Armed Forces Commissioner and am responsible for the group who assess and triage service complaints and welfare issues from the Armed Forces and MOD. After I left the RMP, I went straight into the Surrey Police and after a few years I specialised into a UK Home Office unit working alongside the National Crime Agency, where I became the deputy senior investigating officer of the southeastern regional crime team for anti-trafficking and modern slavery. In late 2022 I left operational law enforcement to go into police complaints and anti-corruption investigations.

3. WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING TO GET PAST?

In 2011 I was diagnosed with PTSD and spent time in hospital.

It took me 13 years and the love,

support and guidance of my amazing wife, Fiona, to seek out help. Adjustment to a new life, without proper preparation had the most significant negative impact on me. At that time, resettlement, in my opinion, hadn’t wholly developed to cater for the needs of soldiers looking to transition into the more niche and defined career environments.

4. WHAT'S THE BIGGEST LESSON YOU TOOK FROM LEAVING?

That there’s absolutely no reason to rush anything for anyone anymore. I felt my service career was always about chasing the person in front of me for professional development. There was an element of that, of course, but ultimately I realised that I was only going places the Army needed my boots, and rarely where I needed to go for my career.

5. BEST THING ABOUT CIVILIAN LIFE?

Time. I have the opportunity to take all the time my family needs me for and the time I need to take for me – to pace things in a way that’s right for a good balance of mental health and my aspirations and personal goals.

The best part of all that is having

a solid group of lifelong friends that share the same values and see civilian life in the same way.

6. HARDEST THING TO LEAVE BEHIND?

It’s hard to say what you truly miss about a life that would bring so much unrest (in hindsight). I guess knowing that you could be around a group of people who didn’t have a single social filter between them, but that in every group of colleagues you could always find a safe space to talk how you wanted, about whatever you wanted.

7. ONE TIP FOR SOMEONE JUST LEAVING THE FORCES?

Take control. Know that everything you bring to the table in civilian life cannot be mimicked, recreated or so much as attempted by the majority of non-service leaver candidates you find yourself in competition with. Your skills, drive, passion, determination and ethics all come from a unique place where you’ve literally sweat blood and tears. Take that with you, show the world what you’re made of and that you’re fully in charge.

You’ve already set yourself apart from the herd, enjoy it – you’re a long time dead. C civvymagazine.co.uk

97

ENDEX

Image: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2026

Thanks for reading – ‘you’re in your own time now!’

T

SUBSCRIPTIONS

he best stories you’ve ever heard – the ones that actually stayed with you – came in the smoking area outside a mess, across a kitchen table at a reunion or in the long quiet stretches of a job no civilian will ever comprehend. They went round once and were gone. You either heard them at the time or you didn’t.

That’s the gap CIVVY is trying to plug.

Every man and woman who has worn the uniform has at least one story worth printing – usually many more. The signaller who now builds bespoke guitars. The aircrewman who took up endurance rowing. The bootneck running a furniture workshop in Devon. The reservist who’s quietly built something the rest of us would not have heard about.

Most of these never get told outside a small circle because nobody asks.

We’re asking.

If you’ve got a story you think we should be telling – yours, your mate’s or the bloke who used to sit two doors down in the block – send us a note on social media or email contact@civvymagazine.co.uk. The same goes if there’s something you’d like us to cover and we haven’t got round to it. We’ll read everything. Kit you want reviewed, careers to be considered, places worth driving to, financial stuff your resettlement briefing didn’t cover, the lot. This magazine works best when it comes back at us as much as it goes out.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, the easiest way to keep CIVVY in print is to tell someone else about it. At £5.95 – less than a flat white coffee in London – there are worse ways to spend an hour or two. Pass this copy on. Buy one for a mate who’s just signing off. Mention us in the group chats, social networks, at the meet-ups, at the dinners, wherever you find yourself with people who’d want to know.

Until next issue – look after each other.

The Editor

Stand with us.

Pre-order Issue #2 today via civvymagazine.co.uk or by scanning the QR code 98

CIVVY Magazine

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ENQUIRIES ADVERTISING Subscriptions civvymagazine.co.uk Editor, submissions, general enquiries The Editorial Team contact@civvymagazine.co.uk Publishing, advertising opportunities Andy Simms, TylerBale Communications andy@tylerbale.co.uk Design & advertising artwork Wroxy Meredith wroxy@tylerbale.co.uk Publisher

Tyler Bale Ltd tylerbale.co.uk info@tylerbale.co.uk Tel: 01252 910413 Delivery If would like to be removed from our mailing list email: contact@civvymagazine.co.uk CIVVY would like to thank Damien McFadden for the kind use of the cover image, damienmcfadden.co.uk

While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this publication, TylerBale Communications and the editor cannot accept liability for any statement or error contained herein. ©CIVVY 2026.

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