Royal Air Force News Friday, October 22, 2021 P5
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Arabian
Flights Pride of pioneer Pickering
ABU DHABI’S skyscrapers and coastline provide the perfect backdrop as the Red Arrows fly in to mark the 50th anniversary of the UAE. The team also displayed at Expo 2020 in Dubai to promote the UK.
OFFICIAL IMAGES of the RAF’s first black woman Honorary Air Commodore have been released. The pictures of Veronica Pickering of 504 (County of Nottingham) Sqn have made her a celebrity in her African homeland. She said: “I was amazed by the reaction in Kenya. My cousins were calling and texting me, telling me I had featured on local radio. I had never done anything that people back home have tweeted about.” The former social worker, UN International Child Protection Consultant and now business coach was recruited by former Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford – who she
Netflix ’n’ drill Tracey Allen
APART FROM appearing in Hollywood films with Brad Pitt and Gail Gadot and Netflix hit Bridgerton, Kirk Bowett has another impressive claim to fame – he’s the first-ever limbless veteran military survival instructor. The former soldier is now with the Robson Academy of Resilience at the Aircrew SERE Training Centre at RAF Cranwell, where he teaches aircrew students survival skills and talks about his own experience of having survived a devastating attack and coping with the physical and psychological trauma that followed.
Iraq vet Kirk turned his IED injury into a career as a movie extra. Now he’s training RAF crew to survive in the wild
Having left the Mercian Regiment as a Sergeant after a 17year career, he worked in close
Rank and Fyl WO KEV HANNAFORD bowed out of the RAF this month at Fylingdales after clocking up 40 years’ service. He joined up in 1981 as a communications engineer and arrived at the North Yorkshire radar base two years ago after a career that has enabled him to travel the world. Kev donned the traditional bowler hat as he prepared for life on Civvy Street, as he was seen off the station with a waterhose guard of honour. WO Hannaford is set to take up a job as an engineering lecturer at Teeside University. He said: “I’m really looking forward to passing on my experience to young people starting out in the engineering world.”
protection for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In July 2013 he suffered lifechanging injuries following an IED attack in Iraq leading an armoured convoy. He broke his neck, lost his left arm below the elbow and had multiple rib injuries. His driver was killed instantly. Kirk said: “I wear a prosthetic arm but don’t tell the students, they find out as the course goes on and I tell them how I lost my hand. Every now and then I might accidentally burn it in the fire or chop a finger off.” He added: “One of the great things about my job is you are out in the field a lot and you have to be physically robust. I teach a lot of the lessons with one arm – gutting rabbits, building a shelter, tying knots. A lot of the students struggle with two hands and I figure out a way to do things,
met when she was Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Nottinghamshire. 504 Sqn, a former Battle of Britain unit, now recruits, trains and employs chefs, drivers, suppliers, and technicians deployed across the UK and world. Honorary Air Cdre Pickering said: LOCAL HERO: “I am super proud to be the first black woman to be appointed to this position, to represent the RAF and be part of the 504 team. I am constantly fascinated and surprised by the RAF and its amazing people.”
In Kenya
SURVIVOR: Kirk tucks into a foraged meal in the forest during survival training course. Inset, taking a break on set of WWI blockbuster 1917, where he plays an injured infantry man
usually involving my teeth.” He joined the Robson Academy last summer, after working as a location manager for Netflix. As an actor, he’s appeared in the films 1917, War Machine (with Pitt) and Wonder Woman (with Gadot). In 2018 he studied creative media at the BFBS Forces Academy. He said: “I brought some of my media skills to this job – when we’re doing some training in the field I’ll do some videos. I also video wounded veterans who come in to give the students resilience talks. “With survival everyone thinks ‘bushcraft’ but it starts out with an incident where you or your colleagues are severely injured or a potential first aid situation. “In the psychology survival section of the course I talk about my experiences bouncing back
from severe injury, the physical and mental health issues that come with it, including if you’ve lost a colleague, and going back to work but not being able to do the job you did previously, which can be devastating, especially for aviators. If they get physically injured they might not fly again.” Not surprisingly, on his road to recovery Kirk suffered from depression and PTSD. He said: “I went from a very challenging military career to an even more challenging civilian one to then being on the scrapheap potentially. “When I was a fully abledbodied infantry soldier I’d be quite bigoted and think having a disability would prevent someone from doing something. Now I say treat me like I’ve got two arms, give me the challenges.”