Volunteer
veterans complete tor of duty with trainee sailors
Veterans are helping Britain’s next generation of sailors through their training on the wilds of
Dartmoor – shedding the traditional image of former military personnel. Trainees as young as 16 spend a couple of days on the moor hiking, learning to navigate, work as a team, and survival in an austere environment. With them all the way are instructors from the Torpoint establishment – plus a handful of Royal Naval Association (RNA) members, former sailors who want to help ensure the 21st-Century generation make the grade. Retired Royal Navy personnel have been lending
outdoor activities, assault course and the two-day
a hand at Raleigh for more than a decade: four
slog around Gutter Tor, about half an hour’s drive
veterans work with each fresh intake of 60 or so
outside Plymouth.
civilians arriving at the base most Mondays to begin
Former medical assistant Les Yeoman is one of 26
their ten-week transformation into junior sailors.
RNA volunteers at Raleigh. He left the Navy
Much of that guidance is concentrated in the base:
in 2000 after 33 years as a medical
veterans help with tasks such as ironing and getting
assistant, joining as a boy in the
kit and uniforms ready for inspection or providing
mid-1960s and, he says,
general moral and pastoral support.
faced many of the same
But increasingly – hoping to shed the perhaps
challenges a 16-year-
traditional image of veterans ‘only’ marching at memorial parades or recounting seafaring stories over a tot of rum – the mentors are with the recruits in the field, helping them through
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