Veterans are helping Britain’s next generation of sailors through their training on the wilds of Dartmoor.
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 members, former sailors who want to help ensure the 21st-century generation make the grade.
Retired Royal Navy personnel have been lending a hand at Raleigh for more than a decade: four veterans work with each fresh intake of 60 or so civilians arriving at the base most Mondays to begin their ten-week transformation into junior sailors.
Much of that guidance is concentrated in the base. But increasingly the mentors are with the recruits in the field, helping them through the assault course and the two-day slog around Gutter Tor.
Former medical assistant Les Yeoman is one of 26 RNA volunteers at Raleigh. He left the Navy in 2000 after 33 years, joining as a boy in the mid-1960s.
He said: ’I went through the same things – away from my family for the first time, sharing messes with strangers, I had the same feeling when I walked through the gates or walked up the gangway of my first ship. We’re with the recruits from week one, day one, looking after them, staying with them throughout.’
Charlotte Woods, a 28-year-old trainee dental nurse from Cornwall, said: ‘The veterans are always really positive – and the more encouragement you get, the easier the course is to get through. You need someone to ‘gear you up’
Pics are crown copyright. Credit LPhot Alex Ceolin.