Army of support
How veterans have helped out nationally and locally during the Covid-19 crisis
Military and NHS veterans have played a vital part in helping the country tackle the coronavirus outbreak, bringing their skills and experience to help with testing centres, food deliveries and supporting hospital staff.
One veteran making an incredible contribution in this tough time is Michelle Partington. The ex-RAF frontline medic has been volunteering with aid agency Re: Act Disaster Response to help the homeless in St Helens, working alongside the Salvation Army and YMCA.
Michelle, 48, was the first female RAF paramedic on the front line in Afghanistan and now runs Mentis Training & Consultancy, which offers mediating and coaching to support mental health. She is drawing on her vast experience during the crisis.
“I was working as a housing support officer and staying at a pub in St Helens, where they kindly put me up,” she explains. “They were running a shop in their pub for key workers and the vulnerable, so when I wasn’t on my shift for the YMCA and the Salvation Army, I was doing food deliveries for them.
“It was hard, but it was a nice experience. It opened my eyes. When you think of a homeless shelter, you picture a big room with lots of camp beds, but they had their own rooms with en suites and they were really well looked after.”
Re:Act’s team of veterans have been working on all kinds of projects to support the UK’s Covid response.
“Service people are giving coronavirus tests in care homes. They helped to build the Nightingale Hospitals. They were packing and delivering PPE and working in the mortuaries when the influx of bodies became too great,” says Michelle.
It’s a tough but rewarding job, and
We’re used to mucking in – when we deploy we just think: ‘Right, let’s get our heads in it’
one veterans are cut out for because they have so much experience of how to handle a crisis.
“We’re used to mucking in together when something is needed,” says Michelle. “When we deploy, we just think: ‘ Right, let’s get our heads in it, do it.’ We’ve had the training, we’ve got the leadership, we know how to cope within ourselves and most importantly that buddy-buddy check. You look out for each other. We are each other’s strength and that comradeship never leaves you.”
Now Michelle has an important job to do each week from a distance. “I’ve got a lovely gentleman aged 91 in a care home in Kent who’s isolating, so I phone him up once a week for a chat,” she says.
Like many others people who’ve spent time helping the community, Michelle is aware of the positives she can take away from this difficult time. “You realise how much you can do, both on your own and as a group,” she says. “People just crack on and do it. You find ways to adjust. And I think that as we go back to work, there’ll always be that new way of working – you find that, actually, anything is possible.”
One of the many challenges in tackling coronavirus was getting Serco and Sodexo’s 28 Covid test centres and three mobile units up and running quickly.
Responsible for providing security guards and traffic marshals to the centres was ex-military police officer David Stubbs, MD of security firm SSGC. It has taken on 1,300 extra staff, many of whom are veterans.
“It was all about recruiting the right people fast,” says David 49. “We’ve taken on about 200 veterans so far. I’m one myself so I know vets come with a fair standard of discipline and they’re used to standing for long periods of time. We need a highly disciplined workforce to ensure we’re managing the risks.
“It’s a great privilege to be involved in what we are doing for the country. I worked without a day’s break for nine weeks to get everything up and
If it’s a Friday night, Saturday morning, it doesn’t matter – the work has priority
running and stable.”
David served in the Military Police for six years and also spent time in the Territorial Army. It’s where he learnt to quickly adapt to any situation.
“In the Military Police you can find yourself in any kind of environment and situation. You have a set of disciplines and training standards that you apply to any task you’re given. That training has guided me in my business life too,” he says.
He and his staff drew on their military skills and determination to keep going. “There are times in the military when it doesn’t matter how long you go to work for – you do your job because it absolutely needs doing,” David explains. “That’s exactly where we are today: the job needs doing and therefore if it’s a Friday night, Saturday morning… it doesn’t matter. The work has priority.”
One thing Rod Eldridge learned from nearly three decades in the Army was mental resilience. This made him well suited to lead the wellbeing support for nurses at London’s NHS Nightingale Hospital.
After tours of Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, Rod, from south Wales, had retired, but was still active with military charities.
“Once you’ve served, you want to continue to serve when the nation’s in crisis,” he says. “You know that you have some abilities that may help.”
So when the call went out to set up a team to help the nurses and healthcare professionals at the Nightingale, Rod responded.
“What you’ll find about the military is that we’re very ‘can-do’; we trust each other very quickly,
People were stretched, it was difficult, but so many grew from the experience
we understand what the mission is, and here our main effort is to support the staff of Nightingale, including the management,” he says. “One of the biggest protective factors we have in the military is the bonds we forge. When you have a team that knows itself, you can hit the ground running.”
Rod put together a team full of ex-Army and Navy nurses who offered crucial support to staff, and were always ready to talk to them as soon as they’d finished a gruelling ITU shift. “It was humbling, and a total delight, to support the healthcare professionals involved in that,” he says.
Rod is not surprised that so many veterans stepped up to help during the crisis.
“There’s a bit of a combat indicator, where suddenly you’ve got a lot of military gravitating towards a crisis. There’s something innate in us about wanting to keep on serving,” he says.
“When you change a large entertainment facility into a hospital in a matter of weeks, that is an amazing feat by all involved. The professional mix of people on the wards was amazing. People were stretched, it was difficult, but I felt that so many grew from the experience.”
Former Army combat medical technician Joshua Ryder has previous experience of dealing with serious outbreaks, having been deployed to Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. He’s now using that experience as a trainee nursing associate for the Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, where he works on the acute mental health ward.
“Our patients have been brilliant,” says Joshua, who left the military in 2018 to return to the UK full-time. “Day to day I’m involved with their physical wellbeing – calming them, making physical observations, doing ECGs and taking blood.
“I take each day as it comes. We’ve got a good team here, people with different skills, and we all support each other and do everything we can for our patients. It would be abnormal, with all the constant changes, if we did not experience stress and anxiety.”
Joshua’s time in the Army was good preparation for the job he does now. “I have worked in demanding conditions, in various locations around the world, operating within a multidisciplinary team. I have a range of skills and experience from both my past and current career.
“I’m adaptable to many environments and job roles. Through my experiences I have gained excellent communication skills. I’m a very
We’ve got a good team here – we support each other and do all we can for our patients
approachable and sociable person.”
And the hard work doesn’t stop when Joshua takes his uniform off and goes home, as he works tirelessly to support mental health charities. In 2019, he ran a half marathon for Mental Health UK and this year he’s running 100 miles to raise more money. It’s a cause that strongly resonates with him.
“In the military I saw soldiers suffering from poor mental health,” he explains. “They opened up to me. One of my friends who was also in the Army committed suicide. I decided to get involved with mental health and entered the NHS through the Step into Health programme, which has been brilliant. I was able to show them what I had done, and my experiences counted.”