Please note that this conversation with Natalie includes accounts of active duty in the Army in Northern Ireland, use of guns and tanksand loss of life through friendly fire. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for links to relevant support services.
Natalie is 40 and lives in Somerset with her family. From as early as the age of 8, she knew she wanted to be a mechanic with the British Armed Forces. She followed that ambition, enlisting in the army at the age of 16 and started training at the age of 17. During her time with the army, Natalie became experienced at working within and containing volatile situations in conflict and post-conflict contexts. In civilian life, Natalie has adapted these risk management skills to new roles, working in jobs that have risk mitigation and assessment at their heart.
Natalie describes herself as someone who taken a lot of risks throughout her life and ended up in what still could be considered male dominated roles. She reflects that she is quite a resourceful, forceful person and although at times she may have tried to be stronger than she maybe was, she has never taken ‘No’ for answer and managed to succeed in life because of it.
I only found out about the
risks involved in signing up
for the army afterwards
‘Before joining the army, I don’t think I thought about the risks. I think there might been a bit of, “I’m a woman, so I know they can’t send me to the front line,” involved in that. (The British Armed Forces didn’t allow women to serve on the frontline of conflict until 2019). But the risk of remaining at home would have meant that I wouldn’t ever have got my driver’s licence. I came from a really, small village 5 miles away from the nearest town. No real bus network or anything like that. Not even my mum had a driver’s licence. The transport network was such that I would never have got to college. I would have been straight into work at the age of 16 and unskilled. The army were offering me a fully paid apprenticeship into mechanics and all my driving licence paid for and all my NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications, practical, work-based qualifications awarded in the UK that are achieved through assessment and training) paid for. I was 16, I didn’t think about any of the potential risks an adult might, because you don’t imagine those risks when you are 16. You don’t know what’s out there, particularly when you are a country bumpkin from a tiny village. So, I only found out about the risks involved in signing up for the army afterwards. I look back now and it’s a retrospective thing.’
The rifle is not unsafe,
it’s a lump of metal
‘One of the biggest things that they do in the army is tear you down and build you back up. They turn you into a team of brothers and sisters. They become your family, so nobody gets left behind. The first thing the army does is remove the chance of you being on your own and having to fight on your own. That is the biggest risk that army training removes. You become so close to those people, sticking to them like glue.’
‘Everybody throughout the military is trained in exactly the same fashion. The risks are limited because everybody cleans their rifle in the same way and in the same order. Every principle is taught to you and hammered into you in exactly the same way. I think that does creates very good sense of safety.’
‘The training in the army is second to none. We go out shooting every week to get your eye in and to make sure that you’ve got all of your rules of engagement - so that you know you are able to protect yourself with a weapon. You get training in map reading, so you don’t get lost, military history and first aid and all this training is repeated every year. You’re given a lot of knowledge to protect yourself with. I still do that now. The reason I haven’t caught Coronavirus despite cleaning medical centres is because I am highly trained. Knowledge is key to protection. When I first picked up a rifle, I was thinking, “Oh my god! this could kill someone!” And now I could go anywhere, pick up a loaded gun and make sure I’ve got it pointing somewhere safe and unload it. I’m no longer frightened of a rifle, because I understand the mechanism and the training involved to keep that rifle safe. The rifle is not unsafe, it’s a lump of metal. It’s the person who is behind it that is unsafe. That is the difference you learn.’
I still had a bit of a
bulletproof attitude
‘In the army, there was always the risk of a live firing exercise going wrong. Once we were doing this old live firing exercise where one section of people gets up and runs and gives covering fire, the other are firing kind of over the top of them. One of the second lieutenant lead us the wrong way and, all of a sudden, we were all lying flat on our stomachs, live rounds going off way too short above us. That was one of my earliest instances of me thinking perhaps things could go wrong. I would have probably only been about 18 then. There were many fatalities on that live firing exercise. One was friendly fire. Someone fired at what they thought was a hessian target, but it was actually a real tank and people lost their lives that day. Although I still had a bit of a bulletproof attitude, this was still all going off around me.’
‘When I was in Northern Ireland it was difficult in that I was mainly in the camp preparing vehicles that had come in and it was other units and inventory who were in them. I still felt a high degree of risk. We had to carry our weapons everywhere, even when we were in barracks. We were allowed to go out in Belfast, but there was a blackboard in front of the guard room that had a list of taxis and shops that we weren’t allowed to use because they were unfriendly. We were also shown videos of mobs killing British soldiers in the area that we were in in the 70s and 80s. It kind of made me not want to go out, even though it was much easier for me to disguise that I was a British soldier because of my blond, long hair. The British army makes men chop their hair from here (Natalie indicates a point quite far up where a side burn would be, near the middle of her ear). As a female I get to hide behind my hair because we get to keep our hair long. But there was a lot of risk factors. Very present prolonged risk. It was 6 weeks during the worst marching season they’d had for decades with lots of our vehicles coming back burnt out and people getting dragged out of vehicles and all sorts. (The marching season refers to the months April to August in Northern Ireland and includes marches by groups such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Apprentice Boys of Derry, and the Royal Black Institution as well as the Orange Order). It wasn’t a pleasant place to be.’
Every now and again I crave
adrenaline, you need a bit
‘I think it’s changed me and how I see risk in civilian life. So, if something is going wrong in the cleaning company I work for, I’m like, “Well, they’re not throwing pipe bombs over the fence are they!” You know, it’s just cleaning, it’s not a problem. I think I have grown and become more safety conscious too. Like my husband will come over and pass me a pair of goggles when I am making doll’s house furniture for my children, and I’ll go, “Actually yeah, he’s probably right, it’s really not worth taking an eye out.” I’m a better person for that. It’s kind of made me value my personal safety more, but it also hasn’t. If you’ve ever been in the Army, you then start to crave stupidity. I’ve got a sports car and let’s say I’m less than good in it! Because every now and again I crave adrenaline, you need a bit. But I think as I’ve got older my need for adrenaline has gone down a bit.’
‘The army has allowed me to find different ways of managing risk compared to other people. I’ve got more resources now. It’s made me better at thinking on my feet. I will find a way round anything. As a civvy it’s made me so much more resourceful and so much harder to situations than other people.’
The control is decreased as
people become more trained
‘There’s a huge relationship between risk and control in the army. When you first start training there’s about 10 to 12 people per 1 instructor and that goes on for the first 8 months. So, this 1 instructor has a high level of control over the small group of about 10 privates under them. Later that ratio goes up to 30 people to 1 instructor, and later on, you have entire battalions that are controlled by 2 Sergeants and a Company Sergeant Major. They keep the groups small when you first go into the army, so they have a high level of control. When you pick up a rife during your first 3 or 4 months in the army, there is a Corporal behind every private. At the start, nobody knows what they’re doing with rifles. New Privates cause accidents by swinging round with a loaded rifle instead of keeping it pointed down the range. So, the army places a Corporal behind every private with a rifle to bat the gun if they accidentally point it at anyone. To keep people safe, they must have that level of control. When you are an experienced soldier, after 3 or 4 years, there’s one Sergeant looking after every 10 - 12 people, because they know none of us are going to make any of those silly mistakes anymore. The control is decreased as people become more trained. The amount of control our commanding officers have over us decreases as our training and the amount of control we have over our weapons increases. By the end of training, everybody knows the marksmanship principles. It’s been absolutely hammered into everybody. The nature of the control changes, from making sure we are all safe, to making sure that people are performing the test correctly.’
They consent up to the
point when they lose their life
‘Every single soldier does the same when they sign up to the army. They consent up to the point when they lose their life. You consent to that when you swear the oath of allegiance. That is just the way it is. Consent doesn’t work dynamically in the army. When you sign your oath of allegiance to the Queen that is it, you sign up to the cost of your life. That is very well communicated before you sign up, but they don’t recommunicate it.’
‘The cleaning company work for gave the area managers the choice of whether they would like to deal with coronavirus infected businesses. I was one the ones that said, I would go in and sort this out. There were area managers that did not want to take that risk because of family members having long term illness. In the civilian world, it is easier to remove a risk from yourself because there is a consent thing there. If a new risk comes up, no one can make you do it. In the civilian world, you have a boundary. You can leave. In the army there is no boundary. You cannot leave. You leave in a body bag or a straight jacket. That’s it. You can’t just leave the army. It doesn’t work like that. My notice period for my trade as a mechanic in the army was one year. You can’t just walk out like you can in a civilian job. They will hunt you down and then you’ll go to the Glasshouse in Colchester (the British Army’s Military Corrective Training Centre). The army need to know everyone is there supporting each other. We’re a highly trained unit. It takes the army over 2 years to put someone with my training back into the army, and they have to protect that. That’s how they manage their risk. They have to have a working unit, so they have to put these controls in place, so their unit continues to work after you’ve left.’
The army also asks you
to take risks without giving
you all the information
‘The army also asks you to take risks without giving you all the information. You’d be lined up as a battalion on the parade ground and they would say to you, “Right, I want 5 people to put their hands up in the air now!” and inevitably, 5 or 6 people would put their hands up. They would bring them to the front, and they’d say, “Right, you’ve just said that you are happy to go litter picking today.” But the thing is, when they said, “I want 6 people to put their hands up in the air now!” in 2001, I put my hand up in the air and I went to Northern Ireland for 6 weeks. So, you do not know if you are going to be taking a risk or not if you put up your hand. You have volunteered for a risk, not knowing what risk you’ve volunteered for. One small arm movement can mean you’re away on duty for the next 6 weeks.’
For some trades in the
Army, it’s really difficult
to come back into civilian life
‘For some trades in the Army, it’s really difficult to come back into civilian life. There can be a risk of joblessness. Luckily, as a mechanic, my trade translated into the civilian realm. If you score lower on the BARB test (an aptitude test that new recruits take to help determine which role in the army will suit their skillset best) you end up as a gunner or in the infantry or something. Those roles are very important in the army, but when you leave the army and return to civilian life, you’re most likely going to be working retail or something. You don’t have a trade, because there is no civilian equivalent to being an infantry man - unless you work security I suppose without a weapon. If you’re a mechanic in the army, like me, then you have a very high chance of being a vehicle mechanic, which I was for about a year, until I diversified and went into British aerospace for 10 years as a radiologist. I was taking pretty pictures of aircraft parts and making sure they were safe to fly.’
A lot of my job involves
removing risk for people
‘As a cleaning manager, my job is all about removing risks. I’m working Coronavirus from inside out really. I’m cleaning it up, keeping medical centres and hospitals open with what I do. I go into medical centres and I audit how clean they are. If they don’t pass, we correct them the same night for infection control reasons. So, I’m removing risks from my cleaners, the general public, the hospital and doctor’s surgery staff.’
‘I manage 100 cleaners. It is always important for you to remember that you work for them, they do not work for you. Cleaners will leave and you will get a high turnover of staff if they don’t understand what they are doing, or they don’t feel certain and confident. It must be hellish, as a healthcare cleaner, if they go in onsite and they don’t understand exactly what they are doing. That to them is a risk. They will remove that risk by leaving. So, it’s up to me to have them fully trained, that they understand the entire role and then they do not feel there is a risk to their health or a risk of getting told off. I remove those risks for them. A lot of my job involves removing risk for people.’
Links to Support Services
Veteran’s Gateway
Veteran’s Gateway put veterans and their families in touch with the organisation best placed to help with the information, advice and support they need – from healthcare and housing to employability, finances, personal relationships and more.
Click here for their website
Phone number - 0808 802 1212
Mind
A national mental health charity which provides information and support.
Click here for their website
Phone number - 0300 123 3393
Text - 86463
Email - info@mind.org.uk
Samaritans
Samaritans run a free, 24-hour helpline to those struggling with their mental health.
Click here for their website
Phone number - 116 123
