Where were you born? Anything stand out in your early years?

yeah so i grew up um in larn i came from as you said like a military sort of family and grandparents parents were in the military and sort of aunts and uncles and stuff um so i guess from like an early age that was quite influential me deciding to go into the military um i sort of always grew up with a sense of adventure um wanted to go out and sort of be outdoors and i remember playing with my friends when i was in primary school running around shooting guns and that kind of thing so it was always kind of in the the back of my mind and I suppose having as I said having the family background too and then I got to the age of 15 where I decided I wanted to join the Royal Marines I think they had a really good recruitment campaign and it was something like 99.9% need not apply and I was like yeah I need to apply.

So I was adamant.

I really wanted to join.

And then thankfully, that's when sort of Rachel actually had that conversation with me about, you know, what, what life could look like maybe after the military maybe going for something that would allow me to have more qualifications and things like that so I sort of came to a bit of a conclusion that I could maybe do two things at once in a sense so what I decided to do was apply for the Royal Marine Reserves okay um so i was i think 15 and 10 months when i when i applied and then started roughly a month after my 16th birthday um which was an absolute shock um but it was probably i actually say this quite often now that it was probably one of the hardest if not the hardest thing i've ever done right um so why just explain why

As an engineer, what skills would you say that you learnt or developed during that time that you look back now and go, you know what, I have that skill directly because of

my military training? um i mean i think in terms of interestingly in terms of engineering there's in some ways there's quite a lot of crossover between engineering and like physio and what i've gone and seen now in terms of in some ways like the biomechanics of a body it's got some there is some comparison engineering and then other things in terms of health care which i think is massive um engineering you know you have to have quite good communication skills and then diving and diving engineering you have to have really good communication skills um which are really really there's a really good strong crossover then into um into physio from that um and i think as well just In terms of combat engineering within the army, you also have to maintain a quite high standard all the time and making sure things are done no matter how tired or whatever you are.

And I think, again, in terms of the NHS and healthcare and the way things are at the minute, it's a similar kind of thing like it's very difficult to do that i think having them previous experiences within the military within an engineering environment it's there is a really good sort of cross over there which i didn't really appreciate i don't think until leaving And that's actually recognised because there was a scheme as I was leaving that I didn't know existed called the Armed Forces into Allied Health scheme.