Once a troop...

Among my many occupations (farmer, mechanic, carpenter, plumber, BnB operator, child-minder, cook, etc, &c), I also help edit an annual journal. 

This is for the Royal Air Force Mountain Rescue Association. This is an organization of ex-service-men and women from our small and very "special" force. 

(Perhaps we're too special. That thought has occasionally occurred to me.)

What this means, mostly, is that once I was, essentially, a professional mountaineer and rescuer. But I can't take much credit. Rescue is a team game. 

RAFMR personnel are, for reasons likely lost to history, collectively called "troops" or "MR troops." Our organization includes troops all the way from from the 1940s and 1950s to the very clean-cut and super-fit troops of today. I have the honour, with each year's publication, of helping them tell their stories.

I was also on civilian teams. I spent about thirty years on one SAR team or another between 1979, when I joined RAF Mountain Rescue, to 2020, when Covid hit and we were forced to close down the Unity College SAR team. 

There's also something about having lived through a decent interval with an organization like RAFMR that is asbestos-producing. (I did five and a half years of it.)

You can't harass me, yell at me, haze me, or subject me to brutal physical training and expect it to have too much of an effect. 

I've been harassed, yelled at, hazed, and brutally worked by experts.

I look forward to getting my print copy of the journal each year. I've read it before, of course, every word. I'm the main copy editor. But it's nice to see it in print. 

I just got the last set of proofs and the print copy should arrive next month.