Noel Tomlinson
Electrical Engineer, Condor Ferries
Service Record: Navy, 2000 – 2004
"When people picture a veteran they think of a 60-year-old with a big, white, bushy beard."
Transcript
When people normally picture a veteran, especially in the Navy, they think of a fifty- or sixty-year-old with a big, white, bushy beard. I think people are starting to recognise that the person that they may work alongside or that live next door to them has actually given up their time in service for the country.
I now work as an electrical engineer for Condor Marine Services, for Condor Ferries. These vessels are high-speed craft. We try and keep up forty knots, which is the high-speed vessels that are operating around the UK at the moment.
We have around about 30 crew, and we carry 450 passengers, about 170 cars, fully laden.
I joined the Navy in 2000. I joined up just after my seventeenth birthday so I was pretty much straight out of school. [In] the first eight weeks of basic training I obviously changed from that schoolboy into a man that can go to sea.
I loved my time in the Navy. I went to a lot of places that I'd never go as a civilian. That all-round training that's not just for the job, but [relates] to everyday life, as well.
People always comment on Forces' personnel, and it's true that they are sort of smart and tidy, because it gets instilled into you and it's a way of life that you carry on, even when you leave.
I'm really proud of being in the Forces. It's made me who I am today and put me in the job that I am in today and, as I say, changed me from the young boy just leaving school into an experienced seafarer and mechanical electrical engineer.