Thursday 31 March 2011

Through Adversity to the Stars.

Today, after 22 years in the Royal Air Force, I finally realised what the RAF motto actually meant.

Yes, I knew that 'Per Ardua Ad Astra' translates as 'Through Adversity to the Stars' but today I finally realised what it meant.

After nearly six weeks of exceptionally bad luck, where the helicopters were breaking down all the time, today we managed to get all four of them up and flying.

I am tremendously proud of my whole shift for getting everything serviceable...even though it has been a horrendous struggle to keep our humour when all around us was falling apart.

To see all four flying past in a (loose) formation was a moment when I thought to myself...

...yep, we did it.

I can't say fairer than that.

See you over the horizon...the birds are aloft and the journey is homeward bound!

2 comments:

John Lambshead said...

Your choppers sound like my family's cars :)
J

Inso said...

Well, we'd fix one thing, send them out to fly and they would come back with something different broken...I have never known a run of bad luck like it!