Hear the words ‘volley ball’ and ‘air force’ and you’ll probably think of sweaty, topless,peroxide-haired Val Kilmer in Top Gun. But for Lucy Ash, a Newcastle-born RAF ICT Technician, the reality is a little different. She might play volleyball, she may live in green camos (‘It’s like going to work in your pyjamas!’), she might do weights every day, but she’s unlikely to be mistaken for Tom Cruise any time soon.
‘You can still be a girl and be in the RAF. It doesn’t take that away from you,’ she tells me over the phone from camp. Lucy, who grew up in Newcastle, joined the RAF straight from school, aged 16. ‘I’m quite a girly girl. I didn’t join the military because I wanted to go off and live in a field,’ she laughs. ‘I wanted to earn money while I got my qualifications.’
After an initial nine-weeks of basic training, Lucy went on to specialise as an ICT Technician which takes another year. As the only woman on the course, she not only had a whole 12-person room to herself, but she had the benefit of her course mates to socialise with.
‘I was paid to train, it looks good on my CV and I’ve got military experience,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘The good thing about the RAF is that if you don’t like the job you’re posted to, you only have to do it for 18 months before you get the option to move. And every job you go to is different. So if you went somewhere and loved it you could stay there longer. It’s a proper secure job, you know?'
Lucy has specialised in a deployable, cutting-edge IT system, which provides simple things such as email up to sophisticated equipment which provides military commanders with situational awareness of the air picture. And yet, she insists, she’s not particularly technically-minded.
‘I don’t even have a laptop,’ she laughs. ‘There’s a guy opposite me who’s built his own computer – you go into his room and it looks like something off The Matrix. But you’re not pressured to get that far into it. The main thing is being able to communicate properly; being confident enough to tell someone when you don’t understand; and to ask for help. It’s not about knowing everything already; it’s about being interested in learning.’
This, I venture, comes more naturally to women, who don’t let their pride get in the way of asking for help and explanations.
‘Yeah, totally,’ agrees Lucy.
When she’s not working, the RAF seems to be an unlikely mix of Byker Grove, Tough Mudder and an outward-bound holiday.
‘My favourite thing is that you can go and do sport all the time,’ says Lucy. ‘They want you to be quite fit so are happy for you to go off and do sport or exercise. I do weights and High Intensity Training most days. I also play volleyball and netball loads. Although,’ she adds, ‘if there were a cocktail bar on camp I probably wouldn’t be at the gym every day.’
The camp also organise a fortnightly trip to Leeds to ski and trips to Wales for mountain biking, rock climbing, abseiling and mining. The RAF also paid for Lucy to learn to drive, posted her to the Commonwealth and Olympic games, as well as offering all manner of other sweaty, adrenaline-fuelled pursuits.
‘When it’s quiet, we go adventure training because when we’re in Afghanistan and pulling out there’s no time for anything but work,’ she says.
Having no time for anything but work sums up lots of people’s concerns about a job in the RAF. But, says Lucy, it’s not like that.
‘People think that you have to choose between a job in the military and having a life; they see it as the end somehow. But I have an amazing life. I can book leave whenever I want. If the girls are going away to Ibiza next week I can book leave and go. Now I’m out of training, I have six weeks of leave a year, just to use when I want.
‘Of course, it does mean living away from home, sharing a kitchen and washing machines with others on the camp, and you might get posted to help with a flood or other natural disaster,’ says Lucy, ‘But, if you love it, then you love it’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.