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The Millies congratulate winners for feats of courage and sacrifice with a glittering awards ceremony at Banqueting House. The Sun Military Awards 2018 – known as the Millies – have recognised the true excellence of the UK’s armed forces with a star-studded ceremony at London’s Banqueting House. The 11th annual ceremony awarded prizes to winners from the Royal Navy, Army and RAF, recognising remarkable feats of bravery, sacrifice and selflessness.

Bravely

Six members of 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards won the Hero Overseas award for their lifesaving first aid response during the Las Vegas shooting last year, where 59 people lost their lives. The young soldiers bravely stepped in and used their battlefield training to aid the emergency services. England manager Gareth Southgate attended the awards ceremony to present the Inspiring Others award to Major Scott Mills of the Royal Marines, who helped prepare the England men’s football team ahead of their historic World Cup campaign this year.

Incredible

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who hosted the nominees at a reception at 10 Downing Street ahead of the awards show, said:

It was a great honour to attend The Sun Military Awards and congratulate so many of the winners and nominees in person. The incredible stories told tonight show how our armed forces protect British people and our interests at home and abroad.

Whether by rescuing civilians from conflict, helping Salisbury recover from a reckless chemical attack or standing up to the appalling use of chemical weapons in Syria, tonight’s nominees have shown the brilliance and bravery of our armed forces. I’m grateful to The Sun for helping the whole country congratulate these remarkable serving personnel and those who support them in their vital work.

Recognition

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier accepted the Judges’ Award for Special Recognition on behalf of the Royal Air Force for RAF100 and its success in celebrating the RAF’s centenary year. The nominees rubbed shoulders with famous faces on the red carpet, including armed forces supporters Nick Knowles, Bear Grylls and Dame Kelly Holmes and sports stars Victoria Pendleton, Amy Williams and Thom Evans. Television stars Georgia Toffolo, Emily Atack and Vicky Pattison also attended to show their support.

The winners of The Sun Military Awards 2018 are:

Hero at Home – Individual

Commander Andrew Parkinson – for rescuing a woman trapped underwater beneath a yacht in a Hampshire marina

Hero at Home – Unit

Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Task Force – for their response to the Salisbury attack

Hero Overseas – Individual

Lance Corporal Chris May, Troopers Stuart Finlay, Ross Woodward, James Astbury, Zak Davidson and Dean Priestley – for their medical response to the Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in American history

Hero Overseas – Unit

HMS Daring – for withstanding danger and aggression guarding vital shipping routes around the world

Best Reservist

Corporal Isabell Hutchinson – for sensitively preventing a young woman from taking her own life

Inspiring Others

Major Scott Mills – for his training of the England men’s football team ahead of the 2018 World Cup

Overcoming Adversity

Robert Long – for his success in Jiu-Jitsu since being blinded by an IED in Afghanistan

Innovation Award

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory – for its work on a sepsis diagnosis breakthrough

Support to the Armed Forces

There But Not There – for its success in commemorating the First World War and raising money for service charities

Judges’ Award for Special Recognition

RAF100 – for its success in celebrating the centenary of the Royal Air Force and inspiring a new generation

The December Newsletter features,

• WW1 Centenary in Pictures
• Poppyshop Offers
• 12 Days of Christmas Memorial Talks
• Arboretum Illuminations
• This Month’s Poll

Editor                                                      Read the Newsletter here

The entente between Britain and France may not be quite as cordiale as it used to be, but the 2018 centenary of the end of the First World War has inspired a unique cross-Channel initiative to commemorate the western front that once divided Europe to horrific effect. A two-year campaign to create a 450-mile memorial pathway that would trace the front lines of some of the bloodiest battles of the Great War has begun to attract wider European support, with French and Belgian officials signalling their interest in the project.

Sacred Path

A new charity, the Western Front Way, has for formal approval by European governments for a tree-lined via sacra (sacred path) that would stretch from the Belgian coast at Nieuwpoort, between Dunkirk and Ostend, to the Swiss border at Pfetterhouse, 25 miles west of Basel. Along the way it would pass the battlefields of Ypres, Arras and Verdun and many other museums, cemeteries and gardens dedicated to the conflict in which nearly 20m people died.

Pilgrimage

BFBS’s annual charity drive The Big Salute has awarded a £10k grant to charity Combat Stress.

Six-Weeks

Combat Stress helps former servicemen and women deal with issues like trauma, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.  The Big Salute grant will go towards funding a six-week occupational therapy course for veterans from across the UK who are referred for mental health treatment.

Shattered

Combat Stress will hold the courses at one of their three residential treatment centres in Ayrshire, Shropshire and Surrey. Robert Marsh, Director of Income Generation for Combat Stress says that his charity has been helping veterans for a century: 

“We were founded 100 years ago just after the end of World War One by women who saw waves and waves of veterans coming back from the Western Front, totally shattered to their core by weeks and months of trench warfare and they decided to do something about it.”

“The support from The Big Salute has been really helpful in making sure we can make and deliver the services that veterans find so helpful.” Treatment for mental health problems has dramatically evolved over the last century. During the First and Second World Wars PTSD was poorly understood and many veterans weren’t treated with compassion or dignity.

“The British Armed Forces treat mental health a lot better than they probably did twenty or even ten years ago.” “They’ve introduced things like TRiM (trauma risk management)… so the military like the commercial world have realised the impact of stress and having good mental health does impact the bottom line. That’s a really good thing.”

The 90 staff of A&G Precision designed machine components for the fuselage, horizontal and vertical tails of the F-35.

From fighter jets to training veterans, thousands of small businesses across the UK are helping to keep Britain safe through their vital services to Defence, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said today as he marked Small Business Saturday.

Small companies from every part of the UK have played a pivotal role in recent Defence projects, including building the UK’s game-changing F-35 fighter jets and delivering the Royal Navy’s largest ever warships, the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.

Unique Knowledge and Expertise

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said:

Small businesses across the UK are a vital cog in the Defence supply chain, from fitting warship galleys in Newcastle to building circuit boards in the South West. They bring innovation, unique expertise and a competitive edge to Defence industry.

And with startups run by former service personnel and manufacturers making the most of our veterans’ unique knowledge, our nation’s economy as a whole is feeling the benefit of our Armed Forces’ expertise and training.

I would like to thank every small business in the country who has invested hundreds of hours of their time, their considerable skills and expertise in support of our Armed Forces.

Boosting the nation’s economy

Technical Fibre Products produce advanced materials which play a key role in pilot protection for the F-35. They became involved in the programme in the 1990s and their materials have been core to the aircraft design from the start.

Taking place on the first Saturday of December, Small Business Saturday celebrates the huge contribution that small businesses make to the British economy and their local communities.

Despite the huge scale of the 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, even some of Britain’s smallest businesses have played a key role in their construction. Caterform, a family-owned business with fewer than 12 employees, worked on the galleys and servery areas of the carriers that will feed a crew of 700. This Tyneside company has fitted kitchen equipment on the galleys of Royal Navy ships for over 30 years.

World Leading

And over 100 British small businesses helped build the new F-35 fighter jets, who this September had their historic first landing on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth. Manchester-based EDM Ltd provide world-leading training simulators to help the Royal Air Force train its personnel to load weapons and fit ejection seats to its latest fighter, without ever going near a real aircraft.

The 107 employees of Exception PCB, from Gloucestershire, manufactured the circuit boards that control many of the F-35’s core capabilities, including its engines, lighting, fuel and navigation systems. Overall, the F-35 programme is expected to boost the UK economy by around £35 billion and create around 25,000 British jobs.

Signing the Covenant

Last year the Ministry of Defence invested over £2.5 billion into small and medium businesses as part of its commitment to make it easier for them to win contracts. In addition, hundreds of small businesses have signed the Armed Forces Covenant, pledging their support for the military community.

The MOD has also launched a range of initiatives, including a new Defence Supplier portal which brings together useful information and opportunities for suppliers in one place; a dedicated Twitter feed to highlight new opportunities for SMEs, @defenceproc; and new, short-form contracts for less-complex procurements.

HEALTH bodies, military charities and politicians united in a quest to find a ‘silver bullet’ to strike at the heart of Britain’s veteran suicide crisis. Organisations were able to vent their frustrations at the current ‘gaps’ in support for ex-forces personnel to Labour’s shadow minister for veterans, reserves and personnel, Gerald Jones.

Crisis

They met with the Welsh MP after his visit to Portsmouth’s naval base, during an hour-long summit at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Causes said more funding needed to be provided to charities and NHS services to help veterans in crisis. But they also highlighted the need for a more co-ordinated approach to be taken between the plethora of forces charities and emergency services. Retired soldier Dan Arnold is the co-founder of Portsmouth-based cause All Call Signs and was among the groups at the meeting.

Intervention

Set up in the wake of the suicide of special forces hero Danny Johnston, the organisation aims to support veterans in dire need or to rally search groups to find those missing and thought to be suicidal. He said: ‘There is a massive gap in service delivery at the point where someone is in complete crisis and feeling suicidal.‘There isn’t a true crisis intervention at the point when they’re in the direst of needs – at that point, there’s nothing.’ Other people at the session included the Royal British Legion, Combat Stress, Veterans Outreach Support (VOS), and Solent NHS Trust among others. Matthew Hall, of Solent NHS Trust, said medical services were stretched dealing with traumatised veterans, who often faced complex needs. He urged Mr Jones to fight to secure a ‘ring-fenced funding pot’ for NHS services supporting veterans in crisis.

Challenge

Mr Jones said the government’s newly-launched veterans strategy had some ‘good ideas’ in improving the situation. But he said more was still needed, adding: ‘Coordination and collaboration don’t cost anything but if you want to raise awareness then all of that takes funding. ‘And when local authorities and public bodies have been significantly cash-strapped over the last seven or eight years, then that has a knock-on effect. ‘There is now a real challenge to provide even basic services because of eight years of austerity. That’s what we need to address.’ As previously revealed by The News, Britain has no official records of the number of veterans who take their own lives.

Outrage

The revelation sparked outrage, with government bowing to public pressure and vowing to arrange for veteran suicide rates to be formally documented. Stephen Morgan, Portsmouth South MP, organised the meeting and said he would be scrutinising the new veterans strategy. ‘I want to make sure the government don’t just have warm words but that they have deeds as well,’ he said. ‘It was good today to learn about some of the good work going on in Portsmouth, what the challenges are and what I can do as an MP that cares for our armed forces and veterans to make sure they get a better service when they leave the military.’

Change

Stephen James, co-founder of All Call signs, felt reassured by the MPs comments and said: ‘We covered a lot of ground in a short time which is a testament to the benefits of getting everyone under the same roof. ‘Collaboration was a key theme of the meeting, we now have to look at how we make that a long-term reality that benefits veterans and service personnel in need.’ Mr Jones added he would ‘take back’ all the good ideas from Portsmouth and said: ‘Discussions like this are incredibly useful. ‘We could all do well to listen to the experiences of the people at the grassroots, at the coalface. Nobody knows better about what needs to change than the people who provide those services at the grassroots level. ‘We’ve had a great example of that here this afternoon.’

A bid to stop veterans becoming homeless and suicidal has been announced by Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood.

Vulnerable