Why run with #TeamBrave?

‘Female veterans are invisible – people like me get overlooked’.

Vicky doesn’t look like a veteran ‘When you think of one, most people picture an old man’ she says ‘Nobody would believe I was a veteran unless I was wearing a badge or unit T-shirt. You don’t see someone like me. I’m overlooked in a way. Female veterans can be invisible, and I’ve felt that at times.’ Vicky joined as a combat medical technician at 19, and was deployed to Kosovo, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq for five or six months at a time, offering frontline medical support to soliders and civilians. She was one of the first soldiers to get boots on the ground in Kabul in 2001. ‘I was young, fit, rising through the ranks and doing well’ she says. I started as a Private and left as a Sergeant. But even all she achieved on a professional level; Vicky’s mental health was deteriorating after a traumatic Afghanistan tour 2011. Vicky was eventually diagnosed with PTSD and medically discharged in 2019 which came as a relief, however Vicky felt excluded as a young, female veteran. At her lowest Vicky turned up at the village in Aylesford, came in and just said ‘is there any way you can help me? The answer was yes.

‘The RBLI hasn’t just given me somewhere to live, but a feeling of familiarity. I cannot imagine living anywhere else at the moment’.