From fighter jets, to war zones, to fostering kids
Aug 13, 2017 13:55:58 GMT 12
kiwiduster1 likes this
Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 13, 2017 13:55:58 GMT 12
From fighter jets, to war zones, to fostering kids
HELEN HARVEY
Last updated 07:57, August 11 2017
New Plymouth pilot Jim FInlayson has had a long and varied career flying helicopters.
It wasn't until seven years later that the nightmares began. Freaky, scary nightmares that showed vivid images of war. The worst were of dead bodies, complete with the terrible smell.
It was the beginning of the 21st century when the nightmares began and New Plymouth pilot Jim Finlayson, now 54, had just come back from serving with the RNZAF in Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands. But the images weren't of the South Pacific jungle - they were of the European city of Sarajevo.
All the memories Finlayson had repressed since he had returned from Bosnia seven years earlier were coming out.
The nightmares featured situations he had been in. Situations like having guns pointed at his chest, kidnap attempts on his interpreter, and body exchanges where the dead were swapped with the enemy so each side could bury their own. There were 'truckloads' of 'rotting' bodies that had been buried and dug up, were about three months old, falling apart and covered with lice.
He could smell them in his dreams. The constant nightmares meant Finlayson couldn't sleep and got really fatigued, so the airforce organised counselling, he says.
"I would highly recommend anyone with post traumatic issues to get the right sort of counselling."
Finlayson was with the RNZAF when he was posted to Sarajevo in September 1992 as part of a team of six military observers.
The city was a "hell hole", he says.
"Imagine a city the size of Christchurch that has mountains all around it. It is cut off and surrounded by the enemy and you've got shells and sniping and everything going on. When you've got no water and no electricity the living conditions in the city are pretty horrific."
He was asked to run the teams who were trying to repair electricity and water supplies to the city, he says.
"That day I had been into one of the hospitals and I held on to a small girl while her father was getting treated. She had shrapnel taken out of her back... without any pain killers, without an anesthetic and without doctors having the ability to wash because there was no water."
His job was to take a team of local engineers - the electricity and water experts - along with some UN protection and some interpreters out into the frontlines between the Muslims and the Serbs to try and get the electricity and water back on, he says.
"Over the five months I did that we got shot at and shelled every single day by anything from small arms to tanks to artillery to mortars."
They didn't shoot back. They were on a peacekeeping mission.
"It's a strange thing to be doing a peace keeping activity in the middle of very active war. There's a step missing there. You need to do peace making before you do peace keeping and in 1992 in Yugoslavia the UN missed that step."
It took three weeks to get electricity restored to the city. Then it got blown up. They fixed it. It got blown up.
As time went on the engineers became very "superstitious" about Finlayson, he says.
"We would go out and get shot at every day and nobody would get hurt. Nobody was killed in my teams. Some of them would refuse to go if I didn't go."
He says there was an element of luck, but there was also good planning and good military skills.
Skills that earned him a UN Force Commander's award for bravery for his work in Sarajevo. And skills that saved his team when a mine exploded under one of their vehicles. Finlayson got his team out safely and was later awarded a MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his actions.
The incident occurred when they were on the front lines in between the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs, who were shooting each other and the team, he says.
"I worked in the mine field for the next three hours to extract my whole team out of there."
He was calm during the incident, his training kicked in.
"It doesn't hit you til afterwards. I was just focussed on the job and focussed on - these are my people and I need to get them out of there."
After Sarajevo Finlayson then moved to the walled city of Dubrovnik, he says, which was a big improvement - there was water, electricity and they only got shot at about once a week.
Back in New Zealand he had "big problems" adjusting, he says. But it didn't put him off overseas missions, he later served in Bougainville and then in 2001 he spent seven months in the city of Mitrovica, in Kosovo.
It was a tense urban warfare type situation that included rioting in the streets, he says.
"I made good friends with some Northern Ireland police officers who were there with the UN. If you are going to be involved in an urban warfare situation police officers from Northern Ireland are really good to be with, because they know what it's all about and know what they are doing."
On his return to New Zealand he was posted back to the capital for a role with the "glorious" title of deputy director of strategic planning and policy, he says.
By then he had served 20 years in the military doing a diverse range of jobs including search and rescue, being aide de camp to the Governor General for a year and working in Singapore, Antarctica and Australia.
But he knew his chances of flying again in the air force were limited, he says.
"I wanted to go back to flying."
So, in 2003 he left the RNZAF for the same reason he joined - to fly choppers.
Finlayson's love of helicopters began when he had just left school and was working as a guide on the Milford Track during the summer and working on ski fields during the winter. He worked alongside helicopter pilots when they supplied huts and were involved in search and rescue.
He saw an ad for the air force so applied and joined up when he was 19, but first trained to fly fighter jets - strike masters and then skyhawks.
"It was awesome. Really fantastic flying. It's very hard to describe how much fun and how challenging it was. Things happen so fast you really have to be on your game."
The movie Top Gun came out at that time, he says. And they did similar things, such as air combat maneuvering and air to ground weapons training.
The normal cruise speed on a skyhawk is 420 knots, which is more than 700kms per hour.
"You could break the sound barrier in a skyhawk going down hill. You couldn't do that straight and level. You'd climb up to 45,000 feet, turn over upside down and just scream down at the ground at full power."
It was years later, while he working as the personal assistant to the chief of the air force, that the New Zealand government got rid of the RNZAF's air combat force - the fighter jets.
That was disappointing, he says.
"The focus of the government at the time was on the army and the navy at the expense of the airforce, which was wrong. When you look at modern warfare and what's happened around the world, for New Zealand not to have an air combat force really is the wrong thing for New Zealand to do."
After flying jets for two years Finlayson trained to fly helicopters, flying the Bell 47.
"We used to use those for a battle support role for the army. After 18 months I changed to the Iroquois, which I flew for a long time. They're old, but they are fantastic helicopters, really incredibly useful, solid, reliable good performing helicopters."
When he left the military Finlayson did more training to get his civilian flying qualifications and has worked in a variety of roles including flying police rescue helicopters in Tasmania, working in the Solomon Islands and training Australian army pilots in Darwin.
He then started working for Helicopters New Zealand in Borneo and Myanmar in the offshore oil and gas industry. With the downturn in the industry Finlayson got made redundant two years ago, so started his own business training people to fly helicopters.
New Plymouth isn't really big enough to train people full time, so he also works in Hamilton and Auckland.
These days Finlayson spends his time hanging out with his wife, New Plymouth doctor Alina Leigh, a radiologist, and 20-year-old stepdaughter, running his small business, and looking after his little lifestyle block.
The couple's lifestyle block has trees all around it, cats, chicken and sheep. They want a space where the foster children they take in will feel safe, he says.
"We try and create this environment where they know that while they are at our place nothing is going to happen to them. They are completely safe. Some of these children come from difficult backgrounds so they have issues."
They take children in for respite care, he says.
"We take kids in at short notice for a short term. Their parents may have gone to jail or gone to hospital. We want to help and we love kids."
It's really satisfying, he says. But it can be hard to say goodbye to the children even after just a short time.
"Some of them you fall in love with straight away. Some of them are so adorable. These kids come from the worst backgrounds, but are adorable, funny, fun loving kids."
The nightmares only come occasionally now and are often set off by something he's done, he says.
"I loved being in the military. I'd rather do our bit elsewhere in the world, keep tabs on what's going on - political and military issues - rather than let the world deteriorate to where it's going affect New Zealand in a big way. It's far better to do our bit for peace and stability all over the world."
- Stuff
www.stuff.co.nz/national/95556082/from-fighter-jets-to-war-zones-to-fostering-kids
HELEN HARVEY
Last updated 07:57, August 11 2017
New Plymouth pilot Jim FInlayson has had a long and varied career flying helicopters.
It wasn't until seven years later that the nightmares began. Freaky, scary nightmares that showed vivid images of war. The worst were of dead bodies, complete with the terrible smell.
It was the beginning of the 21st century when the nightmares began and New Plymouth pilot Jim Finlayson, now 54, had just come back from serving with the RNZAF in Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands. But the images weren't of the South Pacific jungle - they were of the European city of Sarajevo.
All the memories Finlayson had repressed since he had returned from Bosnia seven years earlier were coming out.
The nightmares featured situations he had been in. Situations like having guns pointed at his chest, kidnap attempts on his interpreter, and body exchanges where the dead were swapped with the enemy so each side could bury their own. There were 'truckloads' of 'rotting' bodies that had been buried and dug up, were about three months old, falling apart and covered with lice.
He could smell them in his dreams. The constant nightmares meant Finlayson couldn't sleep and got really fatigued, so the airforce organised counselling, he says.
"I would highly recommend anyone with post traumatic issues to get the right sort of counselling."
Finlayson was with the RNZAF when he was posted to Sarajevo in September 1992 as part of a team of six military observers.
The city was a "hell hole", he says.
"Imagine a city the size of Christchurch that has mountains all around it. It is cut off and surrounded by the enemy and you've got shells and sniping and everything going on. When you've got no water and no electricity the living conditions in the city are pretty horrific."
He was asked to run the teams who were trying to repair electricity and water supplies to the city, he says.
"That day I had been into one of the hospitals and I held on to a small girl while her father was getting treated. She had shrapnel taken out of her back... without any pain killers, without an anesthetic and without doctors having the ability to wash because there was no water."
His job was to take a team of local engineers - the electricity and water experts - along with some UN protection and some interpreters out into the frontlines between the Muslims and the Serbs to try and get the electricity and water back on, he says.
"Over the five months I did that we got shot at and shelled every single day by anything from small arms to tanks to artillery to mortars."
They didn't shoot back. They were on a peacekeeping mission.
"It's a strange thing to be doing a peace keeping activity in the middle of very active war. There's a step missing there. You need to do peace making before you do peace keeping and in 1992 in Yugoslavia the UN missed that step."
It took three weeks to get electricity restored to the city. Then it got blown up. They fixed it. It got blown up.
As time went on the engineers became very "superstitious" about Finlayson, he says.
"We would go out and get shot at every day and nobody would get hurt. Nobody was killed in my teams. Some of them would refuse to go if I didn't go."
He says there was an element of luck, but there was also good planning and good military skills.
Skills that earned him a UN Force Commander's award for bravery for his work in Sarajevo. And skills that saved his team when a mine exploded under one of their vehicles. Finlayson got his team out safely and was later awarded a MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his actions.
The incident occurred when they were on the front lines in between the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs, who were shooting each other and the team, he says.
"I worked in the mine field for the next three hours to extract my whole team out of there."
He was calm during the incident, his training kicked in.
"It doesn't hit you til afterwards. I was just focussed on the job and focussed on - these are my people and I need to get them out of there."
After Sarajevo Finlayson then moved to the walled city of Dubrovnik, he says, which was a big improvement - there was water, electricity and they only got shot at about once a week.
Back in New Zealand he had "big problems" adjusting, he says. But it didn't put him off overseas missions, he later served in Bougainville and then in 2001 he spent seven months in the city of Mitrovica, in Kosovo.
It was a tense urban warfare type situation that included rioting in the streets, he says.
"I made good friends with some Northern Ireland police officers who were there with the UN. If you are going to be involved in an urban warfare situation police officers from Northern Ireland are really good to be with, because they know what it's all about and know what they are doing."
On his return to New Zealand he was posted back to the capital for a role with the "glorious" title of deputy director of strategic planning and policy, he says.
By then he had served 20 years in the military doing a diverse range of jobs including search and rescue, being aide de camp to the Governor General for a year and working in Singapore, Antarctica and Australia.
But he knew his chances of flying again in the air force were limited, he says.
"I wanted to go back to flying."
So, in 2003 he left the RNZAF for the same reason he joined - to fly choppers.
Finlayson's love of helicopters began when he had just left school and was working as a guide on the Milford Track during the summer and working on ski fields during the winter. He worked alongside helicopter pilots when they supplied huts and were involved in search and rescue.
He saw an ad for the air force so applied and joined up when he was 19, but first trained to fly fighter jets - strike masters and then skyhawks.
"It was awesome. Really fantastic flying. It's very hard to describe how much fun and how challenging it was. Things happen so fast you really have to be on your game."
The movie Top Gun came out at that time, he says. And they did similar things, such as air combat maneuvering and air to ground weapons training.
The normal cruise speed on a skyhawk is 420 knots, which is more than 700kms per hour.
"You could break the sound barrier in a skyhawk going down hill. You couldn't do that straight and level. You'd climb up to 45,000 feet, turn over upside down and just scream down at the ground at full power."
It was years later, while he working as the personal assistant to the chief of the air force, that the New Zealand government got rid of the RNZAF's air combat force - the fighter jets.
That was disappointing, he says.
"The focus of the government at the time was on the army and the navy at the expense of the airforce, which was wrong. When you look at modern warfare and what's happened around the world, for New Zealand not to have an air combat force really is the wrong thing for New Zealand to do."
After flying jets for two years Finlayson trained to fly helicopters, flying the Bell 47.
"We used to use those for a battle support role for the army. After 18 months I changed to the Iroquois, which I flew for a long time. They're old, but they are fantastic helicopters, really incredibly useful, solid, reliable good performing helicopters."
When he left the military Finlayson did more training to get his civilian flying qualifications and has worked in a variety of roles including flying police rescue helicopters in Tasmania, working in the Solomon Islands and training Australian army pilots in Darwin.
He then started working for Helicopters New Zealand in Borneo and Myanmar in the offshore oil and gas industry. With the downturn in the industry Finlayson got made redundant two years ago, so started his own business training people to fly helicopters.
New Plymouth isn't really big enough to train people full time, so he also works in Hamilton and Auckland.
These days Finlayson spends his time hanging out with his wife, New Plymouth doctor Alina Leigh, a radiologist, and 20-year-old stepdaughter, running his small business, and looking after his little lifestyle block.
The couple's lifestyle block has trees all around it, cats, chicken and sheep. They want a space where the foster children they take in will feel safe, he says.
"We try and create this environment where they know that while they are at our place nothing is going to happen to them. They are completely safe. Some of these children come from difficult backgrounds so they have issues."
They take children in for respite care, he says.
"We take kids in at short notice for a short term. Their parents may have gone to jail or gone to hospital. We want to help and we love kids."
It's really satisfying, he says. But it can be hard to say goodbye to the children even after just a short time.
"Some of them you fall in love with straight away. Some of them are so adorable. These kids come from the worst backgrounds, but are adorable, funny, fun loving kids."
The nightmares only come occasionally now and are often set off by something he's done, he says.
"I loved being in the military. I'd rather do our bit elsewhere in the world, keep tabs on what's going on - political and military issues - rather than let the world deteriorate to where it's going affect New Zealand in a big way. It's far better to do our bit for peace and stability all over the world."
- Stuff
www.stuff.co.nz/national/95556082/from-fighter-jets-to-war-zones-to-fostering-kids
