Brian Jones OBE explains the motivations and rewards that surround his voluntary work as a Caseworker for SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity.

06 August 2024

It’s an inspirational view across the Vale of Taunton from the veranda of Taunton and Pickeridge Golf Club. Practise putting green flags seem to chatter together in the afternoon breeze, indeed there’s not much else to hear apart from conversational hum in the clubhouse, presumably about tees and teas.

As my conversation with Brian Jones develops, it becomes apparent that this juxtaposition is a neat ambience – near silence, serenity, calm. More of that later.

SSAFA is the oldest military charity in the UK, which comes as news to many. Pre-dating many more familiar names and established in 1885, the Soldier's and Sailor's Families Association was founded by Major James Gildea to help military families at home. Her Royal Highness, Princess Alexandra of Wales became the first ever President of the charity.

Following the founding of the Royal Air Force in 1918, the then Queen Alexandra suggested the organisation should change its name to the Soldiers’, Sailors’ & Airmen’s Families Association and in January 1926 the charity was granted a Royal Charter of Incorporation.

The work of SSAFA today encompasses the same aims, although naturally the areas of support required evolve to reflect changes in working lives and society.

A brief glance at the organisation’s website, www.ssafa.org.uk, draws the eye to a number of words that seem to fire themselves at you – help, rely, challenges, welfare, support, cope, families, veterans.

The promised support covers both regulars and reserves in the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, the British Army and the Royal Air Force and their families, including anyone who has completed National Service.

SSAFA helps that community in a number of ways, though the focus is on providing direct support to individuals in need of physical or emotional care.

Addiction, relationship breakdown, debt, homelessness, post-traumatic stress, depression and disability are all issues that can affect our members of our Armed Forces community. Many of these problems only become apparent when an individual has to leave their life in the Forces and join ‘Civvy Street’. SSAFA is committed to helping our brave men and women overcome these problems, and rebuild their lives.

One thing that has struck me over the last decade or so in my dealings with Yeovilton Air Day, SSAFA Somerset or friends who have served, is that those of us who have absolutely no military experience or even minimal knowledge of it are always accorded respect from those on the inside. It seems that we are not expected to know. For my part in this engagement it does require some acuity – out of all the many types of meeting I attend, it is the ones involving the military at which I make extra effort not to say anything stupid.

There is a sort of interfacing language that many of us do understand though. Some nuances are not restricted to the military, understatement being one of them….we would all like to think we have some level of personal ownership of “stiff upper lip”.

Understated is probably tattooed on Brian Jones somewhere. He drops in that he flew helicopters for a while, the location and time of which dowsed me in chill shudder.

We are here of course to chat about things to get done, not things we have done. But the have done is a really good basis when assembling the skills around casework.

This role within SSAFA is an interface between those in need and what actions can be undertaken to solve the issue, something that Brian feels his experience suits. We talk about a few anonymised examples of his recent work – a widow who couldn’t afford her husband’s funeral, a man in financial trouble, a lady whose husband has dementia and needs a level of home care, a lady needing some white goods, a recently divorced man with PTSD and other issues. The latter has been turned round such that he now helps support SSAFA.

“I am just thankful it’s not me, I get a kick out of helping others” Brian explained. “A military background is not a requirement to perform this role, however aspects of that experience really help. As well as having served in the RAF, my experience of managing projects when running businesses has been really useful.”

Brian certainly has an interesting life and career story, which would be a huge surprise to anyone seeing him carrying his clubs around the golf course.

I was talking about understatement earlier, wasn’t I? Oh, I nearly forgot to say. In 1999, Brian, along with Bertrand Piccard, co-piloted the first successful non-stop circumnavigation of the world on board a balloon, the Breitling Orbiter 3.

Brian explained some background, “I progressed through cubs, scouts, air cadets and tried gliding. I was hooked. I joined the RAF initially as a clerk, but then went to night school to obtain sufficient qualifications to become aircrew.

“After 13 years I left the RAF and started to teach gliding. A while later a girlfriend offered me a space on a balloon flight as her boss didn’t want the space, hooked again! I also had a business and bought a balloon to help promote it. It was not long before I became an instructor, then examiner, then eventually the Chief Flying Instructor in the UK.”

The other part of the story developed in Switzerland. Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss explorer approached Breitling in 1997 and suggested they should sponsor him to fly a balloon around the world. Orbiter 1 duly flew in 1997 and failed, landing in the Mediterranean. It was clear that training on survival skills was needed and Brian was invited to help with that.

Orbiter 2 flew in 1998, this time with Bertrand plus two others. The balloon landed in Burma. “I was asked to go out and help retrieve the equipment,” Brian recalled, “Burma was a lovely country as were the people, however the authorities wanted to confiscate the communications equipment. A local businessman helped us hide the capsule and we managed to get it out to Singapore!”

“When I got back, Breitling had decided they would have one more go. As I had been so involved they asked me to project manage and it ended up with me being co-pilot.”

Launch was from Château d'Oex in Switzerland near Gstaad. Due to a depression in the Mediterranean the balloon (a gigantic 58m high, weighing over 9 tonnes) went south at first instead of east, ending up over Morocco. “I think the balloon flew us for the first few days,” Brian continued, “we were novices in a way for this particular set up. The views of the Sahara were amazing, at dawn and dusk any colour you care to mention could be seen in the sand.”

Direction of travel is mainly controlled by looking for winds through changing altitude. This was usually in the region of 25,000-30,000 feet and the ground team included two meteorologists, three traffic controllers and five communications experts.

The Pacific brought both ends of experience. Flying high over a storm, Brian could see through the eye surrounded by 100 miles of cloud right down to the ocean.

I couldn’t stop myself from asking Brian about the risks, “There were a few dodgy times, wondering if we could make it. The Pacific was always going to be the big one, nobody had flown across it. The issue is that if you go down you are not going to be rescued because you are too far from anywhere. We lost three of our six burners one day and then we saw big storm clouds in the distance. We had to throw loads of things out to get higher out of the way. It was terrifying, at that time I finally lost my sense of humour. But we made it in the end, with 7 world records to our credit.”

We return to the casework. “As I am ex-military, I know what it’s like when you leave the service and how unsupported you are. When you are in the services you are supported at every stage – when you leave they wash their hands and you are left to get on with it. I can empathise with this of course.

“I am very calm, I am also a good listener which is really important. I have an analytical mind, I can listen to people and assimilate problems and issues. Listening is an art, you are asking some really difficult questions sometimes, looking for details into finances for example. You only take on the cases that you want to. There’s no pressure to take a case, you can choose how much to do.”

Brian Jones does sound the perfect wing-man indeed.