Well done to 11 cadets who were down on Monday to get their St John's Essential First Aid badges. EFA is delivered to new recruits within the first 6 months of their joining the air cadets. The next badge up is Youth First Aid. 23 of our cadets are already YFA qualified hence we are contemplating running a weekend YFA for 0125/0924 to keep up momentum on First Aid delivery with the help in First Aid equipment provided by a recent Warwick Town Council grant.

Monday's parade saw 1368 cadets receive an insight into post WWII with a talk by Mr Jennings who was working on Canberra air sampling aircraft during the Grapple Y Nuclear Tests, a British atomic weapons trial conducted on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1958, as part of Britain's programme to develop a hydrogen bomb. A video was shown. Not many young people get to hear first hand what it was like to witness a nuclear explosion and a great way of connecting the young with history. It was an insightful talk with some humorous reflective moments from his experiences in the RAF and life in general. The Wing Commander for Warwickshire and Birmingham Wing, Wg Cdr Lee Cassidy, had the pleasure of presenting him with a Nuclear Veteran's Medal and he gave some awards to 1368's younger cadets.

Well done to 13 cadets from 1368 Sqn who were down on Monday to get their badges for Blue Leadership. The Sqn ran a large scale leadership training programme in Feb->Apr that involved our newbies working together as a team to solve command tasks and learn leadership and briefing techniques. It's been a popular yearly part of the programme, great for building teamwork and friendships. Blue leadership is also a solid foundation badge for building self-confidence and opening up ability to bid on Bronze leadership courses run above Squadron level.