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The Flight to Recovery classroom is full of energy — people talking, moving around, focused on their work. There’s even a little smoke in the air from soldering irons. Some veterans are flying drones in the simulator. Others are working in the engineering area, trying to figure out why a camera isn’t connecting or why a motor is spinning the wrong way — with an instructor guiding them through it.
One of them, who goes by the call sign Grenadier, feels right at home. He’s confident flying, soldering, and often having deep conversations with the instructor — way beyond the course material. He already came in with a solid background from his civilian job as a land surveyor and had some experience with drones.
But Grenadier says he didn’t join the course just to learn — it was more about connecting with people.
“It really helps during those first days after you leave the military. All of a sudden, you don’t have to get up and go on duty anymore. It’s like waking up on the first day of school, and everyone’s heading to class — but you’re not, because you didn’t get in.”
Being part of the veteran community, as he calls it, helps him adjust to civilian life and stay connected to others who’ve been through the same things.
This isn’t his first time leaving the service. Grenadier first joined the fight back in 2014 with a volunteer unit and served until 2019. When russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, he re-enlisted — this time in the mechanized infantry, where his civilian experience helped him land a job as a geodetic operator.
He left service shortly before completing three more years — this time for family reasons. He has three kids. When he got back home, he didn’t rush to find a job. But the The Flight to Recovery course from the Dignitas Foundation got him thinking about a new direction — one he hadn’t considered before: working in tech and manufacturing.
“If I hadn’t taken the course, I wouldn’t have even thought about this kind of work. I knew the field existed, that people were hiring — but I wasn’t really looking. I had other plans. Then I realized — hey, they actually need someone with my skills. So I thought, why not?”
Now, thanks to Flight to Recovery and the tools it gives veterans, Grenadier is going through interviews and negotiating with potential employers about potential opportunities.
To other veterans who feel unsure about what comes next, Grenadier says: don’t overthink it — just take the first step.
“If you have the chance to take a course — do it. Your personal growth is your responsibility. Want to go deep into a topic? Go deep. Want to explore different directions? Go for it. The only thing standing in your way is you.
We’ve got all the world’s knowledge in our pockets now. You can look up anything. But organizing all that info on your own? That’s not so easy. You can sit at home and complain about your job — or you can take that first step toward something better.”
We’re proud to keep working — with gratitude to those who served.
