Page 395 - They Also Served

198
Hannah Shergold 2010.
The daughter of a Royal Engineers Officer, Hannah Louise Shergold was born in Maidstone on 31st October 1984. Educated at Bloxham School, Banbury, she achieved four A grades in her A levels and studied pre-clinical veterinary medicine at Cambridge University. After graduation, she ran her own business as a sculptor in cast bronze, specialising in animals, taking a retail stand at the Blenheim Horse Trials and spending time in Dubai producing work on commission. She then decided on a completely different career path, entering Sandhurst on course 092 as a member of Rhine Company.
Commissioned into the Army Air Corps, she completed an infantry attachment on operations in Afghanistan before completing 18 months of flying training and being awarded her wings as a Lynx helicopter pilot. Flying in Germany and Canada, it was during a tour of Kenya, flying medical evacuations, and with long periods of time to kill between flights, that she took up sketching her surroundings.
Initially drawing the people, buildings, vehicles, and aircraft around her, she graduated to watercolour and then began to specialise in wildlife subjects, sketching and then painting the creatures around her. Over time, she refined her skills, graduating to
389