When Luke Delahunty had a crash on his way to work at RAF Honington, his parents were told he may not last the night. He has gone on to lead a life of adventure and achievement and, he says, it’s thanks to the support of those around him – and always saying ‘Yes!’
An old friend of mine from the cadets said: ‘You do more than I do and I’m not in a wheelchair,’” says Luke Delahunty. “And I laughed and said: ‘Well, that’s your fault. Life is what you make it, you know.’”
After leaving the RAF – following a near-fatal motorbike crash in 1996 – Luke has lived a life of adventure including winning a British gold medal, competing in the Invictus Games, cycling from London to Paris, teaching scuba diving in Egypt, sailing a tall ship in the Mediterranean and appearing on stage, in an opera and in a TV commercial.
“A vast majority of the things that I’ve done are through people that I’ve met,” adds Luke. “People who told me about something that sounds amazing.”
Despite the dizzying array of Luke’s achievements, there is no sense of showing off. And as he says: “If I am not in a good place, other people are always the answer.”
Luke was not particularly sporty as a child; he didn’t really watch it, let alone compete much. He enjoyed playing Scrabble with his mum and joined the RAF Air Cadets because he thought: ‘Why not?’ when a friend joined up. But cadets engaged him enough to join the RAF at 17, as a gunner. He served in Germany, Northern Ireland and Cyprus with 1 Squadron RAF Regiment.
Serving with the RAF Regiment.
Eight years later, in 1996, on his commute to RAF Honington, he and a tractor collided. His injuries were life-threatening. He had to be resuscitated in the ambulance, and his family were told their 24-year-old son would probably not last the night.
But, somehow, he did. Luke spent the next year in hospital and at Headley Court, adapting to total paralysis from the chest down (T6). “I was lucky to survive it. That has always helped me to get through. I also broke my neck, but there was no damage to my spinal cord there. If there had been I would have lost the function in my arms. Pushing a wheelchair would have been very difficult and I would not have been as independent as I am now. My life could have ended or just been much worse; so, I felt it was my duty to make the most of it.”
“[Hospital] was only six miles away from RAF Honington so I still felt very connected to the RAF,” he says. “A few people would come to visit me; like Regiment Warrant Officer, Pat Sweeney. At that time, it wasn’t clear what the prognosis was going to be,” says Luke. “And he said no matter what happens, you’re going be alright because you’re Regiment-trained. At the time I thought what the hell are you talking about? But over the years I think, well, yeah, he was right. In the military we are trained: we’ll never know where we are going to find ourselves, and wherever that is, we’ve got to make the most of it.”
Luke with his motorbike before his accident.
Making contact
After moving to the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville to continue his rehabilitation, Luke, by then 25, began to feel very detached. “Then one day a guy I’d served with in Germany came into the ward. He’d become a civilian paramedic. He said: ‘I’d heard you’d had an accident. And I’d heard you were dead.’ Once word got around that I wasn’t dead, a few people I’d served with came to visit. And one of the guys asked what I was doing the next night. ‘Well, nothing; hospital,’ I replied. He said they’d square it with the nurses and take me out for a drink. So they basically manhandled me into a Sherpa or whatever van it was and took me to the Rose and Crown near RAF Halton. There was a load of guys from 1 Squadron in the pub, because the Queen’s Colour Squadron was there for some reason. Needless to say, I don’t remember much about that night. At that time the internet wasn’t a thing, social media wasn’t a thing. That night out made me feel that people cared, wanted to see me, wanted to help me in their way.”
Eventually, Luke moved to Uxbridge and got a job. He kept in touch with his squadron and would have a few pints with them when he could. He lived in London for 12 years. When RAF Uxbridge closed down, social media was just starting up and he kept in touch that way.
New directions
Luke’s accident had happened on his way to work, so counted as being on duty. He’s grateful that meant he got a medical discharge and a war pension that kicked in immediately. “I was financially OK, but still wanted to do something. I still wanted to be active. “
He went back to college and has had various paid jobs since, for News Quest Media, the NHS and as an actor. He began acting with B22, a theatre company for military veterans. From there he “randomly” ended up in an opera about military life, then got an agent and did a couple of TV adverts. He says: “I just said yes – as usual.” He’s also volunteered for the many charities that have helped, supported or inspired him: BLESMA, SSAFA, the RAF Benevolent Fund, The Jubilee Sailing Trust and The Back Up Trust. He’s currently a trustee at his local Association branch.
Sporting life
The Back Up Trust gets involved with people with spinal cord injuries. During rehabilitation, it introduced Luke to pool, table tennis, archery, wheelchair basketball and rugby, water skiing, sit skiing, rowing and hand cycling. “It was geared to opening your eyes up to what is possible in a wheelchair,” he says. “In the RAF I always applied for a sports parachute course, but never got onto it. So I did a [tandem] parachute jump after my injury. Also, it helped on the social side – with meeting other people with spinal cord injuries. We’ve all got similar experiences; you can chat much more easily about the more private things to do with your injury like bladder control, bowel control, all of those personal things that people don’t generally realise are affected. And it’s through chatting with other people like that that you realise you learn from others.”
“One of the first things I paid for out of my own pocket was learning to scuba dive,” he says. “As a fairly new wheelchair-user, you learn from other people. I got talking to a girl I’d met who was a diver and knew where to go in Egypt that was fully accessible. I went out there, learned to scuba dive, and loved it. Later I qualified as an instructor and lived and taught in Egypt for a year.”
Luke had also done rowing taster days while in London – then trained on the water and in indoor adaptive events: “The boats had side floats, like stabilisers,” he smiles. Despite entering a few competitions, he became more involved in scuba diving and ignored messages asking if he’d like to take part in the Paralympics. It’s the only time in our interview when the man who always says yes mused about what might have been. “I don’t regret the choice I made, because I loved it [teaching scuba abroad], but I sometimes wondered what might have happened if I’d got into sports sooner after my injury.” In London he also bought himself a hand-cycle, though “I wasn’t confident enough to ride it a lot until I moved out to Aylesbury some years later.”
After that he did the London-Paris fundraising cycle ride and other long rides two or three times on the hand bike, because: “a friend asked if I fancied it.”
Handcycling started out as a leisure pursuit on the roads round Aylesbury, before leading to long rides to Paris and the Invictus Games in Orlando, Florida. © Tribune Content Agency LLC/Alamy
Mutual support
His participation in the Invictus Games also came about after taking advantage of a chance encounter. Living in Aylesbury, he’d taken up wheelchair rugby at Stoke Mandeville, and was hand-cycling regularly. “I thought Invictus was for people who had served recently,” says Luke.
“The Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I’d been out of service for decades and also didn’t think my injuries qualified. I was at the pub one day in Stoke Mandeville, wearing an RAF Regiment t-shirt. The [UK] wheelchair archery team was there after training at Stoke Mandeville stadium. We got chatting. An Army major in the team gave me some contacts and she gave me the way to go forwards.”
Luke was selected to compete at Invictus in 2016 (Florida) and 2017 (Toronto) in the rowing and hand cycling events. In Florida he got personal bests in both events. “I was happy with that. It was the experience…coming out to compete through the dry ice to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir…the crowd cheering and clapping. My stomach was churning. It was a magical moment. But what made it more special was that I was allowed to take a couple of people with me. They had been there for me when I was low, and weren’t in a great place in their personal lives; I thought;
‘You know, we can help each other’ and I invited them along.”
Luke says he’s needed most support when relationships ended. A couple of friends he’d also wanted to invite to Invictus Florida had helped him through a breakup – they had phoned every day from Orkney to chat and check he was OK. “They were there for me – not physically, but they were there for me.” And during lockdown when another relationship didn’t make it through the enforced separation: “I was in an online meeting for a resilience project I was involved in. The host took time to ask how each of the 15 participants was. And I just burst into tears and there was a stunned silence, you know, and a second later, everyone was like: ‘Oh! Are you OK?’ After the meeting my phone just kept ringing with people from the session calling me. And one of them only lived 45 minute away and she delivered pizza and wine. And you know, that’s just what I needed – just a person to be there for me.”
“The more things you do, the more people you meet and the more opportunities come along and then it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy almost, because the more you say yes to things…then you never know where it’s going to take you or who you are going to meet or what’s going to come from it. And so that’s how I live my life, just saying yes and doing stuff.”
Air Mail
This story first appeared in Air Mail magazine in spring 2024. To receive Air Mail, which is the RAF Association’s quarterly members’ magazine and looks at all aspects of the RAF’s work, now and since it was founded, become a member and opt for Air Mail as part of your membership.
