Since I read this thread last night I have been summing up the courage to write something about an officer for whom I had only scant knowledge but total respect and admiration.
I first met Jarvo in the wardroom of LUST during SS2 and only just managed to stop him ripping the pockets off my Red Sea Rig shirt - it wasn't mine Jarvo, had it been, you would have been welcome to them. Our paths crossed a number of times later in Masirah, at AWC Cranwell and elsewhere. I tracked his progress to become a QWI and then on to the Red Arrows. He played his part in the RAF to absolute perfection - he brought with him total professionalism and a joie de vivre that is so often sadly lacking in some of those that we recruit today; he was the inimitable RAF fighter pilot. He had that spirit that I, and many like me, had in our youth. A spirit that worked hard and played hard, knew the boundaries both professionally and socially and sought them out!
When I first heard that he was ill I wrote to him expressing some of these thoughts that I now place here. No words will console his family, a young life snuffed out by a truly horrible disease, but had this not been I am convinced that our mate Jarvo would have been an outstanding officer, a remarkable Red Arrow and a thoroughly good bloke.
God Bless him.
RIP, Jarvo, I'll pay you back for all my sore heads whilst at sea off Oman in 2001, when we meet again in the hangar in the sky!