Page 7 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

Ihave only been at RMA Sandhurst for two and a half years. Not long enough to require a replacement tie, but enough for some of the
shock to have dissipated for my opinions of the Officer Cadets to now be a little better informed by experience. There will be exceptions to each of my observations, but they are offered with good intention:
The average OCdt is a 24-year-old male gradu- ate. So what? They are far more likely to have lived by themselves, fed themselves, been in charge of their own learning programme, and joining the Army is a more considered choice. Physically they are also more mature than some will remember from their time.
As a rule of thumb, 12% are females, 12% are Internationals and 10% are serving soldiers in the British Army.
In an intake, there will be a number from families of heads of state; one or two are children (almost without exception, sons) of senior serving Army Officers; two or three have transferred from other Services.
An instructor
REACH they still go up and down 2,700m – or 8,800ft – whatever the unit of measurement, that is still twice the height of Ben Nevis. But now they do it in better clothing and boots, which allows them to be more useful because slightly
Today’s Officer Cadets
Most importantly, you will not know anything about them from how they look or behave in the first few weeks.
Whether it is
44lbs or 20kgs makes precisely no difference: they are the same weight, only decades apart.
less time is spent trying to survive; rest assured we use that effort to test their brains more, rather than their brawn.
And, they still get more nervous than we really understand. The tick- tocking +50-year-old neurosurgeon; the individual who was sick driving his car into camp on Ironing Board Sunday; the inability to remember one’s own name – it all still happens.
Before you know it, one will be a
double World Champion Rodeo
Rider, another ran the bar in the
Warrington British Legion, a third
has the most shocking parental-
family, or was timid in asking for
time off to collect their PhD in non-attributable lung diseases. All are real people. So too, the ones with severe concerns about an under- graduate’s loan, a family illness, an (un)expected pregnancy or...
But these OCdts seek out how to improve. The “Change of command appointments!” might well still send shivers down spines, but the debriefs are inclusive and constructive, and then they spend time working out how to do better next time. They are very eager to do better and to succeed. So, please be rest assured: these are really good people, and I am pretty certain that in many ways many are better than their predecessors.
But (and it is a very big but) the Army is still the Army. The Black Mountains of South Wales are still very steep, covered in bracken, and usually on the damp side. Whether it is 44lbs or 20kgs makes precisely no difference: they are the same weight, only decades apart. During Ex LONG
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