Page 53 - The Wish Stream Year of 2020 Crest

International Cadets 2020
Col (Ret’d) Roddy Winser OBE
The reality is that 2020 has been like no other year in Sandhurst’s history. Coronavirus has done that of course. Despite the challenges, the imperative to keep training our future lead- ers, for the UK and our international friends, has remained at the forefront of our minds and has driven our behaviours. The training programme has been peeled back to its very bare and core objectives. Those ‘Sandhurstisms’ which make Sandhurst such a unique institution, have also been retained, where possible. Keeping those is especially important, as a link to the past: to maintain the traditions, and yet to create his- tory. Sandhurst doesn’t shut. We have all suf- fered the effects. Our international community at RMAS has suffered: no more than other folk, but perhaps in different ways. Their ability to derive a view of UK and our culture through visits to London, Oxford, Bath, Scotland, Wales, or wider has been curtailed. They have in some cases been unable to return home for over a year; for example, OCdt Malik, Afghanistan, CC201, did not get to see his new-born until his child was six months old. And RMAS has been delighted to host circa 45 Internationals during each of our Recess periods as international travel and quarantine restrictions have disrupted plans considerably.
OCdt Kelly from The Cayman Islands
Across 2020 there have been 124 International Cadets in training from 44 different countries alongside our own 675 Regular and 226 Reserve UK OCdts. Our Internationals have continued to add significant value and the benefit of their dif- ferences, based on their experiences of service in their own forces whether warfighting (10 years in one case for this year [Afghanistan]), previous service or time in their respective officer institu- tions, of their countries, or their cultures.
RMAS has trained our first OCdts from the Cay- man Islands (Commissioning Course Short), Chad, Mali, Moldova, Niger, Turks and Caicos Islands (Commissioning Course Short): a reflec-
International Cadets February 2020
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