Page 101 - Wish Stream Year of 2017

Monday 16th January: “Today was our first proper room inspection - and it was a night- mare... Up until 0200, three hours sleep, then up making beds and brasso-ing corridors. Pre- dictably we failed, as the CSgt rampaged the lines, flinging boots into the corridor”. Sandhurst teaches us that a bed can never be perfectly folded, and in doing so the value of the ’80% solution’ delivered on time - a good approach to much of life.
Our life here in the block has not been without excitement, as on 14th February, where “the day kicked off with cleaning a new corridor due to moving rooms: oh, the joy...” There was the day when 82 people filled Old College corridor on show parade, or the depths we plumbed for Muster, as on 23rd March where “an amus- ing highlight was one Cadet getting two show parades for securing his collar with Blu tack”.
There have been low moments, as on 31st March: “Mood not brilliant, quite fed up of being always tired and the same places and faces day after day”. However, Juniors became worth it on 13th April, with the insight that “Theresa May was quite pacy in her Sovereign’s Parade inspection... Left arm still in agony from the rifle”.
There have, unsurprisingly, been some tough Exercise moments. 17th May, Ex Wolfe’s Cross- ing: “the last couple of days were undoubt- edly my wettest ever”. 3rd June, Ex Allenby’s Advance: “the hardest test we have faced so far
and, undoubtedly, the wettest”. 27th June, Slim’s Stand: “day three dawned cloudy, and later the skies opened - torrential rain for 48 hours - the wettest Exercise we have experienced - morale at an all-time low”. All good character-building training.
Thinking back to our poem, the final section sug- gests that the “world’s margin fades” as we move through life. There are two main interpretations to take from this. One is that, as we progress beyond Sandhurst, our journey pushes back the margins of inexperience: for example, becoming accustomed to permanent rain in Brecon. As we progress with our journey, one might therefore think that the world’s “faded margins” mean that less remains untravelled.
I think, however, that a second interpretation is more useful in understanding our journey: that, as we move through life, the margins which we previously thought set and finite, grow ever more indistinct. The margins of the world grow no closer, and our journey continues indefi- nitely. Our ongoing experiences will continue to feed into the complexity of the ways we must approach the world. Since:
All experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when we move.
Lucknow: Building teams as we go along – Lucknow Platoon
In the Army it is a rare commander who gets to select their team. Rather, we accept that we will be installed in an authoritative position over
a number of individuals who constitute our team. No doubt we will applaud the presence of some, accept the majority and, perhaps, wish others had found their way into another team.
The Business Dictionary states that a team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its
individual members. How then, to generate syn- ergy in a team with an almost constantly shifting membership? Lucknow platoon is unique of all the platoons present on any given day at RMAS because it is losing and gaining on average one cadet per week. Creating a new team each week presents challenges that most leaders would seek to avoid, but there are a few things that can help.
Firstly, create a unique identity that all members of the team can get behind. Lucknow cadets identify themselves as something different to the Regular
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