Page 7 - They Also Served

INTRODUCTION
The genesis of this book came from an idea from the commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Major-General Zac Stenning OBE. When Sandhurst was reconstituted after the Second World War (previously it had been the Royal Military College), the first commissioning parade was inspected by King George VI. He decreed that, thereafter, the parade should be known as The Sovereign’s Parade. The 200th such parade was in 2023, so the general suggested a book to highlight the achievements of 200 Sandhurst alumni.
The task proved a little less daunting than first perceived as, over the last five years, I have been sharing short alumni biographies on the Sandhurst Trust Facebook page. Inevitably, they were mainly men, as Sandhurst was a male-only establishment for the first 170 years of its existence. International cadets attended the Academy from the late 1940s, bringing undoubted diversity (now some 16% of every intake are Internationals). Women were admitted in 1984, having previously trained at their own college in Bagshot.
There were two main criteria for selection in this process. The first was that the subject must have made substantial achievements outside of the army, otherwise, this would be a book about famous generals, of which there have already been many written. Nevertheless, I have included a few field marshals, working on the assumption that it would be wrong not to include such luminaries as Montgomery (who almost did not commission, having set fire to another cadet in a prank that went wrong). Some other generals are included due to their achievements outside the Army, such as Richard McCreery, who rode in the Grand National as a four-star general. Sharon Nesmith is also included as the first female to become a three-star general. However, the majority left the Army as relatively junior officers, often after service in one of the world wars.
The second criterion was that they must have trained at Sandhurst, which considerably narrows the field of famous people who have been Army officers. There were many other ways to be commissioned since Sandhurst opened in 1812. The Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, opened in 1741 and trained artillery, engineer and later signals officers until 1939. Thus, Field Marshal Alanbrooke, who was a gunner, and Field Marshal Kitchener, who was a sapper, are excluded. Other Woolwich alumni are worthy of inclusion in a separate volume, such as the larger-than-life rear gunner in Guy Gibson’s Lancaster bomber on the Dambusters Raid, Richard Trevor-Roper. The
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